“We wrestle,” he mumbled, “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness”: he seized upon the Book, and held it up before him like a buckler, all his being drenched in the spirit of defiance, and he cried the Holy Name. He cried it as they cried it on the moors—his people, when the troopers rode upon them: he cried with their conviction that the Blood had all things pacified, redeemed, and the apparition chuckled! The last redoubt of Wanlock’s faith surrendered: he madly wrenched a page from the sacred volume, crushed it with the jewel in his hand, and threw them in the face of his tormentor, then fell, a withered man, upon the bedstead, while the bittern cry outside arose in demon laughter. * * * * * When he drifted back from the bliss of his oblivion, he lay a while like a child that makes its world afresh each morning from a few familiar surrounding things—the light, the shade, the feel of textures, and the sound of the cinder falling on the hearthstone. All his life came ranked before him in epochs that grew more vivid as his brain grew clear—the folly of youth, the vanity of manhood, the pride of his strength, the dour determination of his will; but he saw them all as virtues. Had he not prayed, and sat at the Communion? Had he not felt the gust of the Holy Spirit? Had he not repented?—nay, penitence had been denied him from his very birth, and without repentance well he knew there was no sin’s remission. Thus are the unelect at last condemned for a natural inability—terror they have and chagrin at results, but no regret for the essential wrong. There was a sound of some one moving in the house—the servant, who had been on a private escapade of her own, was now returned. Wanlock seized a walking-cane he kept beside the bedstead for the purpose, and he loudly rapped upon the wall. At first there was no answer; then he rapped again, and the woman entered, flushed with some spirit of adventure. She had the radiant sleekness of the country’s girls,—a strapping, rosy healthfulness, a jaunty carriage, and a dancing and inviting eye: she seemed to Wanlock for a moment like a stranger, and she carried with her scents of the cool night winds. For a moment she looked at him, astounded—he had so suddenly grown very old and his mouth so strangely twisted; then she gave a little cry, and hurried to his bedside, and he saw that the shawl she wore was pinned upon her shoulder by the luckless brooch! It glowed portentous and commanding like a meteor; with the squeal of a netted hare he grasped at his walking-cane, and struck with fury at the object of his terror. The woman shrank before the blow; the rattan swept the candle from the table to the floor: a fountain of flame from the hell that is under life sprang up the bedstead curtains!