A terrible sensation seized him.--Why should he give the letter to- night? 'You promised,' whispered the inner voice. 'No, I did not promise exactly, in so many words; that is, I only said I would be at home to-night, if God pleased. And what if God should not please?--I promised for his good. What if, on second thoughts, it should be better for him not to keep my promise?' A moment afterwards, he tossed the temptation from him indignantly: but back it came. At every gaudy shop, at every smoke-grimed manufactory, at the face of every anxious victim of Mammon, of every sturdy, cheerful artisan, the fiend winked and pointed, crying, 'And what if he be ruined? Look at the thousands who have, and are miserable--at the millions who have not, and are no sadder than their own tyrants.' Again and again he thrust the thought from him, but more and more weakly. His whole frame shook; the perspiration stood on his forehead. As he took his railway ticket, his look was so haggard and painful that the clerk asked him whether he were ill. The train was just starting; he threw himself into a carriage--he would have locked himself in if he could; and felt an inexpressible relief when he found himself rushing past houses and market-gardens, whirled onward, whether he would or not, in the right path--homeward. But was it the right path? for again the temptation flitted past him. He threw himself back, and tried to ask counsel of One above; but there was no answer, nor any that regarded. His heart was silent, and dark as midnight fog. Why should there have been an answer? He had not listened to the voice within. Did he wish for a miracle to show him his duty? 'Not that I care for detection,' he said to himself. 'What is shame to me? Is it not a glory to be evil-spoken of in the cause of God? How can the world appreciate the motives of those who are not of the world?--the divine wisdom of the serpent--at once the saint's peculiar weapon, and a part of his peculiar cross, when men call him a deceiver, because they confound, forsooth, his spiritual subtlety with their earthly cunning. Have I not been called "liar," "hypocrite," "Jesuit," often enough already, to harden me towards bearing that name once again?' That led him into sad thoughts of his last few years' career,--of the friends and pupils whose secession to Rome had been attributed to his hypocrisy, his 'disguised Romanism;' and then the remembrance of poor Luke Smith flashed across him for the first time since he left the bank. 'I must see him,' he said to himself; 'I must argue with him face to face. Who knows but that it may be given even to my unworthiness to snatch him from this accursed slough?'