himself; and the 'Sure, sure, it must have been very bad for you,' with
which old Susan heard of the circumstances, carried more of the comfort
of genuine sympathy than all his sister's attempts at condolence.

She told him how often Sir Guy had been at Stylehurst, how he had talked
to her about the archdeacon; and especially she remembered his helping
her husband one day when he found him trimming the ash over the
archdeacon's grave. He used to come very often to church there, more in
the latter part of his stay; there was one Sunday--it was the one before
Michaelmas--he was there all day, walking in the churchyard, and sitting
in the porch between services.

'The Sunday before Michaelmas!' thought Philip, the very time when he
had been most earnest in driving his uncle to persecute, and delighting
himself in having triumphed over Guy at last, and obtained tangible
demonstration of his own foresight, and his cousin's vindictive spirit.
What had he been throwing away? Where had, in truth, been the hostile
spirit?

He took the key of the church, and walked thither alone, standing for
several minutes by the three graves, with a sensation as if his father
was demanding of him an account of the boy he had watched, and brought
to his ancestral home, and cared for through his orphaned childhood. But
for the prayer-book, the pledge that there had been peace at the last,
how could he have borne it?

Here was the paved path he had trodden in early childhood, holding his
mother's hand, where, at each recurring vacation during his school days,
he had walked between his admiring sisters, in the consciousness that he
was the pride of his family and of all the parish. Of his family? Did he
not remember his return home for the last time before that when he was
summoned thither by his father's death? He had come with a whole freight
of prizes, and letters full of praises; and as he stood, in expectation
of the expression of delighted satisfaction, his father laid his hand
on his trophy, the pile of books, saying, gravely,--' All this would I
give, Philip, for one evidence of humility of mind.'

It had been his father's one reproof. He had thought it unjust and
unreasonable, and turned away impatiently to be caressed and admired by
Margaret. His real feelings had been told to her, because she flattered
them and shared them, he had been reserved and guarded with the
father who would have perceived and repressed that ambition and the