onfessions were being heard
in the chapel. Four boys left the room; and he heard others passing
down the corridor. A tremulous chill blew round his heart, no stronger
than a little wind, and yet, listening and suffering silently, he
seemed to have laid an ear against the muscle of his own heart, feeling
it close and quail, listening to the flutter of its ventricles.

No escape. He had to confess, to speak out in words what he had done
and thought, sin after sin. How? How?

--Father, I...

The thought slid like a cold shining rapier into his tender flesh:
confession. But not there in the chapel of the college. He would
confess all, every sin of deed and thought, sincerely; but not there
among his school companions. Far away from there in some dark place he
would murmur out his own shame; and he besought God humbly not to be
offended with him if he did not dare to confess in the college chapel
and in utter abjection of spirit he craved forgiveness mutely of the
boyish hearts about him.

Time passed.

He sat again in the front bench of the chapel. The daylight without was
already failing and, as it fell slowly through the dull red blinds, it
seemed that the sun of the last day was going down and that all souls
were being gathered for the judgement.

--I AM CAST AWAY FROM THE SIGHT OF THINE EYES: words taken, my dear
little brothers in Christ, from the Book of Psalms, thirtieth chapter,
twenty-third verse. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost. Amen.

The preacher began to speak in a quiet friendly tone. His face was kind
and he joined gently the fingers of each hand, forming a frail cage by
the union of their tips.

--This morning we endeavoured, in our reflection upon hell, to make
what our holy founder calls in his book of spiritual exercises, the
composition of place. We endeavoured, that is, to imagine with the
senses of the mind, in our imagination, the material character of that
awful place and of the physical torments which all who are in hell endure.
This evening we shall consider for a few moments the nature of the
spiritual torments of hell.

--Sin, remember, is a twofold enormity. It is a base consent to the
promptings of our corrupt nature to the lower instincts, to that which
is gross and beast-like; and it is also a turning away from the counsel
of our higher nature, from all that is pure and holy, from the Holy God
Himself. For this reason mortal sin is punished in hell b