honour him: but very terrible in his wrath if he be aroused. Has not the king heard how the Count of such a place, only forty years before, would have carried off a maiden from St. Quemdeusvult's town; and when the bishop withstood him, he answered that he cared no more for the relics of the saint than for the relics of a dead ass, and so took the maiden and went? But within a year and a day, he fell down dead in his drink, and when they came to lay out the corpse, behold the devils had carried it away, and put a dead ass in its place. All which the bishop would fully believe. Why not? He had no physical science to tell him that it was impossible. Morally, it was in his eyes just, and therefore probable; while as for testimony, men were content with very little in those days, simply because they could get very little. News progressed slowly in countries desolate and roadless, and grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, as it did in the Highlands a century ago, as it did but lately in the Indian Mutiny; till after a fact had taken ten years in crossing a few mountains and forests, it had assumed proportions utterly fantastic and gigantic. So the wild king and his wild knights pause. They can face flesh and blood: but who can face the quite infinite terrors of an unseen world? They are men of blood too, men of evil lives; and conscience makes them cowards. They begin to think that they have gone too far. Could they see the saint, and make it up with him somewhat? No. The saint they cannot see. To open his shrine would be to commit the sin of Uzzah. Palsy and blindness would be the least that would follow. But the dome under which he lies all men may see; and perhaps the saint may listen, if they speak him fair. They feel more and more uncomfortable. This saint, in heaven at God's right hand, and yet there in the dom-church--is clearly a mysterious, ubiquitous person, who may take them in the rear very unexpectedly. And his priests, with their book-learning, and their sciences, and their strange dresses and chants--who knows what secret powers, magical or other, they may not possess?