It was much to have gained his confidence--much that Saul was able to depend on the sympathy of his former master, and was not afraid of baring his inmost soul before him. Eustace was seized sometimes with a sense of something like dismay to find how absolutely Saul believed he would echo even the most blasphemous of his thoughts, how securely he reckoned upon finding in his leader the same absolute denial of all revealed religion--religion which he himself fiercely decried and ridiculed, as part and parcel of a corrupt system soon to be exploded. Much that the young man thus hotly declaimed against--much of his wild and random vituperation must have been learned from others. Eustace could honestly affirm he had never allowed such expressions to pass his lips; but here and there a phrase of his own would mingle with the wilder words of Saul, and half startle Eustace by the method of its application. Also he could not help recognising, as this man poured out his soul before him by the shore that day, that his own standpoint had very slightly and insensibly changed from those days, more than a year back now, when he had first sought to awaken in Saul a response to his own ardent imaginings. What the change was he could scarcely define, but he was aware that arguments and assertions which would then have passed by as only slight exaggerations of a legitimate truth, now came to him with something of a shock, bringing a realisation of some unheeded change or development in himself which had silently leavened during the past months, till it had attained a proportion he never suspected. Rousing himself with a start from the train of thought thus suggested, he tried to bring his companion back to the world of real things, and to leave these idle denunciations and invectives alone for the present. When Saul had about tired himself with his own impetuosity, and had kept silence for a few moments, Eustace spoke a few well-chosen words of sympathy, and gradually bringing round the subject of the forthcoming election, he explained to the ex-prisoner what had been going on in the world during his incarceration, and what bright hopes were now entertained in this country of better days in store for it, when a strong Government, pledged to redress the gravest of political abuses, should be in power.