realize that I have a great deal to learn before I should be any
use at Aldershot or Sandgate. I hope you don't mind my talking like
this. But until this morning I had not really intended to remain in the
Order. My hope was to be ordained as soon as I was old enough. Now since
this morning I feel that I do long for the spiritual support of a
community for my own feeble aspirations. The Bishop's words moved me
tremendously. It wasn't what he said so much, but I was filled with all
his faith and I could have cried out to him a promise that I for one
would help to carry on the restoration. At the same time, I know that
I'm more fitted for active work, not by any good I expect to do, but for
the good it will do me. I suppose you'd say that if I had a true
vocation I shouldn't be thinking about what part I was going to play in
the life of the Order, but that I should be content to do whatever I was
told. I'm boring you?" Mark broke off to inquire, for Brother Anselm was
staring in front of him through his big horn spectacles like an owl.

"No, no," said the senior. "But I'm not the novice-master. Who is, by
the way?"

"Brother Jerome."

The other did not comment on this information, but Mark was sure that he
was trying not to look contemptuous.

Soon the junction came in sight, and from down the line the white smoke
of a train approaching.

"Hurry, Brother, I don't want to miss it."

Mark thumped the haunches of the pony and drove up just in time for
Brother Anselm to escape.

"Thank you, Brother," said that same voice which yesterday, only
yesterday night, had sounded so rarely sweet. Here on this mellow August
afternoon it was the voice of the golden air itself, and the shriek of
the engine did not drown its echoes in Mark's soul where all the way
back to Malford it was chiming like a bell.

CHAPTER XXVI

ADDITION

Mark's ambition to go and work at Aldershot was gratified before the end
of August, because Brother Chad fell ill, and it was considered
advisable to let him spend a long convalescence at the Abbey.

The Priory,

17, Farnborough Villas,

Aldershot.

St. Michael and All Angels.

My dear Rector,

I don't think you'll be sorry to read from the above address that
I've been transferred from Malford to one of the active branches of
the Order. I don't accept your condemnation of the Abbey as
pseudo-monasticism, though I can quite well understan