will you come with me, sir,--for once? for God's
sake and the poor's sake?'

'I shall be delighted.'

'Not after you've been there, I am afraid.'

'Well, it's a bargain when you are recovered. And, in the meantime,
the squire's orders are, that you lie by for a few days to rest; and
Miss Honoria's, too; and she has sent you down some wine.'

'She thought of me, did she?' And the still sad face blazed out
radiant with pleasure, and then collapsed as suddenly into deep
melancholy.

Lancelot saw it, but said nothing; and shaking him heartily by the
hand, had his shake returned by an iron grasp, and slipped silently
out of the cottage.

The keeper lay still, gazing on vacancy. Once he murmured to
himself,--

'Through strange ways--strange ways--and though he let them wander
out of the road in the wilderness;--we know how that goes on--'

And then he fell into a mixed meditation--perhaps into a prayer.

CHAPTER V: A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING

At last, after Lancelot had waited long in vain, came his cousin's
answer to the letter which I gave in my second chapter.

'You are not fair to me, good cousin . . . but I have given up
expecting fairness from Protestants. I do not say that the front
and the back of my head have different makers, any more than that
doves and vipers have . . . and yet I kill the viper when I meet him
. . . and so do you. . . . And yet, are we not taught that our
animal nature is throughout equally viperous? . . . The Catholic
Church, at least, so teaches. . . . She believes in the corruption
of human nature. She believes in the literal meaning of Scripture.
She has no wish to paraphrase away St. Paul's awful words, that "in
his flesh dwelleth no good thing," by the unscientific euphemisms of
"fallen nature" or "corrupt humanity." The boasted discovery of
phrenologists, that thought, feeling, and passion reside in this
material brain and nerves of ours, has ages ago been anticipated by
her simple faith in the letter of Scripture; a faith which puts to
shame the irreverent vagueness and fantastic private interpretations
of those who make an idol of that very letter which they dare not
take literally, because it makes against their self-willed theories.
. .

'And so you call me douce and meek? . . . You should remember what
I once was, Lancelot . . . I, at least, have not forgotten . . . I
have not forgotten how that very animal nature, on t