d it; about the altar the ancient ritual
enacted the holy drama, whose sublime enchantment holds every age.
Around rose the towering arches, the steady columns, the broad walls,
lighted from the storied windows, of the first really great temple of
the western continent!

Whose hands raised it? Arthur discovered in the answer the charm which
had worked upon dying Ledwith, turned his failure into triumph, and his
sadness into joy. What a witness, an eternal witness, to the energy and
faith of a poor, simple, despised people, would be this temple! Looking
upon its majestic beauty, who could doubt their powers, though the books
printed English slanders in letters of gold? Out of these great doors
would march ideas to strengthen and refresh the poor; ideas once
rejected, once thought destructible by the air of the American
wilderness. A conspiracy of centuries had been unable to destroy them.
Into these great portals for long years would a whole people march for
their own sanctification and glory!

Thereafter the temple became for him a symbol, as for the faithful
priest; the symbol of his own life as that of his people.

He saw it in the early dawn, whiter than the mist which broke against
it, a great angel whose beautiful feet the longing earth had imprisoned!
red with the flush of morning, rosy with the tints of sunrise, as if
heaven were smiling upon it from open gates! clear, majestic, commanding
in the broad day, like a leader of the people, drawing all eyes to
itself, provoking the question, the denial, the prayer from every
passer, as tributes to its power! in the sunset, as dying Ledwith had
seen it, flushed with the fever of life, but paling like the day,
tender, beseeching, appealing to the flying crowd for a last turning to
God before the day be done forever! in the twilight, calm, restful,
submissive to the darkness, which had no power over it, because of the
Presence within! terrible when night falls and sin goes forth in purple
and fine linen, a giant which had heaved the earth and raised itself
from the dead stone to rebuke and threaten the erring children of God!

He described all this for Honora, and, strangely enough, for
Livingstone, who never recovered from the spell cast over him by this
strange man. The old gentleman loved his race with the fervor of an
ancient clansman. For this lost sheep of the house of Endicott he
developed in time an interest which Arthur foresaw would lead agreeably
one day t