as I apprehend it,
is a request to me to send back the fugitive lamb into the jaws of
the well-meaning, but still lupine wolf?'

This was spoken with so sweet and arch a smile, that it was
impossible to be angry.

'On my honour, I have no wish to convert him. All I want is to have
human speech of him--to hear from his own lips that he is content.
Whither should I convert him? Not to my own platform--for I am
nowhere. Not to that which he has left, . . . for if he could have
found standing ground there, he would not have gone elsewhere for
rest.'

'Therefore they went out from you, because they were not of you,'
said the 'Father,' half aside.

'Most true, sir. I have felt long that argument was bootless with
those whose root-ideas of Deity, man, earth, and heaven, were as
utterly different from my own, as if we had been created by two
different beings.'

'Do you include in that catalogue those ideas of truth, love, and
justice, which are Deity itself? Have you no common ground in
them?'

'You are an elder and a better man than I. . . . It would be
insolent in me to answer that question, except in one way, . . .
and--'

'In that you cannot answer it. Be it so. . . . You shall see your
cousin. You may make what efforts you will for his re-conversion.
The Catholic Church,' continued he, with one of his arch, deep-
meaning smiles, 'is not, like popular Protestantism, driven into
shrieking terror at the approach of a foe. She has too much faith
in herself, and in Him who gives to her the power of truth, to
expect every gay meadow to allure away her lambs from the fold.'

'I assure you that your gallant permission is unnecessary. I am
beginning, at least, to believe that there is a Father in Heaven who
educates His children; and I have no wish to interfere with His
methods. Let my cousin go his way . . . he will learn something
which he wanted, I doubt not, on his present path, even as I shall
on mine. "Se tu segui la tua stella" is my motto. . . . Let it be
his too, wherever the star may guide him. If it be a will-o'-the-
wisp, and lead to the morass, he will only learn how to avoid
morasses better for the future.'

'Ave Maris stella! It is the star of Bethlehem which he follows . .
. the star of Mary, immaculate, all-loving!' . . . And he bowed his
head reverently. 'Would that you, too, would submit yourself to
that guidance! . . . You, too, would seem to wan