'To take up his cause, simply as a matter of justice, and therewith of the Church, without truckling to public opinion, at absolute risk and loss, seems to me generosity and principle quite out of the common way.'

'You're about right there,' said Lance, intensely gratified; 'and doesn't it make one burn to help the old fellow?'

'Quite true. The question is, which way to help him; and while I grant you that the being idle at home just now is a terrible trial, whether it might not be better to be patient under it, than to disqualify yourself for a line in which you might do more—that is if it does disqualify you.'

'What line do you mean?' said Lance.

'Scholarship, the University.'

'That wasn't what I wanted most,' said Lance; 'and as for that, I'm disqualified enough by all this waste of time.'

'What was your wish, then?'

'I'll tell you,' said Lance, with lowered voice. 'When I used to lie catching notes of the chanting, and knowing that the organ was quiet for me, I used to feel that if I got well, I must give up my life to it, and study music in full earnest, so as to be a real lift to people's praise, perhaps in our own Cathedral. I thought maybe I could get in as a lay-vicar when my year is up, and work at harmony under Miles, and take a musical degree. But then came that day when the organ seemed to be crushing and grinding my head to bits—and of all Psalms in the world it was the forty-second! and Manby telling me on my life not to try to do anything for I can't tell how long.'

'Was that the reason you sold your violin?'

'No, of course not; except that it was a sin and a shame to keep it for no good, when I thought a pound might pull that little ape Bernard out of the mire. And I've been asking questions, and find it would take huge time and cost to study music so as to be worth anything; and here am I, a great lout, not doing that or any other good on the face of the earth—as much worse than Theodore as I am bigger. So if I can help Felix, when he is fighting the fight in the Pursuivant for God's honour and good and right, wouldn't that be a sort of service?'