"I think the explanation is this. The calm discussion of Catholic

questions, as we said before, must logically lead to the

discovery of Catholic truth. There are Protestant writers who see

this and do not want to see it. They perceive whither the current

is bearing them, and they struggle against it. They rail at the

church by way of protest against the growth of an unwelcome,

dimly foreseen conviction, as an encouragement to their tottering

unbelief, just as boys whistle to keep up their courage.

{581}

Have you ever seen a dying sinner try to fight off death? It is

in some such hopeless effort as his that _The Liberal

Christian_ and a few other journals are now engaged. I do not

say that they understand this themselves. I do not charge them

with absolutely resisting the progress of conviction, or, to

speak more exactly, the resistance is instinctive rather than

voluntary; but they feel or suspect, perhaps without fully

comprehending, that, if they keep on as they are going, they must

come pretty soon to the Catholic Church, and that provokes them.

_The Liberal Christian_, you know, is edited by Dr. Bellows,

an accomplished gentleman, who was thought some years ago to

exhibit a decided leaning toward the church. I am not prepared to

say whether this supposition was correct or not; but it is

certain that he saw more clearly and exposed more boldly the

inherent defects and logical tendencies of Protestantism than any

other Protestant I can remember, and in one of his published

sermons he declared that Unitarians (his own sect) had more

sympathy with Catholicism than with any other form of religion.

It might seem strange to find him among the foremost revilers of

that very Catholicism; but my theory explains it. The hostility

which glistens in his letters and runs mad, sometimes, in the

miscellaneous columns of his paper, is the revolt of his

Protestantism against the progress of unwelcome ideas--an effort

of his unregenerate nature, so to speak, to throw off something

which does not agree with it. Ah! how many men have trod in the

same path he is now following, and have been led by it to the

bitter waters of disappointment! He saw the fatal gulf into which

the Protestant bodies were plunging. He felt that hunger of the

spirit which nothing but the church of God ever satisfies. He

raised a cry for help, and when he found that there was no help

except from the Holy Catholic Church, he turned his back upon

her, and bound himself down once more with the narrow bonds of

what is called Unitarian 'liberalism.' And now, of course, he

misses no opportunity of declaring his detestation of the succor

which he has refused. He has failed in his aspirations after a

mock church, and naturally he vents his disappointment on the

real one. He fancies that he is moved by principle, when he is

really instigated by pique. He imagines that he is an earnest,

honest seeker after an answer to what he well terms 'the dumb

wants of the religious times,' when he is--but I have no business

to judge his motives. That is God's affair. We must presume that

he is courageous and sincere, and that whenever he finds the

right road he will boldly walk in it. Nine years ago, Dr. Bellows

delivered an address before the alumni of the Harvard Divinity

School, on 'The Suspense of Faith,' which was generally supposed

to indicate his wish to engraft a ritual and a priesthood upon

the Unitarian denomination, bringing it perhaps nearer to

Episcopalianism than to any other system of worship. There was no

such thought in his mind, I am sure; though his sentiments, had

they been acted upon, might have led many men through

Episcopalianism into the Catholic Church. I will not weary you

with the whole of it; but let me read a few lines which have a

special application to what we have been saying.

{582}

He is trying to account for the fact that Unitarianism is in a

posture of pause and self-distrust and he says: 'If, with logical

desperation, we ultimate the tendencies of Protestantism, and

allow even the malice of its enemies to flash light upon their

direction, we may see that _the sufficiency of the Scriptures

turns out to be the self-sufficiency of man_, and the right of

private judgment an absolute independence of Bible or church. No

creed but the Scriptures, practically abolishes all Scriptures

but those on the human heart; nothing between a man's conscience

and his God, vacates the church; and with the church, the Holy

Ghost, whose function is usurped by private reason: the church

lapses into what are called religious institutions, these into

Congregationalism, and Congregationalism into individualism--and

the logical end is the abandonment of the church as an

independent institution, _the denial of Christianity as a

supernatural revelation,_ and the extinction of worship as a

separate interest. There is no pretence that Protestantism, as a

body, has reached this, or intends this, or would not honestly

and earnestly repudiate it; but that its most logical product is

at this point, it is not easy to deny. Nay, that these are the

_tendencies_ of Protestantism is very apparent.' When he

comes to speak of Unitarianism as the representative and most

logical exponent of Protestantism, he expresses himself in a

still more remarkable way. Religion, he thinks, like everything

else in the world, has been constantly making progress, and

Unitarianism has always been in the van. Now this progress seemed

to have reached its limit; there is a pause, a partial recoil, in

some cases a turning back to the formalism and ritual worship of

Rome, in others a headlong rush into the abyss of pure

rationalism. In fact, Dr. Bellows believes that to create an

equilibrium in the relations between God and man, two opposing

forces are in operation--a centrifugal force, which drives man

away from submission to divine authority, that he may develop his

own liberty and functions of the will, and a centripetal force,

which leads him to worship and obedience. These are represented

respectively by Protestantism and Catholicism, and he seems to

think them destined to alternate--perhaps for all time, though

about this his meaning is not very clear. 'Is it not plain,' he

says, 'that, as Protestants of the Protestants, we are at the

apogee of our orbit; that in us the centrifugal epoch of humanity

has, for this swing of the pendulum at least, reached its bound?

For one cycle we have come, I think, nearly to the end of our

self-directing, self-asserting, self-developing, self-culturing

faculties; to the end of our honest interest in this necessary

alternate movement.'"

"That means, if it means anything that Protestantism has done its

work, at least for the present age; that it has accomplished all

it can; and there is nothing left for man but a return to the

centripetal force, or to the Catholic Church."

"Exactly: that would be the logical complement of the position he

assumed in the curious discourse from which I have been quoting;

but the misery is that he had not the courage to be logical. Ah!

how well I remember the impression produced at the time by that

sad, sad cry of weariness and disappointment which went up from

his pulpit when he perceived that the toil, and speculation, and

uneasiness of years had brought him to no goal; that he had

developed man's faculties without finding a use for them; that he

had achieved an intellectual freedom without knowing what to do

with it; that, as he well expressed it himself, '_there was no

more road_ in the direction he had been going.'

{583}

Many, as we have seen, when they reached that point on their

journey whence this whole dismal prospect was visible, turned

back to the church which their fathers had forsaken, and there

found peace; and Dr. Bellows had stated so boldly the miseries of

his own situation that it was no wonder people thought he too

would follow that course. But he set himself about finding a new

road, imagining a new church which was to arise at no distant

day, and combine the most conservative of liturgies with the most

radical of creeds. It was to be constituted on strictly

centripetal principles. Speculation having proved empty, worship

was to be essayed as a change. Doubt being but sorry fare for a

hungry soul, there was to be a good deal of faith, and preaching

not being a gift of all men, place was to be made for prayer.

What that church was to be, how it was to arise, and when it was

to make its appearance, he did not pretend to say. But it must

come soon, because 'the yearning for a settled and externalized

faith' was too strong to be left unsatisfied. It was to be, I

must suppose, a mingling of the revelations of our Saviour with

the dreams of Luther, Calvin, Fox, and Swedenborg; because, as

Dr. Bellows says in one of his lectures, 'the religious man who

has no vacillations in his views, who is not sometimes inclined

to Calvinism, sometimes to Rationalism, sometimes to Catholicism,

sometimes to Quakerism, has an imperfect activity, a dull

imagination, and a timid love of truth; for all these faiths have

embodied great and interesting spiritual facts which the free and

earnest explorer will encounter in his own experience, and find

more vividly portrayed in the history of these sects than in

himself.' It was to possess a fixed creed, but nobody was

expected to believe in it, for 'inconsistencies of opinion' are

to be expected of everybody, and doubt, fear, and scepticism are

actually desirable, provided they are 'the work of one's own

mental and spiritual activity, and not of mere passive

acquiescence in the forces that one encounters from without.' It

was to be a _true_ church, of course, yet a false church

also; because Dr. Bellows declares that 'truth is too large to be

surrounded by any one man or any one party,' and there are always

two great parties in religion as there are in politics, 'and each

has part of the truth in its keeping;' so that, of course,

neither can be wholly right. He wanted his church to be a

historical church, for Christianity is a historical religion, and

'a faith stripped of historic reality, disunited from its

original facts and persons, does not promise to live and work in

the human heart and life.' He seemed to have forgotten that

history is the growth of time, and cannot be conferred upon a

new-born infant. The future church must have rites and

ceremonies, for without them religion hardly 'touches our daily

habits and ordinary career,' and is, like Unitarianism, 'an

unhoused, unnatural, and disembodied faith.' It must be a visible

church, yet without a priesthood; a divinely instituted church,

yet without authority; receiving its doctrines by divine

revelations, yet only true in part; eternal, yet changeable, I am

not surprised that Dr. Bellows has not yet found it."

"Surely he never uttered any such extraordinary farrago as you

have been putting into his mouth?"

{584}

"Not in those words, of course, nor with that collocation of

thoughts; but all that I have said you will find either in his

_Suspense of Faith_, or in the volume of sermons published

under the title of _Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine_,

(New York, 1860.) I have represented, as fairly as possible, the

vagueness of his aspirations and the inconsistency of his

principles. It is only clear that he wanted to be a Protestant

and a Catholic at the same time. He was shocked at the results of

his own centripetalism, and he longed for a visible church, with

a tangible creed and a set form of worship; only he wanted to

make the church himself; not to be the founder of a new sect--he

disclaimed that, and was unwilling even to change the form of

service in his own congregation--but to dream about it, to

speculate upon what it ought to be, to mould and influence

opinion, until, by a seemingly spontaneous movement, the new

church should arise from the midst of the people. Poor man! He

sees, by this time, that nobody feels the want of this new

church, and nobody believes in it; and he hates the true church,

partly because it is a continual reproach to him, bringing to

mind a duty unfulfilled and a happiness unappreciated, and partly

because it continually revives his disappointment."

"I have serious doubts, however, whether Dr. Bellows ever

comprehended the beauty of the Catholic religion half so well as

many people supposed that he did. Read his books with a little

care, and you will see that he never took but the most

superficial view of religion: he never got at the core of it.

Religion to him--as to how many others!--was a thin philosophy

which amused his intellect, a sentimental poetry which tickled

his aesthetic instincts; it was not a _life_. Of that vital

Christianity which comprehends the whole relationship between God

and man, which is both a creed, a worship, and the very essence

of devout life, his heart seems to have been void."

"Yes, he says something almost equivalent to this in his sermon

on 'Spiritual Discernment.'[Footnote 178]

[Footnote 178: _Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine_.]

'All the triumphs of Protestantism,' he declares, 'the universal

improvement of private and public morality, of public education,

respect for the individual, have grown out of the increasing care

to keep the church and the world apart--religion and other

interests distinct subjects of thought and attention.' And the

word 'world' here he does not use in its bad sense, but merely as

synonymous with secular affairs. Again he says, that 'the

Catholic Church succeeded wonderfully in blending life and

religion together, faith and daily usage, pleasure and worship,

philosophy and the Gospel;' and this, he thinks, was its great

fault, while the great merit of Protestantism was, that it

carefully separated what the church had so carefully melted

together. That gives you the real old Puritan idea of piety--a

something to be put on at stated times, and then put off again,

like the long faces which old-fashioned Protestants pull for

Sunday wear; to have no intimate connection with daily life, but

to be kept carefully apart, like the best coat which our

ancestors used to lay by in lavender leaves, to be worn on days

of ceremony. What is the good of a religion which does not blend

with work-a-day life? of a faith which is not felt in daily

usage? of a worship which must be kept apart from our pleasures,

from our business, from any of our honest pursuits?

{585}

Why, the very beauty of religion is, that it shall be in man's

heart at all times and in all places. If it cannot accompany us

everywhere, if it can only live in the artificial atmosphere of

Sunday meetings, it is not worth having. The danger against which

we have most to guard is not, Dr. Bellows thinks, that of

forgetting our religion, but that of growing too familiar with

it. His God is an awful rather than a loving God, and our sin

against him is not that we go so far away from him, but that we

bring him so near to us. In effect he tells us to fetch out our

piety once a week or so, on stated occasions, but not to let it

interfere with our daily walk and conversation, for that would be

sacrilege."

