hased the favour of God, and thine own salvation. Thy
soul shall pass, white and pure, through the flames of Purgatory, to be
triumphantly acquitted at the bar of God."

And lifting his hands in blessing, he pronounced the unholy
incantation,--"_Absolvo te_!"

"Thank the saints, and our dear Lady!" feebly responded the dying man.
"I am clean and sinless."

Before the morrow dawned on the Conversion of Saint Paul, that old man
knew, as he had never known on earth, whether he stood clean and sinless
before God or not. There were no bands in that death. The river did
not look dark to him; it did not feel cold as his feet touched it. But
on the other side what angels met him? and what entrance was accorded,
to that sin-defiled and uncleansed soul, into that Land wherein there
shall in no wise enter anything that defileth?

And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, passed away.

Two months later,--by a scribe's letter, written in the name of her
half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old
coronet had descended,--the news of the Earl's death reached Philippa
Sergeaux at Kilquyt. Very differently it affected her from the manner
in which she would have received it four years before. And very
differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of
Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the
real thought of the heart was--"Is the old man really gone at last?
Well, it was time he should. Now I shall receive the coronet he left to
me, and the two, or three, thousand marks." For thus he had remembered
Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him. To Mary he left nothing;
a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent. But to
the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers--whose
ears heard the news so far away--whose head had never known the fall of
his hand in blessing--whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips
of his--to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her
damask robes was real mourning.

She did not say now, "I can never forgive my father." It is not when we
are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed
with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel
disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the
pitiless, "Pay me that thou owest." The offensive "Stand by,--I am
holier than thou!" falls only from unholy lips. When