er laid them down.

The Bishop's wife had been a weak, amiable woman, and her last conscious
request was to be buried in the sunlight, but her sister-in-law
remarked that "her mind must have been wandering, for though Sarah was
vacillating, she was never sacrilegious." So they buried her in the
shadiest corner of the cloisters, and put up a memorial brass setting
forth all the virtues for which she was not particularly noted, and
entirely omitting to mention her saving grace of patience under great
provocation.

Since that time the Bishop's son, Cecil, had been a bone of contention
at Blanford. His aunt had attempted to apply the same rigorous treatment
to him that had been meted out to his father; but the lad, whose spirit
had not been broken, refused to submit. At first, in his boyhood days,
his feeling was chiefly one of awe of Miss Matilda, who always seemed to
be interfering with his pleasure, and who made the Sabbath anything but
a day of peace for the restless child. Then came long terms at school,
with vacations to which he never looked forward, and then four years at
the university, when the periods spent at Blanford became more dreaded.

Cecil tried bringing home friends, but there were too many restrictions.
So, after graduation, he drifted off to London, where his aunt
prophesied speedy damnation for him, and never quite forgave him because
he did not achieve it. During these years his visits to the palace
became fewer and fewer. Then he wrote his novel, which proved the
breaking-point, for Miss Matilda forced his good-natured, easy-going
father to protest against its publication in England, and the young man,
in impatient scorn, had shaken the dust of his native country from his
feet and departed to the United States, bearing his manuscript with him.

That was a year ago, and Cecil had never written once. His publishers
would not give his address, and if he received the letters sent through
their agency, he never answered them. His father pined for him. His aunt
waxed spiteful, and so firm was her domination over the Bishop that he
never dared tell her of his secretly formed plan of going to America to
find his son. Hence his visit to the great London physician.

The little plot worked out better than he could have hoped. Sir Joseph's
letter proved convincing, for Miss Matilda had a holy awe of constituted
authority, and would no more have thought of disobeying its injunctions
than she would of saying h