"All this shows, as you say, that he has no comprehension as yet

of the true nature of religion; and shall I tell you why he is so

slow to acquire it? I believe that he is not really in sympathy

with Christianity."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh! he is nominally a Christian, of course. He would be

horrified if you told him he was not. But he has no sympathy with

the religion of Christ. Our Saviour, in his opinion, was only the

expounder of a system of ethics, and, to tell the truth, it is

not clear to me wherein the Christ of Unitarianism is essentially

superior to Socrates or Benjamin Franklin. The worship of our

Lord Dr. Bellows emphatically denounces as rank 'idolatry.' We

may only reverence him as a creature specially favored by the

Almighty, and a teacher to whose word we owe the most profound

respect. Take away from your religious system the idea of God in

the person of his divine Son perpetually present with the

faithful, and helping them to bear the burdens of humanity which

he himself has borne, and it is but a cold, cheerless, fallacious

belief which is left you. It is no longer religion; it is only a

false philosophy. Devotion vanishes; faith, hope, and love are

exchanged for a code of rules of behavior; and God withdraws from

the world into the impenetrable mystery of the heavens, where the

voice of prayer indeed may reach him, but his presence is never

felt by man, and his love never fills the heart. He is no longer

the dear Lord of the Christian saints, but the Allah of the

Moslems."

"You have hit it exactly; and now let me tell you that ever since

Dr. Bellows set out on the foreign tour in which he is still

occupied, I have watched for the record of his impressions of

Oriental life, feeling certain, from what I knew of him, that he

would find an attraction in Mohammedanism which he never saw in

Christianity. I was not mistaken. He is not a polygamist: he has

no taste for a sensual heaven; I don't suppose he prefers the

Koran to the Bible; and I never heard of his keeping the

inordinate fasts of Ramadan; still, the creed of Islam seems, in

its main features, to have caught his fancy, and he loads it with

indirect praises, which he never thought of bestowing upon any

form of Christianity. Let me read you an extract from one of his

recent letters to _The Liberal Christian_:

"'These people,' he says, referring to the Egyptians, 'know

nothing of Christianity which ought to give it any superiority

in their eyes over Mohammedanism. When the Arabian prophet

commenced his marvellous work, there is little doubt that he

was animated by the sincere enthusiasm of a religious reformer.

Mohammed recognized both dispensations, the Mosaic and the

Christian; and his intelligent followers to this day speak

reverently of the Christ. They evade the authority and use of

our Scriptures, by asserting that they have been thoroughly

corrupted in their text. A learned Mohammedan in India,

however, has just written the introduction to a new Commentary

on our Bible, in which he ably refutes the Mussulman charge of

general corruptness, and adduces all the passages quoted out of

the Old and New Testaments in the Koran.

{586}

But what have Mussulmans seen of Christianity to commend it

greatly above their own faith? Is it alleged that Mohammedanism

has owed its triumphs and progress to the sword? Is it the

fault of Christians if the Cross has not advanced by the same

weapon? What infidel rage of the Crescent has ever exceeded the

fanatical soldiering of the Crusades, and what has Coeur de

Lion to boast over Saladin in enlightenment or appreciation of

the Christian spirit? And if we come to bowing, and fasting,

and washing, and external forms, _I confess that the

degrading prostrations, and crossings, and mummeries of the

Greek and Catholic churches, with the gaudy trappings of robes

and jewels, the worship of saints and images, and the

deification of a humble Jewish woman, appear to me to have

nothing in the presence of which Mussulmans could feel the

lesser reasonableness, purity, or dignity, or the lesser

credibility of their own unadorned and simpler

superstition._ Compared with Catholic and Greek legends, the

Koran is a model of purity and elegance of style, and _its

worst superstitions do not much exceed in grossness the popular

interpretation given to monkish fables._ As it respects

ecclesiastical interference and tyranny, Mohammedanism is a

whole world in advance of Romanism or the Greek Church. It is

essentially without priest or ritual, in any Catholic sense.

The Mussulman is his own priest. He finds Allah everywhere, and

he has only to turn toward Mecca, and bow in prayer, and his

field, his boat, the desert, is as good an altar as the mosque.

It is truly affecting to see the fidelity of the common people

to their faith, the apparent heedlessness of observation, the

absorption in their prayers, the careful memory of their hours

of devotion.'

"And, speaking of the absence of symbols and rites in the

mosques, he adds: 'Surely there is something grand in this

simplicity, _and something vital in a faith which, aided by so

little external appliance, has survived in full vigor twelve

hundred years'_"

"Why don't he admire the vitality of the devil? Satan has

survived in full vigor a good deal more than twelve hundred

years."

"That would be about as logical. But is it not melancholy to see

how far a man whom we would like to respect can be carried by his

uncontrolled vagaries! He demanded a 'historical church:' there

is only one in Christendom, and that he will not have; and now it

almost seems as if he felt an occasional temptation to search for

one _outside_ of Christendom. Protestantism, he finds, has

run its course. Catholicism he will have nothing to do with.

What, then, is left him, if he will be a religious man at all?

That seems to be the question which perplexes him and the small

but intelligent school of thinkers of whom he is the

representative. As the Jews are still waiting for the Christ they

crucified eighteen hundred years ago, so the Bellows school are

watching for the coming of that Christianity which they have

already rejected. And both, it seems to me, are sick at heart

with hope long deferred."

"Yes; we hear little now of the confident prophetic tone in which

Dr. Bellows some years ago discoursed of the glories of the new

religion of humanity, and predicted a resettlement of worn-out

creeds and a revival of suspended faith. He writes now rather of

the desolation of the present than of brightness which he

discerns in the future. And this brings us back to the point from

which we started. While Protestant theologians in general are

discarding vituperation, there are certain of our opponents who

show us a bitterness to which they were not formerly accustomed,

because they have been disappointed in their own religious

aspirations, and have a vague, half-conscious, and wholly

unwelcome impression that the Catholic Church alone is capable of

satisfying them. Dr. Bellows, for instance, travels through

Europe and finds that Protestantism is everywhere lifeless. He is

bold enough to say so; but he takes his revenge in the next

breath by trying to show that the Catholic Church is no better.

{587}

He is powerless to arrest the decay which is destroying his own

organization, but he seems to find a melancholy compensation in

attacking Catholicism. He reminds me of what the boy said when he

was thrashed by a school-fellow: 'If I can't whip you, I can make

faces at your sister.' He visits Paris, and confesses that

'Protestantism makes next to no headway' in France, and is torn

by internal dissensions. He goes to the heart of Protestant

Germany, and finds the general aspect 'one of painful decay in

the faith and spirituality of the people.' All over the

continent, he observes that where the Catholic faith has died

out, 'nothing vigorous has shot up in its place,' and the masses

of the population are 'without aspiration, devoutness, or faith

in the invisible.' 'Protestantism, as it appears here, is a

chilled, repulsive, ungrowing thing, entering very little into

the national or the social and domestic life, and apparently not

destined in any of its present forms to animate the passions or

win and shape the hearts and lives of the middle classes. ...

_Out of the present elements of faith and worship in Germany I

see no prospects of any healthy and contagious religious life

arising.'_ Nay, what is worse than all, the peculiar form of

Protestantism upon which, if upon any. Dr. Bellows would rely for

the regeneration of Europe, is in no better way than the others.

'It does not appear,' he says, 'that the liberal element in the

Protestantism of Germany, I mean that branch of its Protestantism

which we should consider 'most in sympathy with Unitarianism, is

very earnest or creative. It seems still rather a negation of

orthodoxy than an affirmation of the positive truths of

Christianity. ... Forced to take positive ground, I fear that a

large part of this extensive body _would be compelled to

abandon Christian territory altogether._' From Berlin he

writes that 'the whole life of the national church is sickly and

discouraging;' from Strasburg, that Protestantism 'must learn

some new ways before it will become the religion of the people of

France, Italy, or even Germany;' from Vienna, that the

Protestantism of Austria is 'essentially torpid and

unprogressive, presenting nothing attractive or promising.' These

passages, and many more of similar purport, we may take as

equivalent to the little boy's confession that he could not whip

his antagonist. When it comes to the other part, the making faces

at his sister, I am bound to say that Dr. Bellows shows more

temper than strength. In Vienna, he deplored the lukewarmness of

the Catholic people all through Germany, yet, in several previous

letters, he had contrasted their zeal in church-going with the

indifference of the Protestants. He accuses the clergy of

avarice, though in Rome he compliments the priests for their

personal merits, their 'seriousness, decorum, and fair

intelligence.' He declares that 'the Catholic Church is an artful

substitute for anything that a human soul ought to desire;' that

she is 'the chief hinderance to progress;' that she has

'glorified the blessed Mother into the Almighty;' that she

'mutters spells and practises necromancy at her altars,' and all

that kind of thing, which I need not repeat, because we have

heard it in almost the very same words scores of times before.

But the most curious of all his angry attacks was made--where,

think you? Why, on a steamer in the Levant, where there was

nothing whatever to provoke him: where the onslaught was so

perfectly gratuitous that it burst upon the calm flow of his

letter like a thunderbolt rending the summer sky. Here it is:

{588}

"'Roman Catholicism, weak in every member, is prodigious in its

total effectiveness, because it is a unit. It is quietly

seizing America, piece by piece, state by state, city by city.

In a new state like Wisconsin, for instance, it has the oldest

college, the largest theological school, the best hospitals and

charities, the finest churches; and what is true of Wisconsin

is equally true of many other Western states. Protestantism,

with a hundred times the wealth, intelligence, public spirit,

and administrative ability, by reason of its sectarian

jealousies and divisions can have no parallel successes, and is

losing rapidly its place in legislative grants and in public

policy. The Irish Catholics spot the members of state

legislatures who vote against the appropriations they call for,

and are able in our close elections to defeat their return.

Representatives become servile and pliable, and Romanism

flourishes. A Quaker gentleman of wealth, in the West, (the

story is exactly true,) married a Vermont girl who had become a

Catholic in a nunnery where she was sent for her education. It

was agreed that, if children were given them, the boys should

be reared in the faith of their father, the girls in that of

their mother. _The Vermont mother gave her husband ten girls,

but never a son!_ Eight of them grew up Catholics, married

influential men, and brought up their children Catholics, and

in some cases brought over their husbands, and so the Roman

Church was recruited with Protestant wealth and Quaker blood to

a vast extent. So much for sending Protestant girls to Roman

Catholic seminaries, and then complaining that so many

Protestants are lost to the superstitions of Romanism! There is

an apathy about the Roman Catholic advances in the United

States among American Protestants, which will finally receive a

terrible shock. There is no influence at work in America so

hostile to our future peace as the Roman Catholic Church. The

next American war will, I fear, be a religious war--of all

kinds the worst. If we wish to avert it, _we must take

immediate steps to organize Protestantism more efficiently_,

and on less sectarian ground.'

"Well, upon my word, the conduct of that Vermont girl was

abominable. I suppose Dr. Bellows thinks she never would have

been artful enough to swindle her husband out of all his expected

boys if she had not been brought up in a convent. 'So much for

sending Protestant girls to Roman Catholic seminaries!' I should

think so, indeed!"

"The story is very ridiculous; but the moral Dr. Bellows draws

from it is worse than ridiculous. If we wish to avert a religious

war, he says, 'we must take immediate steps to organize

Protestantism more efficiently, and on less sectarian ground.'

That means that Protestantism must maintain an overwhelming

preponderance in this country by fair means or foul. If it cannot

convert the papists with the Bible, it ought to knock them on the

head with a bludgeon. And the same atrocious sentiment is still

more plainly expressed by an Irish writer in _The Liberal

Christian_ of Feb. 29th, who says, 'Popery and Fenianism are

Siamese curses, withering every noble and humane feeling wherever

they exist. ... _They deserve no toleration; they should

receive no mercy._' There's a 'liberal' Christian for you,

with a vengeance!"

"Well, we can afford to ridicule such fears and threats; but it

is very sad. Here, where nearly all honest people seem to have

made up their minds to reform their bad language, and be as

polite in discussing sacred questions as in talking over secular

affairs, a sect which professes toleration and fairness beyond

all others goes back to the old style of polemical blackguardism.

I can appreciate the unfortunate position of the liberal

Christians, when, having pushed ahead so far, they find that

there is 'no more road' in that direction, and can understand

that only one of two courses may seem open to them, either to

berate the Catholics or to join them; but the instruction which

the barrister received from his attorney when the law and the

facts were both against him, 'Abuse the other side,' does not

apply so well to religion as to jury trials. We must have a

different style of argument if anybody is to be converted or

improved by the discussion.

