It was half-past seven in the evening. At half-past seven it is dark, the lamps are lighted, the houses huddle together in groups. They have secrets to tell as soon as it is dark. Ah! If you knew the secrets that houses are telling when the shadows draw them so close together! But you never will know. They close their eyes and they whisper. Around the fields of Lincoln’s Inn it was as still as the grave. The footsteps of a lawyer’s clerk hurrying late away from chambers vibrated through the intense quiet. You heard each step to the very last. So long as you could see him, you heard them plainly; then he vanished behind the curtain of shadows, the sounds became muffled, and at last the silence crept back into the Fields--crept all round you, half eager, half reluctant, like sleepy children drawn from their beds to hear the end of a fairy story. There was a fairy story to be told, too. It began that night of the eighteenth of March--the Eve of St. Joseph’s day. I don’t know what it is about St. Joseph, but of all those saints who crowd their hallowed names upon the calendar--and, good heavens! there are so many--he seems most worthy of canonisation. In the fervent fanaticism of faith, the virtue of a martyr’s death is almost its own reward; but to live on in the belief of that miracle which offers to crush marital happiness, scattering family honour like dust before the four winds of heaven--that surely was the noblest martyrdom of all. There is probably enough faith left in some to-day to give up their lives for their religion; but I know of no man who would allow his faith to intercede for the honour of his wife’s good name when once the hand of circumstance had played so conjuring a trick upon him. And so, amongst Roman Catholics, who, when it comes to matters of faith, are like children at a fair, even the spirit of condolence seems to have crept its way into their attitude towards this simple-minded man. "Poor St. Joseph," they say--"I always get what I want from him. I’ve never known him to fail." Or--"Poor St. Joseph--he’s not a bit of good to me. I always pray to the Blessed Virgin for everything I want." Could anything be more childlike, more ingenuous, more like a game in a nursery--the only place in the world where things are really believed.