and our Lord commissioned Saint Peter, who was the first
Pope, to teach every body and promised to guard him from all error."

Margaret was mentally congratulating herself on this brilliant solution
of all difficulties. Belasez looked up thoughtfully. "But did He
promise to guard all the successors?"

"Oh, of course!"

"I wonder--supposing He were the Messiah--if He did," said Belasez.
"Because I have sometimes thought that might explain it."

"What might explain it?"

"My damsel knows that the disciples of great teachers often corrupt
their master's teaching, and in course of time they may come to teach
doctrines quite different from his. It has struck me sometimes whether
it might be so with you: that your Master was truly the Sent of God, and
that you have so corrupted His doctrines that there is very little
likeness left now. There must be very little, if He spoke according to
the will of the Holy One."

"But the Church never changes," said Margaret. "Then He could not be
true," said Belasez. "Oh, but Father Nicholas says the Church develops!
She always teaches the truth, but she unfolds it more and more as time
goes on."

"The truth is one, my damsel. It maybe more. But it can never be
different and contrary."

"But we change," urged Margaret, taking the last weapon out of her
quiver. "We may need one thing to-day, and another to-morrow."

"We may. And if the original command had been even, `Ye shall make no
image _but one_,' I should think it might then, as need were, have been
altered to, `Ye may now make a thousand images.' But being, `Ye shall
make _none_' it cannot be altered. That would be to alter His character
who is in all His universe the only unchangeable One."

Margaret sat and watched the progress of the embroidery, but she said no
more.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE TIME OF JACOB'S TROUBLE.

"I know that the thorny path I tread
Is ruled with a golden line;
And I know that the darker life's tangled thread,
The brighter the rich design.

"For I see, though veiled from my mortal sight,
God's plan is all complete;
Though the darkness at present be not light,
And the bitter be not sweet."

The course of public events at that time was of decidedly a stirring
character. The public considered that four mock suns which had been
seen during the previous winter, two snakes fighting in the sea off the
south coast, and fifteen days' continuous thunder in the following