-------

{589}

Nellie Netterville.

Chapter XII.

When first O'More unfolded the cloak in which he had brought

Nellie safely through the flames, she lay so white and still

that, for one brief, terrible moment, he almost fancied she was

dead. The fresh air, however, soon revived her, and, opening her

eyes, filled with a look of terror which afterward haunted them

for months, she fixed them upon Roger, and whispered nervously:

"Where are the rest--the priest and all? Where are they?"

"They are with their God, I trust," he answered solemnly. At that

awful moment he felt that he could say nothing but the truth,

terrible as he knew that truth must sound in the ears of the pale

girl beside him. His words, in fact, seemed to cut through her

like a knife, and she fell upon her knees, exclaiming: "I only

saved--I only saved! O my God, my God! have mercy on their

souls!" Then suddenly remembering that, if she were safe, she

owed it entirely to Roger, she added earnestly, "You have risked

your life for mine. How shall I thank you?"

"By helping me once more to save it," he answered curtly.

"Nellie," he went on rapidly, for he knew too well that every

moment they lingered there was fraught with peril--"Nellie, you

are saved, and yet not safe yet! Your life, however, is in your

own hands now, and with courage and good trust in Providence, I

doubt not we shall pull safely through."

Nellie seemed to gather up her mind for a great effort, and said

calmly:

"Only say what I must do, and I will do it."

"The case is this," said Roger shortly: "Yonder tower," and he

pointed to the burning pile overhead--"yonder tower must fall

soon, and, if we linger here, will crush us in its ruins. On the

other hand, even if we could creep round to the opposite side of

the church, a thing in itself almost impossible, the fanatical

demons who guard the gates will probably shoot us down like dogs.

The cliff, therefore, is our best--almost our only chance.

Nevertheless I leave the choice in your own hands. Only remember

you must decide at once."

"The cliff, then, be it!" said Nellie, with white lips but

flashing eyes. "God is more merciful than man. He will save us,

perhaps; if not, his will be done--not mine. I will trust

entirely to him--entirely to him and you."

Almost ere she had finished speaking, Roger had undone the rope

which he carried round his waist, and was looking eagerly about

him for some means of securing it in such a way as to make it

useful to Nellie in her descent. Fortunately for his purpose, a

thorny tree had planted itself, some hundreds of years before, in

a fissure of the rocks so close to the walls of the tower that,

old, and gray, and stunted, as it now was, its roots had in all

probability penetrated beneath their broad foundation, and were

quite as firmly settled in the ground. Upon this Roger pounced at

once, and having tried it sufficiently to make tolerably sure of

its powers of endurance, he passed one end of his rope round the

thickest and lowest portions of the stem, and made it fast with a

sailor's knot.

{590}

The other end he threw over the cliff, and then watched its fall

with a terrible, silent fear at his heart lest it should prove

shorter than his need required. Down it went and down, and he

stooped over to mark its progress until Nellie felt sick with

fear, and turned away to avoid the giddiness which she knew would

be fatal to them both.

At last she heard him say, "Thank God, it has reached the

platform!" Then he turned round and anxiously scanned her

features.

"Nellie," he said, "this thing is difficult, but not impossible.

I have seen you bound like a deer down cliffs almost as steep, if

not so high. The great, the only real peril, is in the eyesight.

Lot's wife perished by a look. You must promise me neither to

glance up nor down, but to keep your eyes fixed on the rocks

before you. Hold well by the rope; take it hand over hand like a

sailor, (I remember that you know the trick;) and leave the rest

to me. There is really a path, though you can hardly see it from

this spot; and there are chinks and crevices besides, in which

you will easily find footing. You must feel for them as you

descend; and when you are at a loss, I shall be below to help

you. Neither will you be quite alone, for I am going to fasten

you by this cord, so that, if you should happen to let go, I may

perhaps be able to support you."

"My God!" said Nellie, white with terror, as he passed a strong,

light cord, first round her waist and then his own, in such a way

that there was length sufficient to enable them to act

independently of each other, while, at the same time, neither

could have fallen without almost to a certainty insuring the

destruction of both. "My God, I cannot consent to this. Go by

yourself; my fall would kill you."

"But you will not fall--you shall not fall," he pleaded

anxiously, "if only you will abide by my directions."

"Go alone, I do beseech you!" she answered, with a shiver. "You

cannot save me, and I shall but insure your destruction with my

own."

"Nay, then, I give it up," he answered, almost sullenly. "We will

stay here and die together, for never shall it be said of an

O'More that, in seeking safety for himself, he left a woman thus

to perish."

"Then, in God's name, let us try!" said Nellie; "only tell me

what to do, and I will do it--if I can."

"Hold fast the rope, that is all. Never let one hand go until the

other has grasped it firmly, and leave the rest to me. I will

help to place your feet in safe resting-places as we go down.

Only trust me, and all will yet be well."

"I will trust to you and to God, and our Lady," said Nellie,

unconsciously repeating the password of the morning. Her color

was rising fast, and her eyes had begun to sparkle with

excitement. O'More seized the propitious moment, and, almost

before Nellie knew it, she had begun her perilous descent.

"Are you steady now--quite steady?" he asked, in as low a voice

as if he feared to startle the air with motion by speaking

louder. Yes! with the natural instinct of a mountain climber

Nellie had already found a rough indented spot in which her foot

was firmly planted, and he descended a step lower. Thus inch by

inch they went, Nellie ever clinging to the rope, and O'More

guiding her descent with a success he had hardly looked for, and

which he felt to be almost miraculous.

{591}

His heart at last beat high with hope; for he saw by the distance

which they had descended that they must be nearing a sort of

shelf or platform formed by a sudden bulging out of the lower

strata of the cliffs, and he knew that they were safe if they

could only reach that spot, the rest of the path being so well

marked that, even without his aid, Nellie could easily have found

her way from thence to the sands beneath.

But the surge of the sea boomed louder and louder as she

approached it, and at last, fairly forgetting Roger's caution,

she turned her head a little, and glanced downward. Then, for the

first time, she became fully conscious of the terrible position

she occupied, suspended as it seemed by a very thread between

earth and sky, and with the great, deep, awful ocean rolling

hundreds of feet below her. Her head swam, her eyesight failed

her, she had just enough presence of mind left to grasp the rope

firmly by both hands, when, feeling as if her senses were utterly

deserting her, she cried out:

"O my God, I am going! Save me, Roger, I am going!"

"No, no!" he cried, in agony, for he knew only too well the

danger of the thought. "Hold fast--hold on; for Christ's dear

sake, hold on! One step--two steps more, and you are safe.

There!" he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, as he felt his

own foot touch the platform; and seizing Nellie by the waist, he

drew her, hardly conscious of what he was doing, by main strength

to his side. "There, oh! thank God--thank God, you are safe at

last!"

He was just in time. Nellie had that very moment let go the rope,

and if he had not caught her, would inevitably have been dashed

to pieces on the rocks below. As it was, he landed her safely and

gently on the ledge where he himself was standing, and without

venturing to loose her entirely from his grasp, laid her down,

that she might recover from her nervous panic.

"You are safe," he kept repeating, as if it required the

assurance of his own voice to make certain of the fact. "You are

safe!" and then with an instinctive yet entirely unacknowledged

consciousness on his part, that _his_ own safety might

perhaps be at least a portion of her care, he added--"we are safe

now. You can stay here until you are quite yourself again; only

do not look up or down--at least not just yet, not until the

giddiness is gone. You forgot Lot's wife, or this never would

have happened."

Nellie was not insensible, though she looked so. She only felt as

if she were in a dream. She understood perfectly all that Roger

said; the shadow even of a smile seemed to pass over her white

lips as he alluded to Lot's wife; but his voice fell with a

muffled sound, as if it came from a great distance, on her ear;

and earth, and sky, and cliff, and ocean, all seemed blending and

floating in a wild fantasy through her brain. By degrees,

however, a sort of awakening seemed to creep over her, but she

did not use it at first either to look up or speak. Possibly she

felt that words would be powerless to express her thoughts, and

was glad of any excuse for silence. Roger did not like to hurry

her, and he therefore employed the next few minutes in scanning

the sea in search of Henrietta. She was there, exactly in the

place in which he had bidden her to wait for him; but she was

watching the burning tower overhead, and had evidently very

little notion that any of its victims had escaped. From the spot

where he was standing, he could easily have made her hear him;

but fearing that his voice might rouse up some hidden foe, he

turned to Nellie for assistance.

{592}

"Have you a handkerchief," he asked, "or anything of that kind

which you could give me for a signal?"

Without answering, without even looking up, (so obedient had she

grown, poor Nellie!) she untied the scarlet kerchief, which, in

her harmless vanity, she had that morning thrown over her head

and knotted beneath her chin, as the last thing wanting to her

costume of a native girl, and gave it into Roger's hand. He waved

it for some time without success; but at last Henrietta saw it,

and began to row vigorously into shore.

"Now you may look," cried Roger joyfully, helping Nellie to stand

up; "now you may look; for you will see nothing but what it is

good for you to see. Henrietta Hewitson is waiting for us in the

boat below, and the sooner we leave this resting-place the

better."

"Henrietta Hewitson!" cried Nellie, roused effectually to life

again by the mention of her name. "His daughter! How kind, how

noble! Shall we not go to her at once?"

"If you are able," he answered. "The rest of the way is

easy--easier far than the cliffs of Clare Island, which you

climbed with me yesterday."

"Easy! oh! yes, surely it is easy," cried Nellie wildly. "O my

mother--my mother!" she sobbed, with a little gasp; "I shall see

her once again--and my grandfather! the poor old man will not be

left desolate, after all."

Roger saw that she was growing every moment more and more

excited, and he cut the matter short by carrying her down to the

beach and laying her in the boat, as if she had been a baby.

Henrietta received her with a look of remorse, as if she felt

that she herself must seem, somehow or other, responsible in

Nellie's eyes for the pain and misery she had been enduring for

the last few hours; and while she wrapt her tenderly and

affectionately in a cloak taken from her own shoulders, Roger

sent the boat, by a few vigorous strokes of the oar, to a safe

distance from the rocks near which they had embarked. This

manoeuvre placed them in full view of the burning tower, and he

dropped his oar and gazed upon it as if irresistibly attracted by

the spectacle. The body of the church was by this time a

smouldering heap of ruins, but the tower, wrapt in its terrible

robes of fire, still stood bravely up as if in defiance of its

coming doom. For a single second it remained thus, unyielding and

apparently uninjured, than it began visibly to totter. Another

moment, and it was swaying backward and forward like a leaf in an

autumn storm; and yet another, and, as if in a last wild effort

to escape from the flames that swathed it, it plunged right over

the cliffs, the fragments of its ruined walls crashing and

crumbling from rock to rock till they fell with a roar like

thunder into the waters underneath. Both girls, at the first

symptom of the catastrophe impending, had instinctively shut

their eyes; but Roger, on the contrary, looked on as steadily as

if he were keeping a count of every falling stone in order to set

it down in his debt of vengeance against those who had done the

deed. Not a syllable, however, did he utter, until the last stone

had fallen, and the last fiery gleam disappeared from the cliff;

but then, as if unable any longer to endure in silence, he threw

up his arms toward heaven, and exclaimed:

{593}

"Men, women, and children all sent before their time to judgment!

O God! what punishment hast Thou reserved in this world or the

next that shall be heavy enough for such a deed as this!"

"Curse me not--curse not!" cried Henrietta, with anguish in her

voice, "The doom, God knows, is heavy enough already."

"Curse _you!_" said the astonished Roger, "_you_, to

whom I owe more than my own life a thousand times. Nay, Mistress

Henrietta, what madness has made you fear it?"

"I fear! I fear! Why should I not?" sobbed Henrietta. "The sin of

the parents shall be visited on the children, and he is my

father, after all!"

"Your father! _your_ father!" Roger muttered, trying to keep

down the storm of passion that was choking him. "Well, well, he

is, as you say, _your_ father, and so I must perforce be

silent."

"Alas! alas!" Henrietta pleaded, "if you did but know the

completeness of his religious mania, you would also comprehend

how easily a man, merciful in all things else, can in this one

thing be merciless."

