fe.

Monsignor Masterman was appointed to attend upon the Cardinals in
the Abbey; and as he awoke that morning, it seemed to him once
more as if he were living in a dream of strange and intoxicating
unreality. Everywhere in the house, as he passed along the
corridors, as he gave and received last instructions before
starting, there seemed the same tension of expectancy. Finally,
as he went up to the Cardinals' rooms to announce the start, he
found the two prelates, both in their scarlet, sitting in
silence, looking out over the crowded silent streets.

He bowed at the door without speaking, and then, turning, led the way.

As they came down to the door where the horsed State carriages
were waiting, for a moment the wall and the avenue of faces, in
front and to right and left, struck him almost with a sense of
hostility. A murmur that was almost a roar greeted the gleam of
scarlet as the Cardinals came out; then silence again, and a surge
of down-bent heads as the two raised their hands in blessing.

Monsignor himself sat facing the Cardinals in the glass coach, as
at a foot-pace the six white horses, with grooms and postillions,
drew them slowly past the long length of the Cathedral, round to
the right, and into Victoria Street. There he drew a long breath,
for he had never seen or dreamed of such a sight as that which
met him. From end to end of the side street, and in the direction
of Old Victoria Station, across the roadway as well, from every
window and from every roof, looked a silent sea of faces, that
broke into sound and rippling motion as the last carriage came in
sight. He had not realized till this moment the tremendous appeal
to the imagination which this formal restoration of the old Abbey
to the sons of its original founders and occupants made to the
popular mind. Here again there had been working in his mind an
undefined sense that the Church had her interests, and the nation
hers. He had not understood that the two were identified once
more; and identified, too, to a degree which had perhaps never
before been reached. Even in medieval days there had been crises
and even periods during which the secular power stood on one side
and the sacred on another; as when Henry had faced St. Thomas,
with the nation torn in factions behind the two champions. But
the lesson, it seemed, had been learned at last; Caesar had
learned that God was his ultimate sanction: and Church and
nation, now perhaps for the firs