all his companions had been as ready as he was to
die for an alb, or to spend half their days in piously circumventing a
bishop.

But presently the conversation had slid, no one knew how, from
Mottringham and its intrigues to London and its teeming East. Robert was
leading, his eye now on the apostalic-looking priest, now on his wife.
Mr. Newcome resisted, but Robert had his way. Then it came out that
behind these battles of kites and crows at Mottringhan, there lay an
heroic period when the pale ascetic had wrestled ten years with London
Poverty, leaving health and youth and nerves behind him in the meelee.
Robert dragged it out at last, that struggle, into open view, but with
difficulty. The Ritualist may glory in the discomfiture of an Erastian
bishop--what Christian dare parade ten years of love to God and man? And
presently round Elsmere's lip there dawned a little smile of triumph.
Catherine had shaken off her cold silence, her Puritan aloofness, was
bending forward eagerly--listening. Stroke by stroke, as the words and
facts were beguiled from him, all that was futile and quarrelsome in
the sharp-featured priest sank out of sight; the face glowed with
inward light; the stature of the man seemed to rise; the angel in him
unsheathed its wings. Suddenly the story of the slums that Mr. Newcome
was telling--a story of the purest Christian heroism told in the
simplest way--came to an end, and Catherine leaned toward him with a
long quivering breath.

'Oh, thank you, thank you! That must have been a joy, a privilege!'

Mr. Newcome turned and looked at her with surprise.

'Yes, it was a privilege,' he said slowly--the story had been an account
of the rescue of a young country lad from a London den of thieves and
profligates--'you are right; it was just that.'

And then some sensitive inner fibre of the man was set vibrating, and he
would talk no more of himself or his past, do what they would.

So Robert had hastily to provide another subject, and he fell upon that
of the Squire.

Mr. Newcome's eyes flashed.

'He is coming back? I am sorry for you, Elsmere. "Woo is me that I am
constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have my habitation among the
tents of Kedar!"'

And he fell back in his chair, his lips tightening, his thin long hand
lying along the arm of it, answering to that general impression of
combat, of the spiritual athlete, that hung about him.

'I don't know,' said Robert brightly, as he leant aga