"Nay," said Roger bitterly; "it needs, I think, no great stretch

of intellect to understand it thoroughly. A man, fresh from the

siege of Tredagh, where children were dashed from the

battlements, lest, 'like nits, they should become troublesome if

suffered to increase,' will, doubtless, merely consider the

holocaust of human life which lies buried beneath yonder ruins as

a whole burnt-offering, smelling sweet in the nostrils of the

Lord, which he, as his high-priest, has been deputed to offer

up."

He broke off suddenly, for a hand was laid upon his arm, and a

white face lifted pleadingly to his. "Speak not thus of her

father," whispered Nellie. "Speak not thus; see how she is

weeping!"

"Her tears are his best plea for mercy, then," said he in a

gentler tone, and seizing the oars, he began to row as vigorously

as if he hoped to quiet his boiling spirit by the mere fact of

bodily exhaustion. Nellie made no answer, and silence fell upon

them all.

The deed just done was not of a nature lightly to be forgotten,

and they went quietly on their way, as people will, upon whom the

shadow of a great terror still hangs heavily. Just, however, as

they entered the harbor of Clare Island, Nellie caught sight of a

well-known figure, and uttered a cry of joy. It was Hamish, and,

in her impatience, she scarcely waited until the boat was

fastened ere she was at his side. But there was no gladness in

his eye as he turned to greet her. He was deadly pale, and his

left arm hung powerless at his side. Nellie saw nothing of this

at first, however, she was thinking so entirely of her mother.

"Is she come, dear Hamish?" she cried. "Where is she?"

"In Dublin," he answered curtly.

"In Dublin--and you here?" cried Nellie in dismay.

"Because she sent me," he replied.

"What is it, Hamish? What is it?" faltered Nellie, struggling

with a sense of some new and terrible misfortune impending over

her.

"She is sore sick--sick even unto death," Hamish reluctantly

replied. He could not bring himself to utter the terrible truth

as yet.

Nellie stood for a moment mute with terror. She read upon her

foster-brother's face that worse news than even this was about to

follow; but when she would have asked what it was, courage and

voice completely failed her. She knew it, however, soon enough.

From his seat by the door of the tower, Lord Netterville had

caught a glimpse of Hamish, and came down at once to greet him.

Excitement seemed for one brief moment to have restored all his

faculties, and he cried out eagerly:

{594}

"You here, good Hamish! I am heartily glad to see you! And what

news bring you from Netterville? How goes my lady daughter? Ill,

do you say--sore stricken? Nay, man, remember that she is still

but young. It cannot surely be an illness unto death?"

"Yea, but it is, my lord," said Hamish, speaking almost roughly

in his agony. "Death, and nothing short of death, as surely as

that I am here to say it."

"Art thou a prophet?" asked Roger, bending his dark brows upon

him, and half tempted to suspect a snare. "Art thou a prophet,

that thou darest to speak thus confidently of the future?"

"Sir," said Hamish, driven at last beyond his patience, and

hardly knowing how to break his news more gently, "it needs not

to be a prophet to foresee that the widow of a royalist and a

Catholic to boot, shut up in prison and condemned on a false

charge of murder, is in danger--nay, said I danger?--and is as

certain of her doom as if she were already in her coffin."

Nellie uttered a wild cry, the first and last that escaped her

lips that day, and Lord Netterville repeated faintly, "Murder!"

"Ay, murder; and in another week she dies," Hamish answered, now

desperate as to the consequences of his revelation.

Nellie turned short round toward Roger:

"I must go!" she said. "I must go at once."

"Of course you must," he answered, in that helpful tone which had

so often that morning already reassured her.

"She has sent me hither to conduct you," Hamish--with some latent

jealousy of the interference of a stranger--was beginning, when,

unable any longer to conceal the bodily anguish he was enduring,

he uttered a moan of pain, and leaned back against the low wall

of the pier.

Then for the first time Nellie looked into his face, and saw that

he was as white as ashes.

"My God! my God!" she cried in her perplexity. "What is to become

of us? He is dying too."

"No, no," Hamish mustered his failing strength to answer, "It is

nothing. They shot at me as I took boat from the beach, and hit

me in the arm; but it is not broken, and if only I could stop the

bleeding, I should be well enough to start at once."

But he grew paler and paler as he spoke, and the blood gushed in

torrents from his arm, as he tried to lift it for their

inspection. Roger shouted to Norah to bring down a cordial from

the tower, and he then helped Nellie and Henrietta in their

nervous and not very efficient endeavors to check the bleeding

with their kerchiefs. Hamish was by this time well-nigh

insensible, but a cup of wine revived him, and having ascertained

that he was merely suffering from a flesh-wound, Roger sent back

Norah to rummage out some bandages which he remembered were among

his soldier stores. With these he stanched the blood, and

carefully bound up the wounded arm, assuring Nellie at the same

time that her faithful follower was merely suffering from loss of

blood, and that in a few days he would be as well again as ever.

Nellie must be forgiven if at that moment she had no thought

excepting for her mother.

"A few days," she cried despairingly; "then I must go back alone;

for my mother will be dead by that time."

{595}

Hamish did not hear her. He was leaning back in that half-dreamy

state which often follows upon loss of blood; but Roger answered

instantly:

"You shall go at once; but certainly not alone." He turned round

to look for Lord Netterville; the poor old man had sunk upon the

ground, and in his helplessness and perplexity was weeping like a

child.

"Lord Netterville!" said Roger suddenly.

Lord Netterville dashed the tears from his eyes, and looked up

anxiously in the young man's face.

"Lord Netterville," Roger repeated, giving him his hand and

helping him to stand up, "you see how the case stands; your

granddaughter must go to her mother, and go at once. Any delay

were fatal. This poor fellow is totally unable to accompany her.

Will you trust her to my care? I swear to you that she shall be

as dear and precious to me as a sister, and that I will watch

over her and wait upon her as if I were in very deed her

brother."

With a look of relief and confidence that was touching to behold,

the old man wrung the hand which Roger gave him, and then

silently turned toward Nellie. Roger did did not ask her if she

would accept him as an escort; he felt that after the events of

the morning she would need no protestations of loyalty at his

hand, and merely said:

"In two hours we can start; but I shall have to go first to the

mainland to look for horses."

"Nay, that shall be my business," said Henrietta suddenly. "In

two hours hence, at the foot of the round tower, you will find

them waiting; and I will bring you at the same time a letter to a

friend, who may, I think, prove useful to you in Dublin. Follow

me not now," she added in a tone that admitted of no reply, as

Roger made a movement as if he would have gone with her to the

boat, "follow me not now; I can best arrange matters if I go

alone; but in two hours hence I shall expect you."

Chapter XIII.

Henrietta was as good as her word, and, thanks to her energy and

kindness, Nellie, with Roger for an escort, was enabled to

commence her journey that very afternoon, both she and her

companion being mounted upon good swift steeds, which the young

English girl had made no scruple of abstracting for the purpose

from her father's stable. She had done even more than this; for

she had conquered her pride and petulance sufficiently to write a

letter to Major Ormiston, in which she entreated him, by the love

he once professed to bear her, to do all he could for Nellie, and

to procure her every facility for access to her mother. This she

had given to Roger, hinting to him at the same time that her

correspondent was high in favor of the Lord Deputy, and might

possibly be able to induce the latter to commute the sentence of

death hanging over Mrs. Netterville into one of fine or

imprisonment, even if he could not or would not grant her a full

pardon. Of this hope, however, Roger said not a syllable to

Nellie, fearful, if it should come to naught, of adding the

bitterness of disappointment to the terrible measure of misery

which in that case would be her portion.

The journey to Dublin was a difficult and a long one, and if

Nellie had been allowed to act according to her own wishes, she

would probably have used up both herself and her horse long

before she had reached its end.

{596}

Fortunately, however, for the accomplishment of her real object,

Roger took a more exact measure of the strength of both than,

under the circumstances, she was capable of doing for herself,

and he insisted every night upon her seeking a few hours' repose

in any habitation, however poor, which presented itself for the

purpose.

With this precaution, and supported also in some measure by the

very excitement of her misery, Nellie bore up bravely against the

inevitable fatigues and discomforts of the journey. The horses,

however, proved less untiring. In spite of Roger's best care and

grooming, both at last began to show symptoms of distress, and

they were a long day's journey yet from Dublin when it became

evident to him that his own in particular was failing rapidly.

Henrietta had chosen it chiefly for its quality of speed; but it

was too light for a tall and powerfully-built man like Roger; and

more than once that day he had been compelled to dismount, and

proceed at a walking pace, in order to allow it to recover

itself. Night was rapidly closing in, and Nellie, who,

preoccupied by her own anxieties, had not as yet remarked the

state of the poor animal, ventured to remonstrate with Roger upon

the slowness of their proceedings. Then for the first time he

pointed out to her the exhaustion of their steeds, acknowledging

his conviction that his own in particular was in a dying state,

and that two hours more, if he survived so long, would be the

utmost measure of the work that he could expect him to

accomplish. Nellie was for a moment in despair, and then a bold

thought struck her--why not ride straight for Netterville? They

had been for some hours in the country of the Pale, and they

could not be very far from her old home now. Every feature in the

landscape was becoming more and more familiar to her eyes, and

she was certain that, in less than the two hours which Roger had

assigned as the utmost limit of his steed's endurance, they would

have reached her native valley. Once there, they would not only

be in the direct road to Dublin, but they would also have a

better chance of finding horses than they could have in a place

where they were entirely unknown. Netterville, it was true, was

now wholly and entirely, with its fields and stock, in the hands

of the Parliamentarians; but she was certain of the fidelity of

the poor people there, and as certain as she was of her own

existence, not only that they would not betray her, but that they

would also do all they could to help and speed her on her way.

The plan seemed feasible; at all events, no other presented

itself at the moment to Roger's mind, and accordingly, after

having done all he could to relieve his horse, and prepare him

for a fresh spurt, they struck right across the country eastward

toward the sea. Nellie proved right in her conjectures. In even

less than two hours from the moment in which they started, they

reached the valley of Netterville--reached it, in fact, just in

time; for Roger had barely leaped from his horse's back ere the

poor animal was rolling on the turf in the agonies of death.

Nellie then proposed that they should walk to the cottage of old

Grannie, and dismounted in her turn. Her horse was not so

exhausted as that of Roger, nevertheless it was even then unfit

for work, and would in all probability be still more so on the

morrow. Roger therefore thought it better to leave it to its fate

than to run the risk of attracting notice by bringing it with

them to Grannie's habitation.

{597}

He hoped, as Nellie did, that they would have a good chance of

finding fresh steeds at Netterville next morning; and after

carefully hiding the two saddles in a clump of gorse, they set

out on their way on foot. The old woman received Nellie with a

cry of joy. No sooner, however, did the latter mention the

business which had brought her there, than the faithful creature

stifled all her gladness at this unexpected meeting with her

foster-child, and turned to weep in good and sorrowful earnest

over the woe and shame impending upon the house of Netterville,

in the person of its unhappy mistress. While Nellie ate, or tried

to eat, the simple fare set before her by her hostess, Roger told

the latter of the fate which had befallen their horses, and

inquired as to the possibility of replacing them by fresh ones.

Grannie shook her head despondingly. Royalists and

Parliamentarians alternately, she said, had seized upon every

available horse they could find in the country, until, as far as

she knew, there was not a "garran" fit for a two hours' journey

within ten miles of Netterville. As to Netterville itself, if

there _were_ any horses left in its stables, (which she

doubted,) they must of necessity belong to the English soldier to

whose lot, in the drawing of the debentures, the castle and its

grounds had fallen; much, the old woman added with a chuckle, to

the disgust of the officer who commanded them at the time of the

recent murder, and who, having coveted the place exceedingly for

himself, was supposed to have pressed the matter heavily against

Mrs. Netterville for the facilitating of his own selfish wish.

