the evil one
and drive him away. It may be about four hundred years since that last
took place, but to this day--draw your kerchiefs more closely round
your heads and come with me to the river--to this day Christians degrade
themselves by similar rites. Wherever I have been in Christian lands, I
have always witnessed the same scenes: our holy faith has, to be sure,
demolished the religions of the heathen; but their superstitions have
survived, and have forced their way through rifts and chinks into our
ceremonial. They are marching round now, with the bishop at their head,
and you can hear the loud wailing of the women, and the cries of
the men, drowning the chant of the priests. Only listen! They are as
passionate and agonized in their entreaty as though old Typhon were even
now about to swallow the moon, and the greatest catastrophe was hanging
over the world. Aye, as surely as man is the standard of all things,
those terrified beings are diseased in mind; and how are we to forgive
those who dare to scare Christians; yes, Christian souls, with the
traditions of heathen folly, and to blind their inward vision?"

CHAPTER XXII.

Up to within a few days Katharina had still been a dependent and docile
child, who had made it a point of honor to obey instantly, not only her
mother's lightest word, but Dame Neforis, too; and, since her own Greek
instructress had been dismissed, even the acid Eudoxia. She had never
concealed from her mother, or the worthy teacher whom she had truly
loved, the smallest breach of rules, the least naughtiness or wilful act
of which she had been guilty; nay, she had never been able to rest till
she had poured out a confession, before evening prayer, of all that
her little heart told her was not perfectly right, to some one whom
she loved, and obtained full forgiveness. Night after night the
"Water-wagtail" had gone to sleep with a conscience as clear and as
white as the breast of her whitest dove, and the worst sin she had ever
committed during the day was some forbidden scramble, some dainty or,
more frequently, some rude and angry word.

But a change had first come over her after Orion's kiss in the
intoxicating perfume of the flowering trees; and almost every hour since
had roused her to new hopes and new views. It had never before occurred
to her to criticise or judge her mother; now she was constantly doing
so. The way in which Susannah had cut herself off from her neighbors in
the g