much importance to and fussing too much about the
preliminary formalities.

The Bishop did not seem to think that Mark's soul was in grave peril on
that account, and he took the opportunity to warn Mark against an
over-scrupulousness that might lead him in his confidence to allow sin
to enter into his soul by some unguarded portal which he supposed firmly
and for ever secure.

"That is always the danger of a temperament like yours?" he mused. "By
all means keep your eyes on the high ground ahead of you; but do not
forget that the more intently you look up, the more liable you are to
slip on some unnoticed slippery stone in your path. If you abandoned
yourself to the formalities that are a necessary preliminary to
Ordination, you did wisely. Our Blessed Lord usually gave practical
advice, and some of His miracles like the turning of water into wine at
Cana were reproofs to carelessness in matters of detail. It was only
when people worshipped utility unduly that He went to the other extreme
as in His rebuke to Judas over the cruse of ointment."

The Bishop raised his head and gave Mark absolution. When they came out
of the sacristy he invited him to come up to his library and have a
talk.

"I'm glad that you are going to Galton," he said, wagging his long neck
over a crumpet. "I think you'll find your experience in such a parish
extraordinarily useful at the beginning of your career. So many young
men have an idea that the only way to serve God is to go immediately to
a slum. You'll be much more discouraged at Galton than you can imagine.
You'll learn there more of the difficulties of a clergyman's life in a
year than you could learn in London in a lifetime. Rowley, as no doubt
you've heard, has just accepted a slum parish in Shoreditch. Well, he
wrote to me the other day and suggested that you should go to him. But I
dissented. You'll have an opportunity at Galton to rely upon yourself.
You'll begin in the ruck. You'll be one of many who struggle year in
year out with an ordinary parish. There won't be any paragraphs about
St. Luke's in the Church papers. There won't be any enthusiastic
pilgrims. There'll be nothing but the thought of our Blessed Lord to
keep you struggling on, only that, only our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ."

The Bishop's head wagged slowly to and fro in the silence that succeeded
his words, and Mark pondering them in that silence felt no longer that
he was saying "Lord, Lord," but that he had been