Roger listened to all this in silence, privately resolving to

risk his own detention, if discovered, as an outlaw, and to visit

the stable of Netterville next morning, in hopes of procuring a

fresh mount. As nothing, however, could be done till then, he

entreated Nellie to lie down and rest, after which he left the

hut, there not being a second chamber in it, and throwing himself

on a bank of heather on the outside, was soon fast asleep. It was

long before Nellie could follow his example, but at last she fell

into that state of dreamless stupor which often, in cases of

extreme exhaustion, takes the place of healthy slumber. Such as

it was, at all events, it was rest--rest of body and rest of

mind--a truce to the aching of weary limbs, and to the yet more

intolerable weariness of a mind, wincing and shivering beneath a

coming woe. The first gleam of daylight roused her from it. There

was never any pleasant twilight now, between sleeping and waking,

in Nellie's mind! With the first gleam of consciousness came ever

the pale image of her mother, and there was neither rest nor

sleep for her after that. In the present instance, anxiety as to

the chance of being able to prosecute her journey at all, was

added to her other troubles; and, unable to endure suspense upon

such a vital point even for a moment, she opened the door

quietly, so as not to disturb old Granny, and looked out for

Roger. He was nowhere to be seen, and she guessed at once that he

had gone up to the castle. Then a longing seized her to look once

more upon the old place where she had been so happy formerly;

and, without giving herself time to waver, she walked hurriedly

up the valley. She did not, however, venture to the front of the

house, but resolved instead to take a path which, skirting round

it, would lead her to the offices behind.

{598}

It was, by one of those strange accidents which we call chance,

but for which the angels perhaps have quite another name, the

very path which her mother had always taken when visiting the

sick soldier. The door of the room which he had occupied was

slightly ajar as Nellie passed it; and, moved by an impulse for

which she could never afterward thoroughly account, she pushed it

open without noise, and entered. The room was not uninhabited, as

she had at first supposed. A woman, evidently in the last stage

of some mortal malady, lay stretched upon the bed, and a soldier

of the Cromwellian type was seated with an open Bible in his hand

beside her. He had probably been employed either in reading or

exhorting, but at the moment when Nellie entered, it was the

woman who was speaking.

"I tell you, soldier!" Nellie heard her querulously murmur--"I

tell you, soldier, it is mere waste of breath, your preaching. So

long as that woman's death lies heavy on my soul, so long I can

look for nothing better in the next world than hell."

At that very moment Nellie noiselessly advanced, and stood in

silence at the foot of the bed.

The woman recognized her at once, and with a wild shriek flung

herself out of the bed at her feet. The girl recoiled in horror

and dismay. She had learned the whole story of her mother's

condemnation from Hamish ere she left Clare Island.

"Murderess of my mother!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with

anguish. "Dare not to lay hands upon her daughter."

"Mercy! mercy!" cried the woman, grovelling on the ground, and

seeking with her white shrunken fingers to lay hold of the hem of

Nellie's garment. "Mercy! mercy!"

"Where shall I find mercy for my mother?" Nellie asked, as white

as ashes, and shaking from head to foot in the agony of her

struggle between conscience and resentment--the one urging her to

forgive her foe, the other to leave her to her fate. "Where shall

I find mercy for my mother?"

"You see, soldier--you see," moaned the poor wretch upon the

floor, "the daughter cannot pardon me; why then should God?"

"What would you have?" cried Nellie, almost maddened by the

mental conflict. "What would you have? I cannot cure you. What

can I do?"

"You can forgive," the woman answered feebly; "then perhaps God

will pardon also."

"O my God! my God! give me strength and grace sufficient!" cried

Nellie; and then, by an effort of almost superhuman charity, she

stooped, put her arms round the dying creature's neck, and kissed

her.

The woman uttered a cry of joy, and fell back heavily out of

Nellie's arms. A long silence followed.

Nellie looked at the dead, white face, lying quietly on the floor

beside her, and felt as if she were dying also, so utterly did

her senses seem to fail her, and so dead and numbed were all her

faculties in the heavy strain that had been put upon them. A hand

was laid at last upon her shoulder. Nellie started violently. She

had totally forgotten even the existence of the soldier.

"Nay, fear not, maiden, nor yet grieve inordinately," he said, in

a voice of mingled pity and admiration. "Thou hast acted in all

this business (I am bound to bear testimony to the truth) in a

way worthy of thy mother's daughter."

"Thank God, at least, that I forgave her," Nellie murmured

beneath her breath, scarce conscious of what he was saying.

{599}

"Nay, and in very deed," he answered, "thy presence here has been

a crowning and a saving mercy for the poor wretch whom we have

seen expire. Ever since I found her here last night, dying alone

and in despair, I have been striving for her with the Lord, and

praying and exhorting, but, as it seemed to me, all in vain,

until thy kiss of peace fell like a balm more precious even than

that of Gilead on her soul, and restored it, I cannot doubt, (for

I saw a light as of exceeding gladness settle upon her dying

features,) restored it to long banished peace."

"Thank God that he gave me grace to do it!" Nellie once more

whispered. It seemed as if she were powerless to think of aught

besides.

"They who do mercy shall in due time find it!" rejoined the

soldier, putting a small scrap of written paper into her hand.

"In this very room thy mother tended me, when my own comrades had

deserted me, fearing the infection; in this very room yonder

woman, having been expelled the other portions of the mansion,

since order has been taken for the separation of God's elect from

the sinful daughters of the land, took up her abode some three

days since; and in this very room I last night found her, dying

of the malady of which, but for thy mother's care, I must have

also perished, and so moved by the prospect of eternal

retribution which lay before her, that she of her own accord did

dictate, and did suffer me to write down on the spot, a full

confession of her own guilt in the matter of the murdered

Tomkins, She told me then--and many times afterward in the course

of the long night she did continue to aver it--that she herself

it was who did the deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands

condemned to die; she having, in a drunken squabble. seized the

man's pistol and shot him dead upon the spot. And she furthermore

avowed, with unspeakable groanings and many tears, that,

terrified at the consequences of her own act, and moved besides

by a fiendish desire of vengeance against thy mother, who had in

some way unwittingly, in times past, offended her, she not only

accused her of the murder, but maintained that accusation

afterward upon oath when examined before the High Court of

Commissioners in Dublin. Now then, maiden, rise up and speed. Thy

mother's life is in thy hands; for with that paper, writ and

witnessed by one who, however humble, is not altogether unknown

as a zealous soldier in the camp of Israel--with that paper, I

say, to attest her innocence, they must of a certainty

acknowledge it, and let her go."

"How shall I thank thee, O my God!" cried Nellie, scarcely able

to believe her ears that she had heard the soldier rightly.

"It is good to praise God always," he replied sententiously, "but

at this moment briefly. Thy present care must be to get to Dublin

with what speed thou mayest."

"Alas!" said Nellie, "how shall I get there? I have ridden day

and night ever since I heard this unhappy news, and only

yesterday evening our horses were so knocked up, that I and my

companion had to find our way hither as best we could on foot."

"There are but two horses in these stables, and neither of them

are mine to offer," said the soldier, evidently distressed and

anxious at the dilemma in which his _protégée_ was placed.

"Nevertheless, and the Lord aiding me in my endeavors, I will do

what I can. Come with me to the courtyard--I doubt not but thou

knowest the way well enough already."

{600}

Yes, indeed! poor Nellie knew it well enough, and at any other

time she might have wept at revisiting on so sad an errand a spot

hitherto pleasantly associated in her mind with many a childish

frolic, and many a petted animal, the favorites of the days gone

by. Just now, however, she had no inclination to dwell on the

memories of the past. Joy at the proved innocence of her mother,

and a wild fear lest she herself should arrive too late in Dublin

to allow of her profiting by the disclosure, filled her whole

soul, and left no room there for sentimental sorrows. She found

Roger already in the yard, engaged in hot discussion with an

officer of the English army, a coal-black charger, which the

latter was holding carelessly by the bridle, being the apparent

object of the dispute.

"Ay," muttered her conductor, as he glanced toward the group; "it

is, I see, even as I suspected, and I shall have to pay dearly

for Black Cromwell." Then leaving Nellie a little in the

background, he went up to the English officer and said:

"Here is an unhappy maiden, Captain Rippel, bound upon an errand

of life and death, and sorely in need of a good steed to bear

her. The fate of a grave, God-fearing woman, even of Mistress

Netterville herself, the late owner of this mansion, is dependent

on her speed, and, had I twenty horses in the stable, as I have

not one, I declare unto thee as God liveth and seeth, that she

should have her choice among them all."

"Yea, and undoubtedly," the other answered with a sneer.

"Nevertheless, since it is even as thou sayest, and that thou

hast them not, I fear me, good master sergeant, that this young

daughter of Moab, who has been lucky enough to find favor in your

eyes, will be none the better for your good intentions."

"Sir, if you be a man--a gentleman--you cannot, you will not

refuse!" cried the indignant Roger. "Consider, this young lady is

here a suppliant where once she dwelt the honored mistress of the

mansion, and you cannot of a surety say nay! Remember it is no

gift we crave, for this purse contains double the value of your

steed, strong and of admirable breeding as undoubtedly he is."

He held up a purse as he spoke, the parting gift of Henrietta,

from whom, however, he had accepted it merely as a loan, to be

afterward repaid in some of the most valuable of the articles yet

left him in his tower. It was well filled and heavy; but with a

little smile of scorn the officer waved it quietly on one side.

"And how am I to be certified, I pray you, that this young

maiden--who seems to have cast witchcraft on you both--is in

reality Mistress Netterville, or any other indeed than a base

impostor?" he asked with a most offensive leer. "Scarce five days

have as yet elapsed since I came hither, sent by the Lord High

Deputy himself, to put order in this garrison, and to separate

the elect of God from the sinful daughters of the land, and--"

"Sir, do you dare!" cried Roger, suddenly cutting short his

speech; and, raising his hand, he would have struck him to the

ground if the soldier had not placed himself hastily between

them, saying in a monitory tone to Roger:

"If thou wouldst not destroy the young maiden's hopes altogether,

sir, leave this affair to me. Another look or word of thine, and

it will utterly miscarry."

{601}

Roger felt the man was right. It was not by violence or angry

words that he could best serve Nellie. He checked himself at

once, therefore, and fell back, while the soldier said quietly to

his superior officer:

"Thou hast not, peradventure, captain, forgotten the offer which

thou didst make to me some three days since, when first the way

in which the Lord had disposed of our lots was made known to us

at Netterville?"

"Forgotten--no, in sooth--not I!" the other answered roughly.

"Nor have I forgotten either with what manifest folly and

ingratitude thou didst reject it; better though it was by a

hundred pieces of good gold, than that which one of thy comrades

didst thankfully accept from Major Pepper."

"Throw Black Cromwell and the white mare Daylight into the

bargain, and I accept," the soldier answered quietly.

"What, part with Black Cromwell? Black Cromwell, who hath carried

me unhurt through more battles than David himself ever fought

against the Philistines?" the officer demanded with well-affected

astonishment. "Verily and indeed, master sergeant, thou art, as I

do perceive, notwithstanding thy good odor for most punctilious

sanctity--thou art, I say, but an extortioner after all. Had it

been the mare alone, now, though she also is a very marvel for

strength and speed--I had never said thee nay; but to talk to me

of parting with Black Cromwell is to prick me, so to speak, upon

the very apple of the eye."

"Nevertheless I have a fancy for him, and if I cannot get him, I

will still hold fast to Netterville, the inheritance which the

Lord himself hath of late assigned me in this new land of

promise," the other steadily replied.

"There is the good horse. Battle of Worcester, he is stronger

than Black Cromwell, and would altogether suit the maiden

better," his superior rejoined in a coaxing tone.

"Yea, but he hath an ugly trick of going lame ere the first mile

is over," Sergeant Jackson responded with a knowing smile, and

then he added in a tone which was evidently intended to bring the

discussion to an end, "It will be all in vain to dispute this

matter any further. Captain Rippel. If you have in truth, as you

seem to say, made up your mind to keep Black Cromwell for your

own riding, I, on the other hand, am equally resolved not to part

with this house of Netterville, which will serve me well enough,

I doubt not, as a residence, once I have brought my old mother

hither to help me in its keeping."

"Nay, then, usurer, take the horse and thy money with it!" cried

the officer, in a tone far less expressive of vexation than of

triumph at the result of the discussion. "Take thy money and hand

me over that debenture which, with the loss of such a charger as

Black Cromwell, is, I fear me, but too dearly purchased."

Without deigning to utter a single syllable in return, Sergeant

Jackson took the purse which the other in his affected

indignation almost flung at his head, with one hand, while with

the other he drew forth from the breast-pocket of his coat a

paper, being the identical debenture in question, and presented

it to his officer. Captain Rippel snatched it hastily from him,

ran his eye over it to make sure that it was the right one, and

then, turning on his heel, sauntered out of the courtyard,

without even condescending to glance toward the spot where Nellie

stood anxiously awaiting the result.

