made hot."

As the preacher entered on a description of the approaching theocracy,
which he dared to prophesy, Bridgenorth, who appeared for a time to have
forgotten the presence of Julian, whilst with stern and fixed attention
he drunk in the words of the preacher, seemed suddenly to collect
himself, and, taking Julian by the hand, led him out of the gallery,
of which he carefully closed the door, into an apartment at no great
distance.

When they arrived there, he anticipated the expostulations of Julian, by
asking him, in a tone of severe triumph, whether these men he had seen
were likely to do their work negligently, or whether it would not
be perilous to attempt to force their way from a house, when all the
avenues were guarded by such as he had now seen--men of war from their
childhood upwards.

"In the name of Heaven," said Julian, without replying to Bridgenorth's
question, "for what desperate purpose have you assembled so many
desperate men? I am well aware that your sentiments of religion are
peculiar; but beware how you deceive yourself--No views of religion can
sanction rebellion and murder; and such are the natural and necessary
consequences of the doctrine we have just heard poured into the ears of
fanatical and violent enthusiasts."

"My son," said Bridgenorth calmly, "in the days of my non-age, I
thought as you do. I deemed it sufficient to pay my tithes of cummin and
aniseed--my poor petty moral observances of the old law; and I thought I
was heaping up precious things, when they were in value no more than the
husks of the swine-trough. Praised be Heaven, the scales are fallen from
mine eyes; and after forty years' wandering in the desert of Sinai, I
am at length arrived in the Land of Promise--My corrupt human nature has
left me--I have cast my slough, and can now with some conscience put
my hand to the plough, certain that there is no weakness left in me
where-through I may look back. The furrows," he added, bending his
brows, while a gloomy fire filled his large eyes, "must be drawn long
and deep, and watered by the blood of the mighty."

There was a change in Bridgenorth's tone and manner, when he used these
singular expressions, which convinced Julian that his mind, which had
wavered for so many years between his natural good sense and the insane
enthusiasm of the time, had finally given way to the latter; and,
sensible of the danger in which the unhappy man himself, the innocent
and beautif