"Free? I am _not_ free! I am in bondage. I am a slave. I am tied and bound. Yet this bondage is no excuse; it is the very essence of my sin. I cannot explain it; but I feel it. I feel it in this anguish which I cannot escape any more than we can escape from anguish in the bones by writhing. For this is not the anguish of blows or of wounds, but of disease within, growing from my inmost heart, preying on my inmost life. O God, I have sinned, I am a sinful man. In me is no help. Is there none in the universe, none in Thee?" Then from the depth of the anguish came the relief. The thought flashed through him-- "Unless one worse than the worst conception man ever formed of the devil is the Maker of man and the Omnipotent Ruler of the world, it is impossible that we should be so powerless in ourselves to overcome sin, and so agonized in remorse for it, and yet that there should be no deliverance." That thought made a lull in his anguish for a time, a silence; that thought, and the mere exhaustion of the conflict. For his thoughts had whirled him round until thought, with the mere rapidity of motion, became imperceptible. In the centre of the whirlwind there was stillness, and therein he lay prostrate, dumb, and exhausted. But not alone. On his mind, wearied out with vain thinking, on his heart, numb with suffering, fell in the pause of the storm old sweet, familiar words, still small voices, soft echoes of sacred hymns learned in childhood; those old familiar, simple words, wherewith the Spirit, moving like a dove on the face of the waters, knows how to win entrance into souls tempest-tossed, when new words, though wise and deep as an archangel's, would only sweep past its closed doors undistinguished from the wail of the winds, or the raging of the seas on which it tosses. Old familiar words,-- "Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee." Words of healing to so many! Forgiveness; not as a far-off result of a life of expiation, but free, complete, present. Peace; not after years of doubtful conflict, but now, to strengthen for the conflict. Yet these were not the words he most wanted then. It was not so much that guilt pressed on him as a burden, as that sin bound him like a chain. Not peace he most wanted, but power; freedom to fight, power to overcome. It seemed to him as if what he longed for was not so much "Go in peace," as "Come! and I will chasten thee, smite thee low, humble thee in the dust; but make thee whole." Not soft words of comfort, but strong words of hope and promise, were what he needed, and they did not seem to come. He crept out of the house before dawn to obtain tidings at the Hall of Sir Launcelot, and to quiet the restlessness of his heart by outward movement. On his way he passed the forge where Job Forster, the blacksmith, lived alone with his wife at the edge of the village opposite to ours, on the way to the Hall.