{602}

Sergeant Jackson instantly dived into one of the stables, and

seizing a side-saddle, (Nellie's own saddle of the olden times,)

he led forth a strong, handsome mare, as white as milk, and began

to saddle it in hot haste; while Roger, taking the hint, did the

same for Cromwell.

"I am afraid I have cost you very dear," Nellie said in a low,

grateful tone, as she stood beside the sergeant. "Believe me, for

nothing less than a mother's life would I have suffered you to

make such a sacrifice."

"Nay, maiden, call it not a sacrifice," he answered without

looking round, and giving a pull to the girths to make sure that

they were tight. "Or if thou needs must think it one, remember

that, had not thy good mother saved my life, I should not have

been here to make it."

Nellie's heart was too full to speak, and she suffered him to

lift her in silence to her saddle. He settled her in it as

carefully and tenderly as if, instead of a simple soldier, he had

been one of the old courtly race of cavaliers, from which she was

herself descended, and then, with one last whispered word of

gratitude for himself, and one last loving message for old

Grannie, which he promised to deliver to her in person, Nellie

rode forth from Netterville, and, without even giving it a

farewell glance, turned her horse's head toward Dublin.

Chapter XIV.

The city of Dublin, as it stood within its walls in the days of

the Protectorate, barely covered ground to the extent of an Irish

mile, and was built entirely on the south side of the Liffey.

That side, therefore, only of the river was embanked by quays,

and not even _that_ in its entirety; the space now occupied

by the new custom-house and other buildings, to the extent of

several thousand feet, being then mere ooze and swamp, kept thus

by the continued overflowing of the tides.

To the north of the Liffey, however, there was a suburb, built,

as time went on and the exigencies of an ever-increasing

population required, outside the walls of the fortified city. It

was called "Ostmantown," now "Oxmantown," and occupied a very

insignificant space between Mary's Abbey and Church street;

Stoney Batter, Grange Gorman, and Glassmanogue, being merely

villages scattered here and there in the open country to a

considerable distance northward. A bridge of very ancient date,

the bridge of "Dubhgh-all," also at a later period styled the

"Old Bridge," formed the sole means of communication (except by

boat) between the city and its northern suburb. Built upon four

arches, and closed in on the Dublin side by a strong gate-house

with turrets and portcullis, the Old Bridge, like all others of

similar antiquity, was broad enough and strong enough to form a

sort of street within itself; shops being erected upon either

side, and traffic as busy and as eager there, as in the more

legitimate thoroughfares of the city.

From Old Bridge men passed at once into Bridge street, (_Vicus

Pontis_ formerly,) a long, narrow thoroughfare, hemmed in on

one side by the city walls, and on the other by a tolerably

handsome row of houses. These houses were almost all built in the

cage-work fashion of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and roofed in

with tiles and shingles. Many of them also possessed inscriptions

which, cut deep into the wood above the doorway, stated the name

and calling of the owner, with the addition frequently of some

pious sentiment or appropriate phrase from Scripture.

{603}

This custom seems to have been a favorite one in Dublin, and in

the more antique portions of the city there existed houses, even

to a very recent period of its history, upon which might still be

read the names and occupations of the men who, more than two

hundred years before, had resided within their walls.

On the day on which we are about to introduce Dublin to our

readers, there had been a considerable amount of stir and bustle

going on among its inhabitants, and more especially among those

of Bridge street. Rumors had, in fact, been rife since early dawn

of an expected rising of the rebels (as the king's partisans were

then styled by their opponents) in the north; and men speculated

in hope and fear, as their secret wishes moved them, on the

probability of the report. It received something like

confirmation in the afternoon, one or two regiments of recently

arrived English soldiers, armed from head to heel, and evidently

ready to go into action at a moment's notice, having been marched

out of the city and sent northward. Later on in the day,

moreover, it became known that the Lord-Deputy himself, Henry

Cromwell, the best of Ireland's recent rulers, accompanied by a

strong escort, was proceeding in the same direction, and might be

looked for at any moment at the "Ormond Gate," which shut out

Bridge street on the city side, just as the "Gate-house" closed

it on that of the Old Bridge.

But if people stood at their doors and windows to do honor to the

coming of their king-deputy, there yet seemed to be another and

still stronger attraction for them at the end of the street

opposite that by which he was expected to appear. Eyes were cast

quite as often, though more furtively, in the direction of the

Old Bridge as in that of the Ormond Gate; for, in the midst of

other rumors, there had come a whisper, no one knew how or by

whom it had been first set agoing, that a person suspected of

belonging to the rebel party had just been arrested on the river,

having attempted, by means of a boat, to elude the passage of the

Old Bridge, and so penetrate unchallenged into the heart of the

city.

There followed, as a matter of course, much secret and some

anxious speculation as to the rank and real object of the

arrested person, but no one ventured to make open inquiry into

the matter. Cromwell's brief reign of blood had stricken men dumb

with fear. To have shown the smallest interest in persons

suspected of belonging to the rebel party, would have been but to

have drawn down suspicion on themselves; and suspicion, in those

hard times, was too nearly akin to condemnation to be heedlessly

incurred. Instead, therefore, of going at once to the Gate-house

and ascertaining the real facts of the case from its guardians,

people were content, while awaiting the appearance of the

military cavalcade from the castle, to question and conjecture

among themselves as to the rank and real business of the arrested

man. A flourish of trumpets before Ormond Gate put a stop at last

to their gossipings. Heads and eyes, if not hearts and good

wishes, were instantly turned in that direction; the gate was

flung open, and Henry Cromwell, surrounded by a goodly company of

officers and private gentlemen, rode at a brisk pace through it.

A moment afterward, and he had swept past all the gazers, and

pulled up opposite the Old Bridge. The guard at the Gate-house

instantly turned out to receive him, the portcullis was drawn up,

and he was actually spurring his horse forward to the bridge,

when a girl, in the habit of a western peasant, darted through

the soldiers and flung herself on her knees before him.

{604}

The movement was so rapid and unexpected that, if the Lord-Deputy

had not reined up his steed until he nearly threw it on its

haunches, he must inevitably have ridden over her. A moment of

silent astonishment ensued. The girl herself uttered no cry, and

said not a syllable as to the nature of her petition; but as she

lifted up her head toward the Lord Henry, her hood, falling back

upon her shoulders, revealed a face of ashy whiteness, and there

was a pleading, agonized expression in the dark eyes she raised

to his, which told more than many words, of the inarticulate

anguish of the soul within.

Henry Cromwell was not of a nature to be harsh to any one, much

less to a woman; but there had been information enough sent in to

him that morning to make him suspect a snare, and he turned

sternly for explanation to the chief officer of the guard.

"What means this unseemly interruption, corporal?" he asked, as

the latter was vainly endeavoring to induce Nellie to rise from

her knees. "Is this maiden a prisoner? or if not a prisoner, is

she distraught, that she thus ventures, bare-headed and dressed

in such ungodly play-acting fashion, to rush into our very

presence?"

"A prisoner of only half-an-hour's standing is she, may it please

your excellency," the soldier answered promptly, "she and her

companion! They were seen attempting to cross the river in a boat

borrowed from some of the natives on the other side, and as it

seemed to me that their purpose must needs be seditious to demand

such secrecy, I caused both to be apprehended, and have kept them

here to wait your honor's further directions in the matter."

"Ormiston," said the Lord-Deputy, turning to one of the younger

of the group of officers behind him, "remain you here, and

examine, with Corporal Holdfast, into this business. If there be

aught which seems important hid beneath this masquerading folly,

follow me at once to Glassmanogue, where I shall have business to

detain me for a couple of hours; but if it be only, as I do

suspect, the silly freak of a love-sick maiden, in that case I

shall not look for you before to-morrow morning, when you will

bring me, as I have explained already, the last despatches which

may have come from England."

Having thus somewhat summarily despatched poor Nellie's business,

but little dreaming of the great service he had done her in

appointing young Ormiston her guardian, Henry Cromwell dashed

over the bridge, and, followed instantly by his escort, galloped

northward. The moment Nellie saw that her efforts to hold speech

with the Lord-Deputy himself would prove in vain, she had risen

of her own accord, and, the hood once more drawn modestly over

her head and face, had stood aside to let him pass, with a calm,

sad dignity in her look and bearing which had its due effect upon

the rough soldier who had made her captive. He did not again

attempt to touch, or even to address her, but standing near her

silently and respectfully, seemed to wait until of her own accord

she should return with him to the Gate-house. Thus unmolested,

Nellie forgot his existence altogether, and equally heedless of

the crowd, which, having gathered in the wake of the Lord-Deputy,

was now gazing curiously and compassionately upon her, she stood

considering what her next move should be, when, in obedience to

his orders, Harry Ormiston

approached her.

{605}

As he took Corporal Holdfast's place beside her, Nellie lifted

her eyes to his face, and recognized him instantly as the young

officer who had been riding with Henrietta on the day of their

first meeting in the wilderness. A soft cry of joy escaped her

lips, and Harry Ormiston broke down in his half-uttered greeting.

_He_ also remembered her face--have we not already told our

reader that it was by no means one easily to be forgotten?--but

of the when or the where that he had seen it, he had no such

distinct a recollection. Silently, and with a look of timid hope

stealing over that fair face, Nellie drew Henrietta's missive

from her bosom and placed it in his hands.

Ormiston glanced at the superscription, and with a flush of

honest joy mantling on his features, eagerly tore it open.

Scarcely, however, had he read three lines ere the scene among

the mountains, which had ended in his quarrel with his betrothed,

rose before him like a vision, and instantly remembering Nellie

as the fair girl who had been in some measure, albeit

unwittingly, its cause, he turned sharply upon Corporal Holdfast.

"How is this, corporal? I fear me you have made some grave

mistake! This young maiden whom you hold a prisoner is the bearer

to me of a token from one whose zeal and faithfulness in the good

cause cannot be suspected--even from a member of the household of

that brave and God-fearing Major Hewitson, who has set up his

camp on the very edge of the wilderness, and thus made of his

small garrison a very tower of strength against the incursions of

the enemy."

"Nay, and if your honor says it, it must needs be true," the

man--a bluff old soldier, with little pretensions to sanctity in

his composition--answered with suppressed impatience; "and

therefore I can only marvel that a maiden, known and esteemed by

the family of worthy Major Hewitson, should not only have sought

to cheat our vigilance by crossing the river privately in a boat,

but should have done so in the company of a man whom I myself can

testify to having been a chief of some repute in the army of the

Irish enemy, having crossed swords with him at the battle of

'Knocknaclashy,' as I think they call it in their barbarous

language, where he fought (I needs must own it) with a valor

worthy of a better cause."

Major Ormiston turned, gravely but kindly, to Nellie.

"I fear me much," he said, "that you have been but ill-advised in

all this business. Why not have presented yourself openly at the

bridge if the matter which has brought you hither will bear

investigation? and why, more than all the rest, have you come

attended by a person whose very company must needs render you

suspect yourself?"

"O sir!" said Nellie, weeping sadly, as she began to fear that

even Henrietta's recommendation to mercy might perhaps avail her

little; "we had not the password, without which we never should

have been permitted to enter Dublin by the bridge; and our errand

is, alas! of such a nature, that every moment lost is of deep and

sad importance."

"_Our_ errand," Ormiston thoughtfully repeated. "This

errand, then, is not entirely your own, but is in some way or

other interesting also to the man by whom Master Holdfast tells

me you are accompanied."

{606}

"He should have said 'a _gentleman_,'" Nellie answered, with

a slight rebuking emphasis on the latter word--"a gentleman who,

at his own great trouble, and, I fear me, risk, has enabled me to

accomplish this journey; in which, however, he has no other

interest than such as any kind and noble heart might feel in the

sorrows and perils of an unprotected girl."

"Where is he--this other prisoner?" Ormiston asked, turning for

information to the corporal.

"In the gate-house, sir, where we have him safe under lock and

key; for he was no prisoner to be left at large like this silly

maiden, who begged so hard to be allowed to see the Lord-Deputy

go by, that I found it not in my heart to deny her so small a

favor; for the doing of which, I trust I have not incurred the

displeasure either of your honor or of his highness the Lord

Henry."

"Certainly not, honest Holdfast; you have acted both well and

mercifully in all this business. And now lead the way to the

gate-house, and trouble not your wits about this young maiden. I

myself will be her surety that she attempt not to escape."

