it seemed like the winding-up of all that was magnificent in the world of rank and wealth, of all that was noble in the realms of intellect. The sight, too, of a vast crowd all swayed by one dominant idea, to him who beholds it for the first time is enough to affect even to tears, although there may not be added to this, what Walter was constitutionally quick in feeling, sublime music and lofty poesy, and what in an ancient building like the Abbey presses at times upon the mind almost to overpowering, the consciousness of the spiritual presence of an innumerable army of the departed, who, to memory and imagination, are ever thronging there. And yet, strange to say, in the height of all these intense and thrilling moods, Walter was haunted by the ghosts of last night's gaiety. He hated himself for it. It seemed a punishment for wasted time and neglected work, which he had never expected. The very moments when he would have given worlds to lose himself in the spirit of the place and hour, some of those involuntary tricks of the brain we all know but too well, would bring back the little sham theatre in Wellington Crescent, with all its trifling and petty associations. Struggling with the great, deep, earnest stream of reality and strong exalted imagination, was a miserable, flippant, superficial congeries of froth and bubbles, not in themselves perhaps deserving of much blame, but, as Walter felt, "in hunting after those bubbles, how much opportunity have I wasted for the pursuit of better things! How often have I been hindered and thrown back in my course!" And then came the words, ringing on his mind's ear, "O spare me a little that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen." In a public school there is but little time for quiet thought, and perhaps generally less desire for it. But now and then come moments which make a silence around the Moments which, mind even in crowds. seeming at the time but momentary, carry within them the germs of the good or evil of a lifetime. Before Walter had left the Abbey he had gained something which he himself could hardly have appreciated at the time, and the effects of which no one but himself recognized for some time afterwards. He said nothing, made scarcely any alteration in his habits beyond civilly declining the next invitation to Wellington Crescent, and taking more pains with his school-work. But years afterwards he used to look back on the day of the duke's funeral as one of the landmarks of his inner history, though he only spoke of it in certain moods, in firelight talks, or at the end of a long day's wandering to some one whose companionship had become almost part of himself. CHAPTER XII. "And when against the wind she strains, Wordsworth. WE must pass over a few weeks, and fly back in imagination to Thornwell, and to the parsonage garden, where on Easter Eve we shall find Irene kneeling among the primroses and periwinkles in the little shrubbery, half watching an exquisite pert-tailed wren that was shyly appearing and disappearing among the hoary, ivy-clad stems, and half engaged in tying tufts of the soft delicatelyscented flowers on a moss-covered device which she had before her on the ground, while she sang in snatches some verse or phrase of the Easter hymn they had just been practising. Miss Frances had come quite close, and was touching her shoulder before she was observed. "Oh, auntie, you made me jump so! I'm coming directly. Do you like this? It's for the space below the west window." "Very pretty, my dear. But how you have been tiring yourself!" "I wish I'd got a pocket looking-glass, to show which of us looked the most tired! You've not had any of your old women again to bother you." up "I've had one old woman!" said Miss Hooker, with as much slyness as her very sweet, simple face was capable of. "Do you know, auntie, I'm sure there's something wrong somewhere! Why should she send that poor unfortunate Dot off, |