g this
interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,--unfit even
for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity
that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to
the purpose that had broken from him so suddenly, and not less to his
own surprise than to the organist's. From this day she was at liberty to
seek protection under his roof from threatened mobs and hot-headed
church-wardens. Mr. Deane was one man, he himself was another; and if a
day was ever coming to the world when Christian magnanimity must rise in
its majesty and its strength, that day had surely dawned; if the
Christian ministry was ever to know a period when the greatness of its
prerogatives was to be made manifest, that period had certainly begun.

IX.

From this interview Mrs. Edgar went to make her preparations for the
flitting she had already determined upon. She resolved to lose no time,
and consoled Mr. Muir by making known her resolution, and seeking his
assistance, when he was in a condition adapted to the bestowal.

But scarcely were her rooms bared, her trunks packed, and the day and
mode of her departure determined upon, when an order came to H---- from
a high official source, so authoritative as to allow no hesitation or
demur.

"Arrest the organist of St. Peter's Church, Mrs. Julia Edgar."

And, behold, she was a prisoner in the house where she had lodged!

Opposition was out of the question, protest hardly thought of. One
glance was broad enough to cover this business from end to end, and of
resistance there was no demonstration. Her work now was to restore the
room, denuded and desolate, to its late aspect of refinement and cheer.

Well, but is it the same thing to urge others on to sacrifice, and
yourself to bring an offering? to gird another for warfare, and yourself
endure hardness? to incite another to active service, and yourself serve
by passive obedience? to place a sword in the right hand of the valiant,
and bare your heart to the smiting of a sword in the same cause of
glory?

To have urged out of beautiful and studious retirement the painter of
precious pictures, that he may lift the soldier's burden and gird
himself for fasting through long, toilsome marches over mountains,
through wilderness, swamp, and desert, and for encountering Death at
every pass in one of his manifold disguises,--that he may lie on a field
of blood, perchance, at last, the fragment of himsel