ough the room.
Please God he left a blessing! Or perhaps the moonlight has thrown a
spell over us. What were you thinking of, Bishop?"

"I will tell you. I was thinking of the first Good Friday in Old
Jerusalem. I was thinking of the sun hiding his face at noonday.
Thora, have you an almanac?"

Thora took one from a nail on which it was hanging and gave it to
him.

"I was thinking that the sun, which hid his face at noonday, must at
that time have been in Aries, the Ram. Find me the signs of the
Zodiac." Thora did so. "Now look well at Aries the Ram. What month of
our year is signed thus?"

"The month of March, sir."

"Why?"

"I do not know. Tell me, sir."

"I believe that in a long forgotten age, some priest or good man
received a promise or prophecy revealing the Great Sacrifice that
would be offered up for man's salvation once and for all time. And I
think they knew that this plenary sacrament would occur in the vernal
season, in the month of March, whose sign or symbol was Aries, the
Ram."

"But why under that sign, sir?"

"The ram, to the ancient world, was the sacrificial animal. We have
only to open our Bibles and be amazed at the prominence given to the
ram and his congeners. From the time of Abraham until the time of
Christ the ram is constantly present in sacrificial and religious
ceremonies. Do you remember, Thora, any incident depending upon a
ram?"

"When Isaac was to be sacrificed, a ram caught in a thicket was
accepted by God in Isaac's place, as a burnt offering."

"More than once Abraham offered a ram in sacrifice. In Exodus, Chapter
Twenty-ninth, special directions are given for the offering of a ram
as a burnt offering to the Lord. In Leviticus, the Eighth Chapter, a
bullock is sacrificed for a sin offering but a ram for a burnt
offering. In Numbers we are told of _the ram of atonement_ which a man
is to offer, when he has done his neighbour an injury. In Ezra, the
Tenth, the ram is offered for a trespass because of an unlawful
marriage. On the accession of Solomon to the throne one thousand rams
with bullocks and lambs were 'offered up with great gladness.' In the
Old Testament there are few books in which the sacrificial ram is not
mentioned. Even the horn of the ram was constantly in evidence, for it
called together all religious and solemn services.

"A little circumstance," continued the Bishop, "that pleases me to
remember occurred in Glasgow five weeks ago. I saw a crowd enter