He offered his hand very respectfully to Nellie as he finished

speaking, 'and she suffered him to lead her in silence toward the

bridge. As they entered the gate-house, however, she quietly

withdrew her hand and glided from his side to that of Roger.

Ormiston instantly recognized the latter as the dispossessed

owner of the "Rath," and an officer, beside, of some standing in

the recently disbanded army of the Irish. Courteously saluting

him, therefore, he informed him that he had been deputed by the

Lord-Deputy to inquire into the nature of the business which had

brought him to Dublin, adding an earnest hope on his own part

that it might prove to be in no way connected with political

affairs.

"That, most assuredly, it is not," said Roger, pleased and

touched by the young officer's manner, and satisfied by

Henrietta's letter, which Ormiston still held open in his hand,

that he was addressing the person for whom it had been intended.

"My business is one which solely concerns this young gentlewoman,

and concerns her, in fact, so nearly, that if you cannot aid her,

as Mistress Hewitson half hinted that you could, I trust, at all

events, you will give me as much of my liberty for this one day

as may enable me to do so myself. I too am a soldier and an

officer. Major Ormiston, and you may trust me that I will not

abuse your favor."

"Sir," said Nellie imploringly, "you have not read the letter--if

you would but read the letter! Mistress Hewitson half promised

that you would help me!"

Thus called upon, Ormiston ran his eyes over Henrietta's letter,

which, concluding it to be on matters merely personal to himself,

he had been reserving for more private, and therefore more

satisfactory perusal.

Nellie watched him anxiously as he read on, and with a spasm of

anguish at her heart she saw that, as he gradually took in the

nature of its contents, his first look of eager joy disappeared,

and was succeeded by one of deep and tender pity--pity which made

itself felt in the very accents of his voice, as he exclaimed:

"Young Mistress Netterville! Good God! And I never even dreamed

of the relationship! Alas! that you should have come so far, only

to find sorrow and disappointment in the end."

"Oh! not dead! not dead!" cried Nellie, terrified by his words

and looks. "Say, not dead--not dead--I do entreat you!"

{607}

"No, no!--not dead--_yet_," he answered nervously. He could

not bring himself to say that she was to die upon the morrow.

"Nay, Major Ormiston," Roger here interposed, for Nellie was

sobbing in speechless anguish, "if not dead all is well--or may

at all events yet be well--for this most injured lady. I have

hope still--hope in the honor and justice even of our enemy. See

this paper! It was writ by the soldier who hath lately received

as his share in the Irish spoil the house and lands of

Netterville, and who is ready to aver on oath that he took it

down word for word from the lips of the very woman who did that

deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die."

Ormiston glanced rapidly over the papers which Roger had drawn

from his bosom and given to him.

"Yes, yes!" he cried joyfully, "I doubt it not in the least.

Sergeant Jackson is well known as a man of truth beyond

suspicion, and these lines, moreover, do but repeat the defence

which the unhappy lady urged over and over again upon her trial,

insisting that the accusation against her was an act of private

vengeance. But all this can be discussed hereafter. Time presses;

and whatever is to be done to save her, must be done at once."

"The Lords Chief-Justices," suggested Roger; but Ormiston shook

his head with a little smile of scorn.

"Little likely _they_ to reverse a sentence pronounced in

their own courts!" he said. "No, no! it is to the Lord-Deputy we

must appeal. I will ride after him at once, and in a couple of

hours at the furthest you may look for me with the result. I

trust in God that it may be a good one."

He left the room without waiting for an answer, and in another

minute they heard him gallop across the bridge. The next two

hours were passed by Nellie in an agony of expectation which was

painful to behold. She could not stay still a moment. Sometimes

she paced the narrow guard-room with rapid and impatient

footsteps--sometimes, regardless of the presence of the English

soldiery, she flung herself on her knees, weeping and praying

almost aloud in her agony. Every stir upon the bridge--every

sound from the street beyond, seemed to announce the return of

her messenger, and at these moments she would stand up, shivering

from head to foot in such a fever of hope and fear, that Roger at

last became seriously alarmed, and remonstrated firmly and

affectionately with her on her want of self-command. At last, to

his inexpressible relief, a bustle at the doorway announced

Ormiston's return, and a moment afterward the latter entered the

guardroom. Nellie stood up, as white as ashes, and utterly

incapable of either speaking or moving toward him. Shocked at the

mute anguish of her face, Ormiston took her hand in his; but when

she looked at him, expecting him to address her, he hesitated,

like one doubtful of the effect of the tidings he was bringing.

"For God's sake, speak at once!" cried Roger. "Anything is better

for her than this suspense! Say, is it life or death?"

"Not death, certainly--at least I hope not," said Ormiston,

vainly seeking in his own mind for some fitter words by which to

convey his meaning.

The blood rushed to Nellie's temples, and the pupils of her eyes

dilated, but still she could not answer.

"You _hope?_" Roger repeated sadly. He saw, though Nellie

did not, that there still existed some uncertainty in the matter.

{608}

"There is a reprieve at all events," he said, in the same joyless

tones in which he had before replied.

The color faded from Nellie's cheek, and the gladness from her

eye. "Only a reprieve--only _that,_" she muttered, in tones

so hoarse and changed that the young men could hardly believe it

to be hers--"only that!"

"But the rest will follow," said Ormiston, trying to reassure

her. "The Lord-Deputy will himself inquire into the business,

and--"

"Nay, then, she is safe indeed!" Nellie interrupted him to say.

"With that confession, furnished by her chief accuser, her

innocence must be clear as daylight. O sir! she is safe--surely

she is safe!" she added, trying to reassure herself by the

repetition of the word, and yet sorely puzzled by a something in

Ormiston's eyes which looked more like pity than sympathy in her

joy.

"Safe? I trust so--with all my heart and soul I trust so," he

answered gravely. "Nevertheless, my dear young lady, I would

counsel you, as a friend, not to suffer your hopes to soar too

high, lest any after disappointment should be too terrible for

endurance."

"If she is reprieved, she will be pardoned; and if she is

pardoned, she will live," Nellie repeated slowly, like one trying

yet dreading to discover the hidden meaning of his words.

"She will live," he amended gently; "yes, certainly, if God hath

decreed it as well as man."

"Nay, if she is in God's hands only, I am content," said Nellie,

with a sudden return to confidence, which somewhat astonished

Ormiston. "I also have been in God's hands," she added, with an

appealing look toward Roger, "and can tell how much more merciful

they are than man's. Sir, I conclude from what you say that she

is ailing; may I not go to her at once?"

"If you are strong enough," he was beginning, but she interrupted

him with a burst of grief and indignation.

"How? not strong enough? and I have come all this way to see her!

O mother, mother!" she sobbed convulsively, "little you dream

your child is near, bringing peace and pardon to your prison!"

Roger saw that Ormiston knew more than he liked to tell, and

asked in a low voice:

"The poor lady, then, is very ill?"

"Dying!" the other answered curtly.

"Will her daughter be in time to see her, think you?"

"In time; but that is all. She has burst a blood-vessel, as I

have just now learned, and this reprieve seems little better than

a mockery; for no one dreams that she could have survived for the

tragedy of to-morrow."

"Then let Nellie go at once," said Roger promptly. "She has

ridden night and day to see her mother, and sad as the meeting

may be, it would be sadder still if they met no more. Let her go

at once."

And so it was decided.

----------

{609}

Newman's Poems.

BY H. W. Wilberforce.

The little volume of poems published anonymously under this

humble title, [Footnote 179] produced an impression immediately

on its publication, not only among Catholics but among English

readers in general, which could hardly have been caused by a

volume of poems from any other writer of the day, with the

exception, perhaps, of the Laureate. The explanation is to be

found in the initials J. H. N. at the end of the preface--a

signature long ago of world-wide celebrity.

[Footnote 179: _Verses on Various Occasions_. London:

Burns, Gates & Co. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication

House, 126 Nassau street, New York.]

There may be those who feel surprised to find that a man chiefly

known as having been, under God's providence and grace, the main

author of the Oxford movement of 1833, should be found to have

possessed and exercised extraordinary poetical gifts. It may

perhaps be partly a lurking feeling of envy, partly a just

perception how rarely any one man combines numerous unconnected

powers, which makes the world at large reluctant to admit that

any man has greatly distinguished himself in a line far removed

from that specially his own. But that feeling, be its origin what

it may, does not in reason apply to the case before us, because

it would seem that the gifts which specially qualify a man to

produce a deep effect upon the hearts and consciences of his

fellows, to be the founder and leader of any great school of

thought, social, moral, political, or religious, are very much

the same as those required for the making of a great poet.

This is at first sight so obvious, that we incline to think the

only real argument against it would be, an appeal to experience.

It will be said, there is a small class of men who have won among

their fellows (as if it were a title of honor formally secured to

them) the name of "the poet," and no one of them has been, except

in his own special art of poetical composition, among the great

leaders of human thought. But this is easily accounted for. A man

immersed for years in public affairs of any kind, however richly

his mind may have been stored with poetical images, and however

natural it may have been to him to have sought for them a

poetical expression, can rarely have had leisure to cultivate the

merely artistic part of poetical composition to the degree

necessary for success as a poet. It is hardly likely that in his

case there should combine the many accidental circumstances

necessary (over and above the possession of great poetical

endowments) for the composition, publication, and general

diffusion of any considerable poetical work. And even if all

these should happen to meet, the mere fact of being very greatly

distinguished in any other line is of itself, we strongly

suspect, enough to prevent any man from being chiefly remembered

as a great poet. The name of "the poet Cowper" is a household

word in every English family. But if "William Cowper, Esq., of

the Inner Temple" (as his name stands on the title-page) had

risen to the woolsack, we believe that, even though he might have

written the same poems, he would never have gained the title.

{610}

If indeed mediocrity in everything else had sufficed to gain a

high and permanent reputation for a man of equal mediocrity in

poetical talents, we should now have talked of Cowper's friend as

"the poet Hayley." But that the highest poetical genius does not

obtain the title for a man otherwise conspicuous, is proved by

the example of Shakespeare. Merely because he has left behind him

dramatic works to which the world affords no rival, not even the

preeminent poetical genius shown in his poems has caused the

world at large to speak and think of him as "the poet

Shakespeare." Nor would Dryden, despite of his matchless lyric

poems, have attained the title, if among his numerous plays he

had written Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.

It seems to us that these considerations are enough to answer the

objection from experience, which might perhaps be urged against

our opinion, that the qualities which qualify a man to exercise a

deep influence on his fellows and make him a leader of the souls

of men, are in fact the same as those which qualify him for

success as a poet.

We think this volume will convince most of those who read it that

we are right. The weighty and touching thoughts of these poems

bear the stamp of the same mint from which issued those volumes

of sermons, which, far more than any other work, have impressed a

permanent stamp upon the generation of English readers which is

now tending, as Dr. Newman says of himself, "toward the decline

of life." It is impossible to read them without feeling that, if

his life had been one of mere literary leisure, his chosen

employment would probably have been poetry. As it is, he has

evidently resorted to it, not when he was thinking of others, but

when he sought to relieve the fulness of his own soul. In this

world he has written in prose; his poetry has been the record of

his inner struggles and emotions, and has been written for

himself and his God.

As long as any memory of the English nation and the English

language remains among men. Dr. Newman, we doubt not, will be

remembered and reverenced; not indeed as one of the few whom

poetry has made great, but as one of the great men who have

written poetry. And so far from deeming it strange that such

should be the case with the great author of the movement of 1833,

we, for our part, should have thought it strange if, in a man of

the highest literary culture, the intense feelings in which that

movement originated had not relieved themselves by poetical

expression. We believe, indeed, that few if any great moral

movements have taken place in which something more or less of the

same kind has not been found. Perhaps the most remarkable

exception was the change of religion in England in the sixteenth

century; the leaders in which not only produced no great poetical

work, but did not leave behind them so much as a hymn. This was a

striking contrast, not only to the contemporary movement in

Germany, and to that of the Methodists in the eighteenth century,

but also to that of the earlier Lollards. The explanation,

however, is not far to seek. Lord Macaulay says, "Ridley was

perhaps the only person who had any important share in the

English Reformation, who did not consider it as a mere political

job." Now, attractive as jobbing is to many very clever men, it

is hardly qualified to inspire any poetical afflatus. Cranmer was

too busy getting what he could for himself, to be musing over

poetical images.

