He had now passed the Rubicon. His first impressions he had resisted; and the feebler suggestions which afterwards arose in his mind, only led him to entrench himself the more strongly in the arguments of Sir John. Besides, he had declared himself a friend to Episcopacy, and thus barred up his retreat by that shrinking dread of being deemed wavering and inconsistent, which has so often merely the effect of rendering such as lie openest to the imputation firm in the wrong place. There was a secret bitterness in his spirit, that vented itself in caustic remarks on all whom he had once admired and respected--all save Mary and her brother, and of them he never spoke. His former habits of application were broken up; yet, though no longer engrossed by the studies which it had once seemed the bent of his nature to pursue, he remained as indifferent as ever to the various pursuits of interest and ambition which engaged his uncle. After passing a day of restless inactivity among his books, he walked out a little before sunset in the direction of the old chapel of St. Regulus, and, ere he took note of where his wanderings led him, found himself among the graves. It was a lovely evening of October. The ancient elms and wild cherry-trees which surrounded the burying-ground still retained their foliage entire, and the elms were hung in gold, and the wild cherry-trees in crimson, and the pale yellow tint of the straggling and irregular fields on the hill-side contrasted strongly with the deepening russet of the surrounding moor. The tombs and the ruins were bathed in the yellow light of the setting sun; but to the melancholy and aimless wanderer the quiet and gorgeous beauty of the scene was associated with the coming night and the coming winter, with the sadness of inevitable decay and the gloom of the insatiable grave. He passed moodily onward, and, on turning an angle of the chapel, found Mary Anderson seated among the ruins, on the tombstone of her mother, whom she had lost when a child. There was a slight flush on her countenance as she rose to meet him, but she held out her hand as usual, though the young man thought, but it might not be so, that the grasp was less kindly. “You have been a great stranger of late, Dallas,” she said; “how have we been so unhappy as to offend you?” The young chaplain looked as if he could have sunk into the ground, and was silent. “Can it be true,” resumed the maiden, “that you have left us in our distress, and gone over to the prelates?” Dallas stammered out an apology, and reminded her that Christianity, not Presbyterianism, formed the basis of their friendship. “The Church,” he said, “had too long paid an overweening regard to mere forms; it was now full time to look to essentials. What mattered it whether men went to heaven under the jurisdiction of a Presbyterian or of an Episcopalian Church?” He passed rapidly over the arguments of Sir John.