breath as he had often felt in earlier
years, but which very rarely came to him now. Like the soft toll of a
passing bell, the terrible words rang in his ears with their accent of
hopeless pity--"Thou fool! Thou fool!" Would God, some day, in that
upper world, say that to _him_?

The sound was so vivid and close that he actually glanced round to see
if any one was there to hear but himself. But he was alone. Only God
had heard them, and God forgets nothing--a thought as dreadful to His
enemies as it is warmly comforting to His children. Alas, for those to
whom the knowledge that God has His eye upon them is only one of terror!

Yet there is one thing that God does forget. He tells us that He
forgets the forgiven sin. "As far as the sun-rising is from the
sun-setting [Note 1], so far hath He removed our transgressions from
us"--"Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." But as
it has been well said, "When God pardons sin, He drops it out of His
memory into that of the pardoned sinner." We cannot forget it, because
He has done so.

For Sir Godfrey Foljambe the thought of an omniscient eye and ear was
full of horror. He turned round, went downstairs, and going to a
private closet in his own study, where medicines were kept, drank off
one of the largest doses of brandy which he had ever taken at once. It
was not a usual thing to do, for brandy was not then looked on as a
beverage, but a medicine. But Sir Godfrey wanted something potent, to
still those soft chimes which kept saying, "Thou fool!" Anything to get
away from God!

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Note 1. This is really the Hebrew of Psalm 103, verse 12. The infidel
objection, therefore, that since "east" and "west" meet, the verse has
no meaning, is untenable as concerns the inspired original. It is only
valid as a criticism on the English translation.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

MY LORD ELECT OF YORK.

"She only said,--`The day is dreary,
He will not come,' she said:
She wept,--`I am aweary, weary,--
O God, that I were dead!'"

Tennyson.

"What, ho! Gate, ho! Open unto my Lord elect of York!"

The cry startled the porter at Hazelwood Manor from an afternoon nap.
He sprang up and hurried out, in utter confusion at his negligence. To
keep a priest waiting would have been bad manners enough, and an abbot
still worse; but an archbishop was, in the porter's estimate,