ed
associations of the last Lenten vigil. But it was difficult, throbbing
as he was with wild life and trouble to the very finger-points, to get
himself into the shadow of that rock-hewn grave, by which, according
to his own theory, the Church should be watching on this Easter Eve.
It was hard just then to be bound to that special remembrance. What he
wanted at this moment was no memory of one hour, however memorable or
glorious, not even though it contained the Redeemer's grave, but the
sense of a living Friend standing by him in the great struggle, which
is the essential and unfailing comfort of a Christian's life.

Next morning he went to church with a half-conscious, youthful sense of
martyrdom, of which in his heart he was half ashamed. St Roque's was
very fair to see that Easter morning. Above the communion-table, with
all its sacred vessels, the carved oaken cross of the reredos was
wreathed tenderly with white fragrant festoons of spring lilies, sweet
Narcissus of the poets; and Mr Wentworth's choristers made another white
line, two deep, down each side of the chancel. The young Anglican took
in all the details of the scene on his way to the reading-desk as the
white procession ranged itself in the oaken stalls. At that moment--the
worst moment for such a thought--it suddenly flashed over him that,
after all, a wreath of spring flowers or a chorister's surplice was
scarcely worth suffering martyrdom for. This horrible suggestion, true
essence of an unheroic age, which will not suffer a man to be absolutely
sure of anything, disturbed his prayer as he knelt down in silence to
ask God's blessing. Easter, to be sure, was lovely enough of itself
without the garland, and Mr Wentworth knew well enough that his
white-robed singers were no immaculate angel-band. It was Satan himself,
surely, and no inferior imp, who shot that sudden arrow into the young
man's heart as he tried to say his private prayer; for the Curate of St
Roque's was not only a fervent Anglican, but also a young Englishman
_sans reproche_, with all the sensitive, almost fantastic, delicacy of
honour which belongs to that development of humanity; and not for a
dozen worlds would he have sacrificed a lily or a surplice on this
particular Easter, when all his worldly hopes hung in the balance. But
to think at this crowning moment that a villanous doubt of the benefit
of these surplices and lilies should seize his troubled heart! for just
then the strains