She was a little conscience-stricken, but rallied enough to say, 'It is the whole principle of auricular confession, to which nothing shall ever bring me back. Not the utmost persecution!' and as he smiled a little, she added, 'It was all form and human intervention.'
'If you can say so from personal experience, Angela,' he replied, 'it proves how lamentably I have failed to express my doctrine and intention, and how vain it is for me to try to converse with you. Indeed, I only attempted it because I knew you had had a great shock, and were unhappy.'
'Unhappy till I turned my back on the world and its vanities, and beheld the true and simple way of salvation! Would you but let me show it to you!'
'My dear child, do you think I have feebly tried to follow my Master all these years, and never seen it? If I have so totally failed in guiding you to it, my words alone were in fault, and it is well that the one Truth has been brought to bear upon you. I thank Him for it, and pray that some day you may be led to full truth.'
There he quitted her; and she could report that Mr. Fulmort had tried to get her under his direction again, and that she had almost brought him to own the emptiness of the system that he inculcated. That he did not was, Miss Martha decided, wholly owing to the Old Adam.
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
THE FIDDLER'S RANCH.
'The Vater Unser that I said
Before I went to school,
The prayers come ringing in my head
Like ripples in a pool.'
Veritas.