{611}

Besides, the Reformation in England appealed not so much to men's

deeper feelings, as to their natural and reasonable dislike to

have their property confiscated and themselves imprisoned,

hanged, and cut up alive; and this last kind of appeal neither

needed nor encouraged poetical powers.

To return to the volume before us, the poems were so evidently

written only for the author himself that it is our signal good

fortune that they have ever been published. The greater part of

them first appeared in a series called the _Lyra

Apostolica_, in many successive numbers of the _British

Magazine_, edited by the late Hugh James Rose, in which

several of Dr. Newman's earliest prose writings were originally

published. It was afterward issued in the form of a small volume,

the first edition of which appeared in 1836. By far the greater

part of it was supplied by Dr. Newman; the other poems, by five

of his intimate friends. [Footnote 180]

[Footnote 180: These were John Bowden, "with whom" (Dr.

Newman writes in the _Apologia_) "I spent almost

exclusively my undergraduate years." He died just before Dr.

Newman became a Catholic. His two sons are now fathers in the

London Oratory.--Hurrell, Froude, whose noble character and

high gifts Dr. Newman has sketched with admirable force,

truth, and beauty, in three pages of the _Apologia_,

which he sums up by saying: "It is difficult to enumerate the

precise additions to my theological creed which I derived

from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with

admiration toward the Church of Rome, and in the same degree

dislike the Reformation. He fixed on me the idea of devotion

to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in

the Real Presence." He died February 29th, 1836,

"prematurely," says Dr. Newman, "and in the conflict and

transition-state of opinion. His religious views never

reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of

their multitude and their depth."--John Keble, the author of

_The Christian Year_, of whom Dr. Newman writes

(_Apologia_, edition i. p. 75) words expressing deep

feelings shared by many who are now, by God's grace, members

of the Catholic Church. He died in 1865, and at this moment,

on his birthday, April 27th, the first stone of a new college

at Oxford, erected as a testimonial to him, and bearing his

name, is being laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury.--Robert

Isaac Wilberforce, second son of William Wilberforce. From

his earliest years his character seemed made up of truth,

purity, unselfishness, tenderness of affection, and

indefatigable diligence. As his great powers developed, they

showed themselves perhaps the more remarkable from their

combination with a degree of humility so extraordinary as to

be his chief characteristic. After a university career of

unusual distinction, he was elected fellow of Oriel College,

on the same day with Hurrell Froude, with whom he is classed

by Dr. Newman, in the _Apologia_, as one with whom he

was, "in particular, intimate and affectionate." He became a

country clergyman, and afterward archdeacon; and in 1838

published (in combination with the present Bishop of Oxford)

the _Life of William Wilberforce_. His theological works

were all of later date. It is characteristic that he always

declared he would never have undertaken any of them if Mr.

Newman had not left the field unoccupied. In the opinion of

most persons, except himself, his equal in learning and

ability was not then left in the Church of England. In 1854,

he became a member of the Catholic Church, and died in 1857,

while studying at Rome for the priesthood.--Isaac Williams

was fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He remained much

longer in Oxford, sharing Mr. Newman's intercourse and

counsels. In 1840, Mr. Newman dedicated the beautiful volume

on _The Church of the Fathers_ "to my dear and much

admired Isaac Williams, the sight of whom carries back his

friends to ancient, holy, and happy times." He is, perhaps,

best known by his published poems; but he has also published

a series of devotional commentaries on the gospels, of great

beauty and to which many are deeply indebted. He died in

1865. Dr. Newman went to visit him in his country retirement

only a few days before. Our readers, we think, will feel an

interest in this brief memorial of a group of men so closely

connected with the collection in which many of these poems

originally appeared.]

To these are added, in the present volume, a few of earlier and a

good many of later date. All of them seem equally to have been

composed without any view to publication, and considering that

their illustrious author has always been remarkable for a dislike

to put himself forward, and for an almost extreme susceptibility

of feeling, some persons may wonder that he has ever been able to

persuade himself to give them to the world. We do not share their

wonder; for we long ago came to the conclusion that it is by men

of the greatest natural reserve that the fullest confidences of

their inner feelings are not unfrequently made. In the common

intercourse of society such men display least of their real

feeling. But being distinguished from others by the depth and

strength of their thoughts and affections, more lasting

convictions and emotions, and greater self-knowledge, they can,

upon any call of duty, speak out most unreservedly and sincerely;

and the pain it gives them to make any revelation of their inner

selves is such that, to do it completely, costs them little, if

anything, more than to speak of themselves at all.

{612}

This, all the world sees, has been exemplified in the

_Apologia_, and in its measure it has been the same with the

_Lyra Apostolica_, and with the present volume. The poems in

the _Lyra_ were, nearly all of them, the expression of the

thoughts which crowded into the mind of Dr. Newman during a tour

in the Mediterranean, between December, 1832, and July, 1833. The

present volume adds very greatly to their interest by giving the

place and day of their composition. Thus, the poem headed

"Angelic Guidance" was written on the day on which he left

Oxford. In our days, in which a very few hours upon the Great

Western takes Oxford men to Falmouth without trouble or fatigue,

the date, "Whitchurch, December 3d, 1832," is interesting.

Whitchurch is a somewhat dreary and secluded village, at which

the direct road from Oxford to Southampton intersected the mail

road from London to Exeter and Falmouth. There was in those days

a coach to Southampton, to the top of which Mr. Newman mounted,

(the present writer and other Oriel friends standing in the

street, in front of the Angel Inn, to see the last of him.)

Before midday he reached Whitchurch, and there had to wait till

night for the Falmouth mail. We should be curious to know what

has become of the large inn at Whitchurch which was maintained by

this sort of traffic. It must long ago have been shut up. Mr.

Newman's life had hitherto been almost entirely confined to one

or two places, and now he was starting alone for distant lands,

and began by waiting many hours at a lonely and (_crede

experto_) sufficiently dreary inn. His thoughts turned to the

guardian angel who, as he already believed, bore him company. The

_Apologia_ tells us how early in life his thoughts had run

upon angels and their ministrations. He says of these lines:

"They speak of 'the vision' that haunted me. That vision is more

or less brought out in the whole series of these compositions."

We need hardly say how much these circumstances add to the

interest of the poem, which appeared in the _Lyra_ without

any explanation of the circumstances under which it was composed.

It is impossible to read these poems without feeling how much a

man takes with him from home of the thoughts which are called out

even by the most striking and memorable scene. The events going

on in England--the evident decay of what he still believed to be

the "reformed church"--formed the coloring medium through which

he looked at all he saw. Thus, at sea, the day he left Gibraltar,

he wrote the lines headed "England:"

"Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name

More than in Faith's pure fame!

O trust not crafty fort, nor rock renown'd

Earn'd upon hostile ground;

Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will

To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.

"Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime.

High towers have been man's crime.

Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,

Strongholds have been man's snare.

Thy nest is in the crags; ah! refuge frail!

Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.

"He who scann'd Sodom for his righteous men

Still spares thee for thy ten;

But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,

He will not pass thee by;

For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest,

So gives he them by turn, to suffer or be blest."

The _Apologia_ tells us that the golden lines, "Lead, kindly

light," were composed when the "orange-boat" in which the author

sailed from Palermo to Marseilles was becalmed in the straits of

Bonifacio.

{613}

It is not mentioned, we think, that it was in the darkness of the

night. They are here headed, "The Pillar of the Cloud:'

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home--

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see

The distant scene,--one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou

Should'st lead me on.

I loved to choose and see my path; but now

Lead Thou me on!

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.

Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still

Will lead me on.

O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone;

And with the morn those angel faces smile

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

"Off Algiers," in sight of the grave of that great African church

which produced St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and Tertullian, is the

date of "The Patient Church," in which, in spite of all

appearances to the contrary, the writer, relying on the promise

of Christ, looked forward to the ultimate victory of the church,

and which begins:

"Bide thou thy time!

Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime;

Sit in the gate and be the heathen's jest.

Smiling and self-possest,

O thou, to whom is pledged a victor's sway,

Bide thou the victor's day!"

On December 28th, 1832, Mr. Newman caught his first sight of a

Greek shore. It is highly characteristic that the first thought

which it inspired to the most finished classical scholar of his

day in Oxford, was not of Thucydides, not even of Homer, but of

"the Greek fathers:"

"Let heathens sing thy heathen praise,

Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days

In my sad heart abides;

For sons of thine in truth's first hour.

Were tongues and weapons of his power.

Born of the Spirit's fiery shower.

Our fathers and our guides.

"All thine is Clement's varied page;

And Dionysius, ruler sage,

In days of doubt and pain;

And Origen with eagle eye;

And saintly Basil's purpose high

To smite imperial heresy,

And cleanse the altar's stain.

"From thee the glorious Preacher came,

With soul of zeal and lips of flame,

A court's stern martyr-guest;

And thine, O inexhaustive race!

Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace;

And royal-hearted Athanase,

With Paul's own mantle blest."

At Corfu, the narrative of Thucydides brought to his mind the

thought which he worked out in the sermon on "The Individuality

of the Soul," published six years later; and in which he says:

"All who have ever gained a name in the world, all the mighty men

of war that ever were, all the great statesmen, all the crafty

counsellors, all the scheming aspirants, all the reckless

adventurers, all the covetous traders, all the proud

voluptuaries, are still in being, though helpless and

unprofitable. Balaam, Saul, Joab, Ahitophel, good and bad, wise

and ignorant, rich and poor, each has his separate place, each

dwells by himself in that sphere of light or darkness which he

has provided for himself here. What a view this sheds upon

history! We are accustomed to read it as a tale or a fiction, and

we forget that it concerns immortal beings who cannot be swept

away, who are what they were, however this earth may change." The

germ of that sermon is contained in the lines headed "Corcyra,"

January 7th, 1833.

The _Lyra_ contains some beautiful and well-known lines:

"Did we but see,

When life first open'd, how our journey lay

Between its earliest and its closing day.

Or view ourselves as we one day shall be,

Who strive for the high prize, such sight would break

The youthful spirit, though bold for Jesus' sake.

"But thou, dear Lord!

While I traced out bright scenes which were to come,

Isaac's pure blessings, and a verdant home,

Didst spare me, and withhold thy fearful word;

Willing me year by year, till I am found

A pilgrim pale, with Paul's sad girdle bound."

They are headed, "Our Future. What I do, thou knowest not now;

but thou shalt know hereafter." It gives them a new interest to

find that they were composed at Tre Fontane, the spot of the

martyrdom of St. Paul.

{614}

The verses called "Day Laborers," composed while waiting at

Palermo for a passage home, (as is described in the

_Apologia_,) show the author's deep sense of having a work

to do. They are headed, "And He said. It is finished:"

"One only, of God's messengers to man,

Finished the work of grace which he began;

......

List, Christian warrior! thou whose soul is fain

To rid thy mother of her present chain;--

Christ will avenge his bride; yea, even now

Begins the work, and thou

Shalt spend in it thy strength; but, ere he save,

Thy lot shall be the grave."

We have insisted on the peculiar value of the poems written

during this short tour, (the only one of the kind in which the

illustrious author has ever indulged himself,) because it adds a

new and special interest to compositions which, even when

published without any such interest, attained a wide and deserved

celebrity. He seems at the time to have felt that that tour was

to be the only distraction of the kind in a life of toil; and

that he was enriching himself with images of beauty (worthy, as

he says, in itself rather of angelic than mortal eyes) which were

to last him for many a long year:

"Store them in heart! Thou shalt not faint

'Mid coming pains and fears.

As the third heaven once nerved a saint

For fourteen trial years."

That the remembrance has been fresh and keen, we see in the lines

on "Heathen Greece" written in 1856, and first published in that

exquisite volume _Calista_:

"Where are the islands of the blest?

They stud the AEgean sea;

And where the deep Elysian rest?

It haunts the vale where Peneus strong

Pours his incessant stream along,

While craggy ridge and mountain bare

Cut keenly through the liquid air.

And, in their own pure tints arrayed.

Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade.

And stand in beauty undecay'd.

Guards of the bold and free."

It is worth notice that the pregnant lines on "The Sign of the

Cross" were written before the author left Oxford, and while he

was as yet, as he expressly tells us, so ignorant of Catholic

doctrine that even when waiting at Palermo, just before he

returned home, he says: "I began to visit the churches, and they

calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. I

knew nothing of the presence of the blessed sacrament there."