nt to
be possessed and sweetly ruled by the loveliest of angels? Truly it were
but a daintier madness. Come thou, holy Love, father of my spirit,
nearer to the unknown deeper me than my consciousness is to its known
self, possess me utterly, for thou art more me than I am myself. Rule
thou. Then first I rule. Shadow me from the too radiant splendors of thy
own creative thought. Folded in thy calm, I shall love, and not die. And
ye, women, be the daughters of Him from whose heart came your mothers;
be the saviours of men, and neither their torment nor their prey!

CHAPTER VII.

THE PULPIT.

Before morning it rained hard again; but it cleared at sunrise, and the
first day of the week found the world new-washed. Glaston slept longer
than usual, however, for all the shine, and in the mounting sun looked
dead and deserted. There were no gay shop-windows to reflect his beams,
or fill them with rainbow colors. There were no carriages or carts, and
only, for a few moments, one rider. That was Paul Faber again, on Ruber
now, aglow in the morning. There were no children playing yet about the
streets or lanes; but the cries of some came at intervals from unseen
chambers, as the Sunday soap stung their eyes, or the Sunday comb tore
their matted locks.

As Faber rode out of his stable-yard, Wingfold took his hat from its
peg, to walk through his churchyard. He lived almost in the churchyard,
for, happily, since his marriage the rectory had lost its tenants, and
Mr. Bevis had allowed him to occupy it, in lieu of part of his salary.
It was not yet church-time by hours, but he had a custom of going every
Sunday morning, in the fine weather, quite early, to sit for an hour or
two alone in the pulpit, amidst the absolute solitude and silence of the
great church. It was a door, he said, through which a man who could not
go to Horeb, might enter and find the power that dwells on mountain-tops
and in desert places.

He went slowly through the churchyard, breathing deep breaths of the
delicious spring-morning air. Rain-drops were sparkling all over the
grassy graves, and in the hollows of the stones they had gathered in
pools. The eyes of the death-heads were full of water, as if weeping at
the defeat of their master. Every now and then a soft little wind awoke,
like a throb of the spirit of life, and shook together the scattered
drops upon the trees, and then down came diamond showers on the grass
and daisies of the mounds, an