Yet there is one thing that God does forget. He tells us that He forgets the forgiven sin. "As far as the sun-rising is from the sun-setting [Note 1], so far hath He removed our transgressions from us"--"Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." But as it has been well said, "When God pardons sin, He drops it out of His memory into that of the pardoned sinner." We cannot forget it, because He has done so. For Sir Godfrey Foljambe the thought of an omniscient eye and ear was full of horror. He turned round, went downstairs, and going to a private closet in his own study, where medicines were kept, drank off one of the largest doses of brandy which he had ever taken at once. It was not a usual thing to do, for brandy was not then looked on as a beverage, but a medicine. But Sir Godfrey wanted something potent, to still those soft chimes which kept saying, "Thou fool!" Anything to get away from God! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. This is really the Hebrew of Psalm 103, verse 12. The infidel objection, therefore, that since "east" and "west" meet, the verse has no meaning, is untenable as concerns the inspired original. It is only valid as a criticism on the English translation. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. MY LORD ELECT OF YORK. "She only said,--`The day is dreary, He will not come,' she said: She wept,--`I am aweary, weary,-- O God, that I were dead!'" Tennyson. "What, ho! Gate, ho! Open unto my Lord elect of York!" The cry startled the porter at Hazelwood Manor from an afternoon nap. He sprang up and hurried out, in utter confusion at his negligence. To keep a priest waiting would have been bad manners enough, and an abbot still worse; but an archbishop was, in the porter's estimate, a semi-celestial being. True, this Archbishop was not yet consecrated, nor had he received his pallium from Rome, both which considerations detracted from his holiness, and therefore from his importance; but he was the Archbishop of the province, and the shadow of his future dignity was imposing to an insignificant porter. Poor Wilkin went down on his knees in a puddle, as soon as he had got the gate open, to beg the potentate's pardon and blessing, and only rose from them summarily to collar Colle, who had so little notion of the paramount claims of an archbishop that he received the cavalcade with barks as noisy as he would have bestowed on any worldly pedlar. Nay, so very unmannerly was Colle, that when he was let go, he marched straight to the Archbishop, and after a prolonged sniff at the archiepiscopal boots, presumed so far as to wag his very secular tail, and even to give an uninvited lick to the archiepiscopal glove. The Archbishop, instead of excommunicating Colle, laid his hand gently on the dog's head and patted him; which so emboldened that audacious quadruped that he actually climbed up the prelate, with more decided wagging than before.