We cannot more fitly conclude this little sketch of a real event than by a quotation from Montalembert's closing chapter on the “Anglo-Saxon Nuns”:
“Is this a dream, the page of a romance? Is it only history—the history of a past for ever ended? No; once more it is what we behold and what happens amongst us every day.... Who, then, is this invisible Lover, dead upon a cross eighteen hundred years ago, who thus attracts to him youth, beauty, and love?—who appears to them clothed with a glory and a charm which they cannot withstand?—who seizes on the living flesh of our flesh, and drains the purest blood of our blood? Is it a man? No; it is God. There lies the secret, there the key of this sublime and sad mystery. God alone could win such victories and deserve such sacrifices. Jesus, whose godhead is amongst us daily insulted or denied, proves it daily, with a thousand other proofs, by those miracles of self-denial and self-devotion which are called vocations. Young and innocent hearts give themselves to him, to reward him for the gift he has given us of himself; and this sacrifice by which we are crucified is but the answer of human love to the love of that God who was crucified for us.”
The House That Jack Built.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”
In Two Parts.
PART II.
Concluded.
Late in the afternoon, Bessie went down and leaned on the bars again, looking up and down the road, looking at the tracks left by Father Conners' carriage-wheels—the smooth curve of their turning; looking to see the shadows creep across the road as the sun went down. The sadness of a lonely evening was upon her, and, though she had not lost her morning resolution, she had lost the joyous hopefulness with which those resolutions were made.
At her left, and quite near, a fringe of young cedars made a screen between the ground that belonged to her house and the farmer next to it, where her uncle Dennis had lived when John Maynard had wooed and won her.