'And,' added Clement, 'will you not send a message to your daughter-in-law—to Jane, sir?'

'To Jane? Much she cares! Well, if you say I must, and if Edward forgave me, I suppose—Tell her I'll do my best to forgive—but if she had never got hold of poor Fulbert—God forgive me—what am I getting to? Only mind she doesn't do the same by you. Ay, I'm at peace with her and all of 'em! Only don't let her come. God have mercy on me?' The cry was, at least, half bodily.

And so the holy rite began in dark doubt and dim trust and hope. How unlike the bright cheeriness and the joy that no man could take away from Edward Underwood's last Communion! This was the last interval of clear consciousness. All that day he was dying, with just perception enough to cling to Clement's presence and voice, as almost unceasingly the young man held him up, and prayed with and for him with the earnestness of one who held intensely full faith in the might of intercessory prayer to aid the spirit in the doubtful strife, often supported by the thought of the prayers that were rising in so many churches far away for the struggling and the dying.

Felix was with him at times, but no one could do much to aid his physical exertion; and it was needful to keep guard over Mrs. Fulbert Underwood, as long as there was mind enough left for her presence to cause emotion. It had been right of Clement to send for her, but she was a trying element in the day, though not loud or coarse, but tearful and affectionate about the dear old Squire's former kindness and the wretched misunderstanding that had come between. There was every reason to believe her a harpy, but at this moment she could not show her talons; and Felix was divided between sense of humbug and fear of injustice during the long uncongenial tête-à-tête. The only breaks in it were from the doctors. Mr. Page was backwards and forwards the whole day, and Dr. May came in the course of the morning; but they could do nothing but apply these resources of science that seem but to lengthen out the death agony. However, the greatest refreshment of that day was a turn under the wall with Dr. May, hearing how highly he thought of Clement's whole conduct towards the old man.

'I don't say the lad is altogether after my cut,' said the Doctor. 'We old folks used to think ourselves up in the steeple, and now we find these young ones think us down in the crypts. I'm afraid he may be bringing a hornet's nest about his ears, but that's all outside; and for the rest, nobody could have had such an effect on poor old Ful Underwood without something very genuine in him.'

'That is quite true,' said Felix; 'Clement has startled us sometimes, but we have never done otherwise than respect his thorough sincerity; and he always shows to the very best in any trouble or trial.'

'Ay,' said Dr. May; 'and I'll tell you another thing I've been slow to find out. It's not one youth in a hundred that if he is moderate enough to stop with what satisfied our—my—generation, has anything in him. Why, as I saw it well put the other day—Ethel was delighted with the notion—King Arthur tried to work up the Round Table, and because Christian chivalry had raised that generation, comes the Quest of the Sancgreal to lead them higher. 'Tis one of the tests of life whether we will take to our Quest and let others take to it. Tying them down to our Round Table does no good at all. But what am I talking of? You are one of these boys yourself.'

'I suppose I am,' said Felix; 'but I own I should be happier to see things as my father would have had them.'

'Somehow I saw it in you. Veneration has fixed your standard, I take it; and you've had all the cares in the world to sober you. But depend upon it—I've seen it many a time, in my own boys as well as others—enthusiasm carries on the work, and where that is, you may be only too thankful to give a loose rein. A young man must have it out one way or another; and we may well be thankful if he gives it to the Church, even though he may run into what seems queer to us.'

Felix laid up the conversation for himself and Geraldine, and thought it over many times that long day.