mured the young man.

"I thought so," burst out his father. "Yes! you have been corrupted in
the town. You are become as the children of this world, who follow
wanton wenches, fight for them, and make idols of them; but I tell you,
while I live, I shall labour to win you back to God. I will smash your
idols. Did the Lord vouchsafe to work a miracle for you, for you to
deny him now? Far better have remained in darkness, with those gates
closed for ever, through which the devil and all his snares have
entered in, and taken possession of your heart!"

The young man had some struggle to suppress his rising passion. "Who
gave you the right, father, to suppose my inclinations to be so base?"
he said. "Am I degraded, because I am forced to do what is needful in
the world we live in, to crush the insolence of the base? There are
divers ways of wrestling with the evil one; yours is the peaceful way,
for you have the multitude to deal with. I have the individual, and I
know that way."

"It is a way you shall not go," hotly returned the father; "I say you
shall not trample on God's commandments. He is no son of mine, who
would do violence to his brother. I prohibit it with the authority of a
parent and a priest. Beware of setting that authority at nought!"

"And so you spurn me from your home;" said Clement gloomily. A pause
ensued. His mother, who had burst into tears, now rose, and rushed up
to her son. "Mother," he said earnestly, "I must be a man. I cannot be
a traitor." He went towards the door, with one look at Marlene, whose
poor blind eyes were searching painfully; his mother followed him--she
could not speak for sobbing. "Do not detain him, wife," said the vicar,
"he is no child of ours, since he refuses to be God's; let him go
whither he pleases, to us, he is as dead."

Marlene heard the door close and the vicar's wife fall heavily to the
ground, with a cry that came from the depths of her mother's heart. She
woke from the trance in which she had been sitting, went to the door,
and with an immense exertion, she carried the insensible woman to her
bed. The vicar stood at the window and never uttered a word; but his
folded hands were trembling violently.

About a quarter of an hour later, a knock came to Clement's door. He
opened it and saw Marlene.--She entered quietly. The room was in
disorder--she struck her foot against the trunk. "What are you going to
do, Clement?"

The stubbornness of his grief softened at o