CONTENTS

[I]The Bishop's Shadow
[II]The Lima Street Mission
[III]Religious Education
[IV]Husband and Wife
[V]Palm Sunday
[VI]Nancepean
[VII]Life at Nancepean
[VIII]The Wreck
[IX]Slowbridge
[X]Whit-Sunday
[XI]Meade Cantorum
[XII]The Pomeroy Affair
[XIII]Wych-on-the-Wold
[XIV]St. Mark's Day
[XV]The Scholarship
[XVI]Chatsea
[XVII]The Drunken Priest
[XVIII]Silchester College Mission
[XIX]The Altar for the Dead
[XX]Father Rowley
[XXI]Points of View
[XXII]Sister Esther Magdalene
[XXIII]Malford Abbey
[XXIV]The Order of St. George
[XXV]Suscipe Me, Domine
[XXVI]Addition
[XXVII]Multiplication
[XXVIII] Division
[XXIX]Subtraction
[XXX]The New Bishop of Silchester
[XXXI]Silchester Theological College
[XXXII]Ember Days

THE ALTAR STEPS

CHAPTER I

THE BISHOP'S SHADOW

Frightened by some alarm of sleep that was forgotten in the moment of waking, a little boy threw back the bedclothes and with quick heart and breath sat listening to the torrents of darkness that went rolling by. He dared not open his mouth to scream lest he should be suffocated; he dared not put out his arm to search for the bell-rope lest he should be seized; he dared not hide beneath the blankets lest he should be kept there; he could do nothing except sit up trembling in a vain effort to orientate himself. Had the room really turned upside down? On an impulse of terror he jumped back from the engorging night and bumped his forehead on one of the brass knobs of the bedstead. With horror he apprehended that what he had so often feared had finally come to pass. An earthquake had swallowed up London in spite of everybody's assurance that London could not be swallowed up by earthquakes. He was going down down to smoke and fire . . . or was it the end of the world? The quick and the dead . . . skeletons . . . thousands and thousands of skeletons. . . .

"Guardian Angel!" he shrieked.

Now surely that Guardian Angel so often conjured must appear. A shaft of golden candlelight flickered through the half open door. The little boy prepared an attitude to greet his Angel that was a compound of the suspicion and courtesy with which he would have welcomed a new governess and the admiring fellowship with which he would have thrown a piece of bread to a swan.