a begging friar
recommend the purchase of briefs of indulgence and the daily repetition
of the Ave Maria by a series of extraordinary miracles for the rescue of
desperate sinners, related so jocosely as to keep the crowd in a roar of
laughter. He had laughed with the rest, but he could not imagine his
guide, with the stern, grave eyebrows, writhen features and earnest,
ironical tone, covering--as even he could detect--the deepest feeling,
enjoying such broad sallies as tickled the slow merriment of village
clowns and forest deer-stealers.

All stood for a moment while the Paternoster was repeated. Then the
owners of stools sat down on them, some leant on adjacent pillars,
others curled themselves on the floor, but most remained on their feet
as unwilling to miss a word, and of these were Tibble Steelman and his
companion.

_Omnis qui facit peccattum, servus est peccati_, followed by the
rendering in English, "Whosoever doeth sin is sin's bond thrall." The
words answered well to the ghastly delineations that seemed stamped on
Ambrose's brain and which followed him about into the nave, so that he
felt himself in the grasp of the cruel fiend, and almost expected to
feel the skeleton claw of Death about to hand him over to torment. He
expected the consolation of hearing that a daily "Hail Mary," persevered
in through the foulest life, would obtain that beams should be arrested
in their fall, ships fail to sink, cords to hang, till such confession
had been made as should insure ultimate salvation, after such a
proportion of the flames of purgatory as masses and prayers might not
mitigate.

But his attention was soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as
the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a
taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses,
forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing
and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness of him
who brought sin and death into the world. The horror seemed to grow on
Ambrose, as his boyish faults and errors rushed on his mind, and he felt
pervaded by the contagion of the pestilence, abhorrent even to himself.
But behold, what was he hearing now? "The bond thrall abideth not in
the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. _Si ergo Filius
liberavit, vere liberi eritis_." "If the Son should make you free, then
are ye free indeed." And for the first time was the true liberty