miles from the house where he lived. There was
besides definite testimony from one of his fellows, precise and
detailed; and there was lastly a half admission from the culprit
himself. All this was worked up with great skill--suggestive epithets
were plastered over the weak spots in the evidence; clever theories put
forward to account for certain incompatibilities; and to Ralph at least
it was convincing.

He found himself growing hot with anger at the thought of the hypocrisy
of this monk's life. Here the fellow had been living in gross sin month
after month, and all the while standing at the altar morning by morning,
and going about in the habit of a professed servant of Jesus Christ!

"But I have kept the cream till the last," put in Dr. Layton. And he
read out a few more hideous sentences, that set Ralph's heart heaving
with disgust.

He began now to feel the beginnings of that fury against white-washed
vice with which worldly souls are so quick to burn. He would have said
that he himself professed no holiness beyond the average, and would have
acknowledged privately at least that he was at any rate uncertain of the
whole dogmatic scheme of religion; but that he could not tolerate a man
whose whole life was on the outside confessedly devoted to both sides of
religion, faith and morals, and who claimed the world's reverence for
himself on the score of it. He knit his forehead in a righteous fury,
and his fingers began to drum softly on his chair-arms.

Dr. Layton now began to recur to some of the first stories he had told,
and to build up their weak places; and now that Ralph was roused his
critical faculty subsided. They appeared more convincing than before in
the light of this later evidence. _Ex pede Herculem_--from the fellow
who had confessed he interpreted the guilt of those who had not. The
seed of suspicion sprang quickly in the soil that hungered for it.

This then was the fair religious system that was dispersed over England;
and this the interior life of those holy looking roofs and buildings
surmounted by the sign of the Crucified, visible in every town to point
men to God. When he saw a serene monk's face again he would know what
kind of soul it covered; he would understand as never before how vice
could wear a mask of virtue.

The whole of that flimsy evidence that he had heard before took a new
colour; those hints and suspicions and guesses grew from shadow to
substance. Those dark spots were not