y with what might be called a notional assent,
as the blind man might believe that light is sweet, or one who had never
experienced pain might believe it was something from which the senses
shrink. Every day that I have recited the creed, and declared my belief
in the Life Everlasting, I have by implication confessed my entire
disbelief in any other. I knew that what seemed so solid is not solid,
so real is not real; that the life of the flesh, of the senses, of
things seen, is but the "stuff that dreams are made of"--"a dream within
a dream," as one modern writer has called it; "the shadow of a dream,"
as another has it. But last night--"

He stood still, gazing straight before him, as if he saw something that
I could not see.

"But last night," I repeated, as we walked on again.

"Last night? I not only believed, I saw, I felt it with a sudden
intuition conveyed to me in some inexplicable manner by the vision of
that face. I felt the utter insignificance of what we name existence,
and I perceived too behind it that which it conceals from us--the real
Life, illimitable, unfathomable, the element of our true being, with its
eternal possibilities of misery or joy."

"And all this came to you through something of an evil nature?"

"Yes; it was like the effect of lightning oh a pitch-dark night--the
same vivid and lurid illumination of things unperceived before. It must
be like the revelation of death, I should think, without, thank God,
that fearful sense of the irrevocable which death must bring with it.
Will you not rest here?"

For we had reached Beggar's Stile. But I was not tired for once, so
keen, so life-giving was the air, sparkling with that fine elixir
whereby morning braces us for the day's conflict. Below, through
slowly-dissolving mists, the village showed as if it smiled, each little
cottage hearth lifting its soft spiral of smoke to a zenith immeasurably
deep, immaculately blue.

"But the ghost itself?" I said, looking up at him as we both rested our
arms upon the gate. "What do you think of that?"

"I am afraid there is no possible doubt what that was. Its face, as I
tell you, was a revelation of evil--evil and its punishment. It was a
lost soul."

"Do you mean by a lost soul, a soul that is in never-ending torment?"

"Not in physical torment, certainly; that would be a very material
interpretation of the doctrine. Besides, the Church has always
recognised degree and difference in the punishmen