in coin, and let the cross be of iron.'

'And there it stands,' said the guest, looking up.

'I hope it does,' said Honor, confronting, as usual, the common-sense led
pupils of Miss Fennimore, with her willing demi-credulity.

'It is a beautiful story!' was the comment; 'and, like other traditions,
full of unconscious meaning.'

A speech this, as if it had been made to delight Honor, whose eyes were
met by a congratulatory glance from Phoebe. At the farther words, 'It is
very striking--the evil spirit's power ending with the slaying the body,
never harming the soul, nor bending the will--'

'Bending the will is harming the soul,' said Phoebe.

'Nay,' was her companion's answer, 'the fatal evil is, when both wills
are bent.'

Phoebe was too single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand
this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul's words of
deep experience, 'To will is present with me.'

'I see,' she said; 'she might even have preferred the genie, but as long
as her principle and better will resisted, she was safe from herself as
well as from him.'

'Liked the nasty genie?' said Maria, who had listened only as to a fairy
tale. 'Why, Phoebe, genies come out of bottles, and go away in smoke,
Lieschen told me.'

'No, indeed,' said Bertha, in a low voice of feeling, piteous in one of
her years, 'if so, it needed no outward whirlwind to fling her dead on
the coast!'

'And there she found peace,' answered the guest, with a suppressed, but
still visible sign of weariness. 'Oh! it was worth the whirlwind!'

Phoebe was forced to attend to Maria, whose imagination had been a good
deal impressed, and who was anxious to make another attempt on a
pilgrimage to castle and cross.

'When Mervyn comes back, Maria, we may try.'

The guest, who was speaking, stopped short in the midst. Had she been
infected by Bertha's hesitation? She began again, and seemed to have
forgotten what she meant to have said. However, she recovered herself;
and there was nothing remarkable through the rest of the walk, but, on
coming indoors, she managed to detain Phoebe behind the others, saying,
lightly, 'Miss Fulmort, you have not seen the view from my window.'
Phoebe followed to her little bed-room, and gazed out at the lovely
isles, bathed in light so as to be almost transparent, and the ship of
war in the bay, all shadowy and phantom-like. She spoke her admiration
warmly, but met with but a half assent. T