eaning in their own deranged brains, Joseph. And
this very night, after confession such as the poor things could make, I
had determined to administer the sacrament of the Holy Communion to
them. I was in the act of doing so when the noise outside, and the
crowd breaking in the doors, caused me to retire, in the belief that my
presence and the act in which I was engaged might be misunderstood by
an incensed rabble. You agree that I was right, Joseph? Yes? Then--I
own it--I am much relieved in my mind--still more to find that all the
elements are safe. It would have been terrible--a disastrous loss--if
any part of them had been injured. Even now, Joseph, when I came a
little to myself, it seemed to me that when I awoke I found you--you,
Joseph, the son of a Churchman, who ought to have known better, in the
act----"

"No, Mr. Ablethorpe," said I; "but something was necessary to arouse
you, and it seemed to me that nothing else would have the desired
effect."

"Quite right, Joseph! You judged well," he said, nodding his head.
"And the pursuers? Were you able to turn them off the track? I heard
them pursuing."

I reassured him. So far as the pursuers went, he had nothing to fear.
Mr. Ablethorpe said that in that case he would go home and place the
monstrance--I think he called it, but it doesn't seem the right word,
does it?--in a place of safety. But as I had no time to lose, I would
not let him go without telling me if he had heard anything of my father
at the house of Deep Moat Grange.

"Joseph," he answered solemnly, "it is well enough known to you that
all I heard there passed into my knowledge under the sacred seal of the
confessional, and that I am debarred from repeating a word, either yea
or nay."

"But I want to know about my father!" I cried. "You shall not go
without! He may have been murdered! And suspicion points to that
house where you were found, in which, according to your telling, you
received confessions from those who may have been guilty!"

"Joseph," he answered me, with an accent extremely pitiful, "indeed I
cannot tell you! I am debarred!"

"Debarred or no," I cried, "you must tell me if you have heard anything
about my father, or I will break your head with this iron hook!"

He could have taken me up in one hand and shaken me, but it was not
with the weapons of an earthly warfare that he was fighting this
present battle.

"If so, I must e'en bow to the blast," he said. "I