gain mistake the cry of rapture, nor repulse the
arms extended in a frenzy of delight. In those days he dreamed of some
dark place where they might celebrate and make the marriage of the
Sabbath, with such rites as he had dared to imagine.

It was perhaps only the shock of a letter from his father that rescued
him from these evident approaches to madness. Mr. Taylor wrote how they
had missed him at Christmas, how the farmers had inquired after him, of
the homely familiar things that recalled his boyhood, his mother's voice,
the friendly fireside, and the good old fashions that had nurtured him.
He remembered that he had once been a boy, loving the cake and puddings
and the radiant holly, and all the seventeenth-century mirth that
lingered on in the ancient farmhouses. And there came to him the more
holy memory of Mass on Christmas morning. How sweet the dark and frosty
earth had smelt as he walked beside his mother down the winding lane, and
from the stile near the church they had seen the world glimmering to the
dawn, and the wandering lanthorns advancing across the fields. Then he
had come into the church and seen it shining with candles and holly, and
his father in pure vestments of white linen sang the longing music of the
liturgy at the altar, and the people answered him, till the sun rose with
the grave notes of the Paternoster, and a red beam stole through the
chancel window.

The worst horror left him as he recalled the memory of these dear and
holy things. He cast away the frightful fancy that the scream he had
heard was a shriek of joy, that the arms, rigidly jerked out, invited him
to an embrace. Indeed, the thought that he had longed for such an obscene
illusion, that he had gloated over the recollection of that stark mouth,
filled him with disgust. He resolved that his senses were deceived, that
he had neither seen nor heard, but had for a moment externalized his own
slumbering and morbid dreams. It was perhaps necessary that he should be
wretched, that his efforts should be discouraged, but he would not yield
utterly to madness.

Yet when he went abroad with such good resolutions, it was hard to
resist an influence that seemed to come from without and within. He did
not know it, but people were everywhere talking of the great frost, of
the fog that lay heavy on London, making the streets dark and terrible,
of strange birds that came fluttering about the windows in the silent
squares. The Thames rolled ou