els and so pulled
together with inward pains, that he sometimes cried out as if he were
being torn to pieces. At that moment Mr. Skill, the ancient physician,
entered the sick-room, when, having a little observed Matthew's intense
agony, with a certain mixture of goodness and severity he recited these
professional verses over the trembling bed:

"O conscience, who can stand against thy power?
Endure thy gripes and agonies one hour?
Stone, gout, strappado, racks, whatever is
Dreadful to sense, are only toys to this--
No pleasures, riches, honours, friends can tell
How to give ease to this, 'tis like to hell."

And then, turning to the sick man's mother, who stood at the bed's head
wringing her hands, the ancient leech said to her: "This boy of yours has
been tampering with the forbidden fruit!" At which the angry mother
turned on the well-approved physician as if he had caused all the trouble
that he had come to cure. But the ancient man knew both the son and the
mother too, and therefore he addressed her with some asperity: "I tell
you both that strong measures must be taken instantly, else he will die."
When Mr. Skill had seen that the first purge was too weak, he made him
one to the purpose; and it was made, as he so learnedly said, _ex carne
et sanguine Christi_. The pills were to be taken three at a time,
fasting, in half a quarter of a pint of the tears of repentance. After
some coaxing, such as mothers know best how to use, Matthew took the
medicine and was soon walking about again with a staff, and was able to
go from room to room of the hospitable and happy house. Understandest
thou what thou readest? said Philip the deacon to Queen Candace's
treasurer as he sat down beside him in the chariot and opened up to him
the fifty-third of the prophet Isaiah. And, understandest thou what thou
here readest in Matthew and Mr. Skill?

1. Now, on this almost too closely veiled case I shall venture to
remark, in the first place, that multitudes of boys grow up into young
men, and go out of our most godly homes and into a whole world of
temptation without due warning being given them as to where they are
going. "I do marvel that none did warn him of it," said Mr. Skill, with
some anger. What Matthew's father might have done in this matter had he
been still in this world when his son became a man in it we can only
guess. As it was, it never entered his mother's too fond mind to take
her fatherl