nexpressible relief when
he found himself rushing past houses and market-gardens, whirled
onward, whether he would or not, in the right path--homeward.

But was it the right path? for again the temptation flitted past
him. He threw himself back, and tried to ask counsel of One above;
but there was no answer, nor any that regarded. His heart was
silent, and dark as midnight fog. Why should there have been an
answer? He had not listened to the voice within. Did he wish for a
miracle to show him his duty?

'Not that I care for detection,' he said to himself. 'What is shame
to me? Is it not a glory to be evil-spoken of in the cause of God?
How can the world appreciate the motives of those who are not of the
world?--the divine wisdom of the serpent--at once the saint's
peculiar weapon, and a part of his peculiar cross, when men call him
a deceiver, because they confound, forsooth, his spiritual subtlety
with their earthly cunning. Have I not been called "liar,"
"hypocrite," "Jesuit," often enough already, to harden me towards
bearing that name once again?'

That led him into sad thoughts of his last few years' career,--of
the friends and pupils whose secession to Rome had been attributed
to his hypocrisy, his 'disguised Romanism;' and then the remembrance
of poor Luke Smith flashed across him for the first time since he
left the bank.

'I must see him,' he said to himself; 'I must argue with him face to
face. Who knows but that it may be given even to my unworthiness to
snatch him from this accursed slough?'

And then he remembered that his way home lay through the city in
which the new convert's parish was--that the coach stopped there to
change horses; and again the temptation leapt up again, stronger
than ever, under the garb of an imperative call of duty.

He made no determination for or against it. He was too weak in body
and mind to resist; and in a half sleep, broken with an aching,
terrified sense of something wanting which he could not find, he was
swept down the line, got on the coach, and mechanically, almost
without knowing it, found himself set down at the city of A--, and
the coach rattling away down the street.

He sprang from his stupor, and called madly after it--ran a few
steps--

'You might as well try to catch the clouds, sir,' said the ostler.
'Gemmen should make up their minds afore they gets down.'

Alas! so thought the vicar. But it was too late;