smile; "every now and then they will spread a report in Clanmarina that you are becoming a Protestant again, which gives them a pretext for publishing in our newspaper a letter to contradict the rumour, and to give a puff direct of your new opinions by saying that never before did you know peace or happiness. Of course, without the report being spread, there is no pretext for the contradiction, as no one can say, 'Very well, I thank you,' unless somebody first asks, 'How do you do?' Now, Mr. Clinton, do not for a moment suppose I could think so lightly of an apostasy on your part as to continue our acquaintance at all. From no point of view can I see it otherwise than as a death-blow to yourself, which ends our intercourse. It has become your duty to proselyte, it is mine to avoid the danger; by our ever being seen together, I should give the sanction of my example to others for exposing themselves to a siege in which they can gain nothing, and may lose all."

"You intend to become quite an alarmist among my old friends and parishioners," observed Mr. Clinton, with a deprecating smile, and rapidly fluctuating colour; "I trust they may not all desert one who wishes them well, and will do his best to serve them."

"Yes, by urging them to break loose from the limits of the Bible into the unlimited wilds of tradition! I trust, and believe, Mr. Clinton, that the congregation, to a single individual, will all forsake you. When the trumpet gives an uncer

tain sound it cannot lead us on to the battle.

Every head of a family ought to leave you at once, before the taint has reached one member of their households. I am a woman, and must, you know, speak my mind.”

"You always did," observed Mr. Clinton, with a sad smile," and you have a right to your own opinions, as I have to mine."

66

"Yes; while I remain a Protestant, I may think, speak, and act for myself, but you will soon be bound to obey the slightest nod from Rome, in obedience to that false superstition which is a mere forgery on the bank of truth," answered Lady Edith, in a tone of deep regret. My own candid idea is, that you have been worked up to an actual delirium at Eaglescairn, that bleeding and blistering would do you more good now than controversy, and that, indeed, all those who are reeling over into idolatry, might be very advantageously ordered by their doctors a few months of calm domestic retirement in their own family circles, aloof from Papal controversy, and with an anody ne prescription for their mental disease of the most sensible Protestant works. At the end of a year the patient would look back on such a state as yours with much the same feelings that he would remember the delirium of a typhus fever. Now, Mr. Clinton, I wish you a long and very sorrowful farewell! The sight of you, probably soon to be a pervert, serves as the strongest warning I could receive, not to trust myself in Popish society. It should be a remarkable admonition for all Protestants to 'take heed lest they fall,'

that of those names inscribed at Oxford as having raised the monument recently built there to Cranmer and Ridley, more than a third have already been seduced into apostasy, and would now, perhaps, willingly burn those martyrs over again if they could; among these new perverts many had long been dozing on towards indifferentism, and others were inflated with vanity or pride, but all are now alike prostrated in the dust before a foreign priest and a degrading superstition."

Mr. Clinton lingered for some moments, as if unwilling to bid his old friend a last adieu, and when Lady Edith turned away, the tears rolled down her aged cheeks with sorrowful emotion; she held out her hand in silence to Mr. Clinton, who grasped it with all his old feeling revived for the moment of respectful attachment. The artificial expression of downcast sanctity in his welldrilled countenance gave way to a look of natural feeling, and he appeared again so like the Mr. Clinton of former and better days, that Lady Edith looked round as she retired, saying, "If you ever return to the old paths, Mr. Clinton, let me be the first to welcome you back."

"No," muttered Mr. Clinton to himself, in a tone of high excitement, "never :

"All worldly goods and wealth, which once I loved,

I now do count but dross;

My pride is to despise myself; my joy

All insults, sneers, and slanders of mankind;

No creature now I love.""

The sun shone brightly one morning on Mr.

Clinton's little parsonage, the large old appletree was shedding its blossoms in a white shower on the grassy lawn, and roses clustered round the five latticed windows, as well as over the low rustic porch,-all nature looked gay and riante, but nevertheless, Lady Edith thought or fancied that there was a silence so unusual there, and an uninhabited melancholy air about the house itself, which made her sad. She wished to see Mrs. Clinton on business of some consequence to a poor family in Clanmarina, and having repeatedly knocked at the door without any one appearing, she wondered more and more at the noiseless stillness of all within and without. Lady Edith looked around, sadly remembering what a scene of joyous usefulness that little cottage and garden had so long been, and what unlooked for changes were now impending. The Bishop of Inverness had announced a visitation to Clanmarina, in consequence of the representations made to him of the Popish doctrines which Mr. Clinton taught as Episcopalian, and there was no reason to suppose it possible that such a man as the Bishop of Inverness could allow him to continue thus preaching Romanism in a Protestant pulpit. Mr. Clinton had endeavoured to set up for being a martyr, under persecution, but it was a signal failure, as all the congregation were now aware that he literally did at Rome as Rome does, and attended the Popish mass during his whole residence at Eaglescairn, which his people did not consider to be a perfectly Protestant proceeding or a perfectly

fair one. If he received the emoluments of one Church and supported another, it was not serving two masters, but betraying one.

Lady Edith observed a recent trace of carriagewheels on the gravel before Mr. Clinton's house, and the door of entrance stood ajar, but the silence remained unbroken, except by the repeated knocks of the visitor again and again and again for admission. Assuming at length the privilege of an old friend, as the business could not be postponed, she entered unannounced, and proceeded straight to the only sitting-room. There, to her utter surprise, stood the shutters only half open, the tea-things of the night before on the table, two candlesticks with extinguishers on, and the ashes unswept from the grate. All had a look of recent hurry and confusion, of desolation and misery. Papers and ends of rope were scattered in confusion on the floor, the refuse evidently of a hasty packing up; numerous letters lay torn to atoms in the grate, and almost every book had been taken from the shelves, which were empty.

Lady Edith looked around in dismay, and felt as if she had of late been born into a perfectly new world, so unlike were its unexpected changes and its painful vicissitudes to anything that in her peaceful course of action she had hitherto known. For several minutes the solitary visitor stood almost unconsciously gazing at this unexpected and most unaccountable confusion. Hitherto, if the Clintons were going merely to dine a few miles off with a neighbouring farmer, they men