what he had said lest they should think him
flippant answered that he thought of joining the Order of St. George.

"You know--Father Burrowes, who works among soldiers."

When Mark was standing by the cross-roads above Wychford and was
wondering which to take, he decided that really the best thing he could
do at this moment was to try to enter the Order of St. George. He might
succeed in being ordained without going to a theological college, or if
the Bishop insisted upon a theological course and he found that he had a
vocation for the religious life, he could go to Glastonbury and rejoin
the Order when he was a priest. It was true that Father Rowley
disapproved of Father Burrowes; but he had never expressed more than a
general disapproval, and Mark was inclined to attribute his attitude to
the prejudice of a man of strong personality and definite methods
against another man of strong personality and definite methods working
on similar lines among similar people. Mark remembered now that there
had been a question at one time of Father Burrowes' opening a priory in
the next parish to St. Agnes'. Probably that was the reason why Father
Rowley disapproved of him. Mark had heard the monk preach on one
occasion and had liked him. Outside the pulpit, however, he knew nothing
more of him than what he had heard from soldiers staying in the Keppel
Street Mission House, who from Aldershot had visited Malford Abbey, the
mother house of the Order. The alternative to Malford was Clere Abbey on
the Berkshire downs where Dom Cuthbert Manners ruled over a small
community of strict Benedictines. Had Mark really been convinced that he
was likely to remain a monk for the rest of his life, he would have
chosen the Benedictines; but he did not feel justified in presenting
himself for admission to Clere on what would seem impulse. He hoped that
if he was accepted by the Order of St. George he should be given an
opportunity to work at one of the priories in Aldershot or Sandgate, and
that the experience he might expect to gain would help him later as a
parish priest. He could not confide in the Rector his reason for wanting
to subject himself to monastic discipline, and he expected a good deal
of opposition. It might be better to write from whatever village he
stayed in to-night and make the announcement without going back at all.
And this is what in the end he decided to do.

The Sun Inn,

Ladingford.

June 24.

My