r seen corroborated, was a thing she
had a right to know! but whether he ought to tell her at once he did
not yet see. He took up his candle, and with a feeling of helpless
dismay, withdrew to his chamber. But when he reached the door of it,
yielding to a sudden impulse, he turned away, and went farther up the
stair, and out upon the bartizan.

It was a frosty night, and the stars were brilliant. He looked up and
said,

"Oh Saviour of men, thy house is vaulted with light; thy secret places
are secret from excess of light; in thee is no darkness at all; thou
hast no terrible crypts and built-up places; thy light is the terror of
those who love the darkness! Fill my heart with thy light; let me never
hunger or thirst after anything but thy will--that I may walk in the
light, and light not darkness may go forth from me."

As he turned to go in, came a faint chord from the aeolian harp.

"It sings, brooding over the very nest of evil deeds!" he thought. "The
light eternal, with keen arrows of radiant victory, will yet at last
rout from the souls of his creatures the demons that haunt them!

"But if there be creatures of God that have turned to demons, may not
human souls themselves turn to demons? Would they then be victorious
over God, too strong for him to overcome--beyond the reach of
repentance?

"How would they live? By their own power? Then were they Gods!--But
they did not make themselves, and could not live of themselves. If not,
then they must live by God's power. How then should they be beyond his
reach?

"If the demons can never be brought back, then the life of God, the
all-pure, goes out to keep alive, in and for evil, that which is
essentially bad; for that which is irredeemable is essentially bad."

Thus reasoned Donal with himself, and his reasoning, instead of
troubling his faith, caused him to cling the more to the only One, the
sole hope and saviour of the hearts of his men and women, without whom
the whole universe were but a charnel house in which the ghosts of the
dead went about crying, not over the life that was gone from them, but
its sorrows.

He stood and gazed out over the cold sea. And as he gazed, a shivering
surge of doubt, a chill wave of negation, came rolling over him. He
knew that in a moment he would strike out with the energy of a strong
swimmer, and rise to the top of it; but now it was tumbling him about
at its evil will. He stood and gazed--with a dull sense that he was
wa