disgraceful business--a robbery of the
dead who had left their money to support a faith they believed in. He
is responsible--to my thinking--for all the anarchy, confusion and
misery in that poor unhappy Ireland. I believe," and she leant forward
and dropped her voice, "I believe that at heart the man is more than
half a Romanist. See how he has favoured the High Church party, and if
ever he gives a clerical appointment it is always to a Ritualist priest.
They don't call themselves _clergymen_ now. Well," and she drew
herself up once more, "I, for one, wouldn't like to have his sins on my
shoulders. I should think he ought to be haunted by as many victims as
Napoleon Buonaparte. What with financial humbug, war taxes--the
blunders of the Alabama business--the disgrace and bloodshed of the
Transvaal affair and the Egyptian war--crowned by the undying and never
to be forgotten shame of Gordon's sacrificed life, I wonder he can lay
down his head at night and sleep. When he heard of that hero Gordon's
death he should have taken a pistol and blown out his blundering brains.
But perhaps," she added more calmly, "he was afraid of meeting his
victims until he couldn't help himself. However, he might have gone
into one of those `retreats' his favourite Ritualists are so fond of,
and spared England any more blunders and follies."

"You are very bitter against him," said the stranger calmly. "Be sure
that his own actions will also be his own avengers. Life would be made
much more tolerable if we would only keep that fact before us. To my
mind there is no backbone or support in a religion that teaches
irresponsibility. That is the great fault of you Christians. Your
faith is not a thing you take hold of, and grasp and act upon. Hence
your many national disasters. You shelve your future, or what you call
your salvation, on the merits of a Sacrifice, and think yourselves
relieved of all further trouble. In the world, and in society, religion
is a tabooed subject--it is only kept for Sundays and for churches. I
believe your clergy know no more of the _real_ doctrines of
Christianity, those deep and _mystical_ truths underlying the teachings
of Christ, than the child at his mother's knee. I have been to your
great cathedrals and churches. I saw only lip-service and routine. I
heard only stale maxims, weak explanations of the allegories and
parables that fill your Biblical records; flowing rhetoric and vague
expressi