hat any good can come of aught you purpose without beseeching
the divine guidance.'

Much else did the abbot utter in this vein of holy admonition. And
Basil would have listened with the acquiescence of a perfect faith, but
that there stirred within him the memory of what he had read in
Augustine's pages, darkening his spirit. At length he found courage to
speak of this, and asked in trembling tones:

'Am I one of those born to sin and to condemnation? Am I of those
unhappy beings who strive in vain against a doom predetermined by the
Almighty?'

Benedict's countenance fell; not as if in admission of a dread
possibility, but rather as in painful surprise.

'You ask me,' he answered solemnly, after a pause, 'what no man should
ask even when he communes with his own soul in the stillness of night.
The Gospel is preached to all; nowhere in the word of God are any
forbidden to hear it, or, hearing, to accept its solace. Think not upon
that dark mystery, which even to the understandings God has most
enlightened shows but as a formless dread. The sinner shall not brood
upon his sin, save to abhor it. Shall he who repents darken repentance
with a questioning of God's mercy? Then indeed were there no such thing
as turning from wrong to righteousness.'

'When I sent you that book,' he resumed, after observing the relief
that came to Basil's face, 'I had in mind only its salutary teaching
for such as live too much in man's world, and especially for those who,
priding themselves upon the name of Roman, are little given to
reflection upon all the evil Rome has wrought. Had I known what lay
upon your conscience, I should have withheld from you everything but
Holy Writ.'

'My man, Deodatus, had not spoken?' asked Basil.

'Concerning you, not a word. I did not permit him to be questioned, and
his talk has been only of his own sins.'

Basil wondered at this discretion in a simple rustic; yet, on a second
thought, found it consistent with the character of Deodatus, as lately
revealed to him.

'He has been long your faithful attendant?' inquired the abbot.

'Not so. Only by chance was he chosen from my horsemen to accompany me
hither. My own servant, Felix, being wounded, lay behind at Aesernia.'

'If he be as honest and God-fearing as this man,' said Benedict, 'whose
name, indeed, seems well to become him, then are you fortunate in those
who tend upon you. But of this and other such things we will converse
hereafter. Liste