time, mingled strangely with small works
on country life and sports; now the latter only remained, and the nearest
to a devotional book was a volume of a mystical herbalist who identified
plants with virtues, strangely and ingeniously. Then the prie-dieu, where
the beads had hung and the little wooden shield with the Five Wounds
painted upon it--that was gone; and in its place hung a cupboard where he
kept a crossbow and a few tools for it; and old hawk-lures and jesses and
the like.

Then he lay back again, and thought.

Had he then behaved unworthily? This old Faith that had been handed down
from father and son for generations; that had been handed to him too as
the most precious heirloom of all--for which his father had so gladly
suffered fines and imprisonment, and risked death--he had thrown it over,
and for what? For Isabel, he confessed to himself; and then the--the
Power that stands behind the visible had cheated him and withdrawn that
for which he had paid over that great price. Was that a reckless and
brutal bargain on his side--to throw over this strange delicate thing
called the Faith for which so many millions had lived and died, all for a
woman's love? A curious kind of family pride in the Faith began to prick
him. After all, was not honour in a manner bound up with it too; and most
of all when such heavy penalties attached themselves to the profession of
it? Was that the moment when he should be the first of his line to
abandon it?

_Reviresco_--"I renew my springtide." But was not this a strange
grafting--a spur for a crucifix, a crossbow for a place of prayer?
_Reviresco_--There was sap indeed in the old tree; but from what soil did
it draw its strength?

His heart began to burn with something like shame, as it had burned now
and again at intervals during these past years. Here he lay back in his
father's chair, in his father's room, the first Protestant of the
Maxwells. Then he passed on to a memory.

As he closed his eyes, he could see even now the chapel upstairs, with
the tapers alight and the stiff figure of the priest in the midst of the
glow; he could smell the flowers on the altar, the June roses strewn on
the floor in the old manner, and their fresh dewy scent mingled with the
fragrance of the rich incense in an intoxicating chord; he could hear the
rustle that emphasised the silence, as his mother rose from his side and
went up for communion, and the breathing of the servants behind him.