musical effect, had some
sort of conductor in the place of this--hullabaloo....

He decided to walk about the room for a time and then remake his bed....

The sunrise found the bishop with his head and shoulders out of the
window trying to see that blackbird. He just wanted to look at it. He
was persuaded it was a quite exceptional blackbird.

Again came that oppressive sense of the futility of the contemporary
church, but this time it came in the most grotesque form. For hanging
half out of the casement he was suddenly reminded of St. Francis of
Assisi, and how at his rebuke the wheeling swallow stilled their cries.

But it was all so different then.

(3)

It was only after he had passed four similar nights, with intervening
days of lassitude and afternoon siestas, that the bishop realized that
he was in the grip of insomnia.

He did not go at once to a doctor, but he told his trouble to every one
he met and received much tentative advice. He had meant to have his
talk with Eleanor on the morning next after their conversation in the
dining-room, but his bodily and spiritual anaemia prevented him.

The fifth night was the beginning of the Whitsuntide Ember week, and
he wore a red cassock and had a distracting and rather interesting day
welcoming his ordination candidates. They had a good effect upon him; we
spiritualize ourselves when we seek to spiritualize others, and he went
to bed in a happier frame of mind than he had done since the day of the
shock. He woke in the night, but he woke much more himself than he had
been since the trouble began. He repeated that verse of Ken's:

"When in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with heavenly thoughts
supply; Let no ill dreams disturb my rest, No powers of darkness me
molest."

Almost immediately after these there floated into his mind, as if it
were a message, the dear familiar words:

"He giveth his Beloved sleep."

These words irradiated and soothed him quite miraculously, the clouds of
doubt seemed to dissolve and vanish and leave him safe and calm under a
clear sky; he knew those words were a promise, and very speedily he fell
asleep and slept until he was called.

But the next day was a troubled one. Whippham had muddled his timetable
and crowded his afternoon; the strike of the transport workers had
begun, and the ugly noises they made at the tramway depot, where they
were booing some one, penetrated into the palace. He had to snatch a
meal betwe