The Case of Richard Meynell

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

And again:

"I have called you friends. Ye are my friends"—

With the reply:

"If ye do the things which I command you."

And yet again:

"The words that I speak unto you:"—

"They—they are spirit; and they are life!"

A moment's silence, before all the voices, gathering into one harmony, sent the last versicle ringing through the arches of the choir, and the springing tracery of the feretory, and of the Lady Chapel beyond.

"Lord to whom shall we go?—Thou—thou hast the words of eternal life!"

"Only a few days or weeks," murmured Meynell, as they passed out into the evening light, "and we two—and those men singing there—shall be outcasts and wanderers, perhaps for a time, perhaps while we live. But to-day—and to-morrow—we are still children in the house of our fathers—sons, not slaves!—speaking the free speech of our own day in these walls, as the men who built them did in theirs. That joy, at least, no one shall take from us!"