Methought that in a solemn church I stood. Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet, Lay spread from, door to door, from street to street. Midway the form hung high upon the rood Of him who gave his life to be our good; Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet Among the candles shining still and sweet. Men came and went, and worshipped as they could, And still their dust a woman with her broom, Bowed to her work, kept sweeping to the door. Then saw I, slow through all the pillared gloom, Across the church a silent figure come; “Daughter,” it said, “thou sweepest well my floor!” It is the Lord! I cried; and saw no more. I suppose, if one could so stop the throat of the blossom-buried nightingale, that, though he might breathe at will, he could no longer sing, he would drop from his bough, and die of suppressed song. Perhaps some men so die--I do not know; it were better than to live, and to bore their friends with the insuppressible. But, however this may be, the man who can utter himself to his own joy in any of the forms of human expression--let him give thanks to God; and, if he give not his verses to the printer, he will probably have cause to give thanks again. To the man’s self, the utterance is not the less invaluable. And so Wingfold found it. He went out again, and into the churchyard, where he sat down on a stone. “How strange,” he said to himself, “that out of faith should have sprung that stone church! A poor little poem now and then is all that stands for mine--all that shows, that is! But my heart does sometimes burn, within me. If only I could be sure they were HIS words that set it burning!” CHAPTER XI. THE SHEATH. “Mr. Wingfold,” said Polwarth one evening, the usual salutations over, taking what he commonly left to his friend--the initiative,--“I want to tell you something I don’t wish even Rachel to hear.” He led the way to his room, and the curate followed. Seated there, in the shadowy old attic, through the very walls of which the ivy grew, and into which, by the open window in the gable, from the infinite west, blew the evening air, carrying with it the precious scent of honeysuckle, to mingle with that of old books, Polwarth recounted and Wingfold listened to a strange adventure. The trees hid the sky, and the little human nest was dark around them. “I am going to make a confidant of you, Mr. Wingfold,” said the dwarf, with troubled face, and almost whispered word. “You will know how much I have already learned to trust you when I say that what I am about to confide to you plainly involves the secret of another.” His large face grew paler as he spoke, and something almost like fear grew in his eyes, but they looked straight into those of the curate, and his voice did not tremble.