So up the choir, with footsteps faint,
In the fading light of each shining saint,
I wondered if He would hear my plaint.

There was something surely in kneeling where
A thousand hearts had left their care
That helped to contradict despair.

"No hope remains in the world," I cried,
"So far have I wandered, so much denied,
Is there any way left as yet untried?

"I love, but it only makes death more drear And truth more distant; I love in fear, 'Tis not with the love that seeth clear.

"I toil, but the range of my restless glance, Still stretches afar; an aimless dance

I see, and name it the work of chance.

They are blown together, like dust in the wind, The feeble frame and the lordly mind, And only their ashes are left behind.

"My words are bitter; what proof remains To prove them false; are a prisoner's chains Lighter because he forgets his pains?

"Hear me, for mine is a soul in need:
On the cold damp ground I sink and bleed,
Hear me, and show thou art God indeed.

"The lamp of my spirit was lit in vain,
The light went out long since in the rain,
Can faith once lost be found again?

""Tis dark without it, but how can we, When the night is starless, pretend to see Across the darkness an image of Thee?"

Here the crucifix shone o'er the altar stair,
And its dim light made me at last aware
Of the Lamp that was burning faintly there.

There are notes of music and tones of love, Memories and sights that have power to move The soul to communion with things above.

So I fixed my gaze on the steadfast ray,
Till it seemed as if earth and its troubles lay
In the valley of restlessness far away.

A dreamlike procession of early years
Swept through my spirit; the frost that sears
Our life fell from me in tranquil tears.

The riddle of doubt was solved at last,
As the growing and glimmering lustre cast
A light on the labyrinth of my past.

God makes each heart a cathedral dim, With its vaults where gloomy vapors swim, And its altar burning still for him.

I woke from my trance in the church alone, And the church bell marked that an hour had flown,

As it pealed in a sombre monotone.

PART VIII.-CHAPTER XXIV.

WHEN Vincent was set down in the darkness and silence of the Sunday night in the Dover railway station, stunned as he was by all that he had heard and seen, and worn out with fatigue and want of rest, his faculties were not at his command, as they ought to have been at the command of a man in such desperate straits, and with such a matter in his hands. When his fellow-passengers trooped away with all the bustle and excitement of travellers who had then only completed the first stage of their journey to the pier, and the night-boat which waited to carry them across the Channel, he, left behind, after being vainly stimulated by various porters and attendants with adjurations to make haste, and warnings that he would be too late, stumbled out at length into the unknown place-into the gloom of night only half aware of the immediate occupation that lay before him. The image of Susan grew hazy before her brother's eyes. Mary's revelation did not move him now with the quickening thrill of anguish and rage which had at first stirred him when he heard it. He had no longer his wits about him; anxiety, fear, the impulse of revenge, were all obliterated by the utter weariness which dulled all his senses, and made the necessity of throwing down his wearied limbs in some corner, and somehow dropping to sleep, more imperative than any other need. He had not energy enough to ask where the hotel was to which Mary had directed him, but wandered along in the darkness with the sound of the sea booming in his ears-sounding all the more thundery and tempestuous because it was unseen. This heavy unaccustomed cadence aided the dull effect of weariness. His own thoughts left him altogether he was scarcely conscious of anything but the measured roll of the sea and the languor of his own worn-out frame, as he went on mechanically towards the lights before him. When he came into the brighter street, and began to encounter other wayfarers, his mind returned to him so far that he became dimly aware of what he had to do. The hotel of which Mary had told him was directly in his way, and the sight of it roused him still farther. He went in and asked first for Mr. Fordham, and then for Colonel Mildmay, without any success. Then he described the party-a tall

man with light thin hair and mustache, two ladies, one with a blue veil. With a pang which penetrated through the cloud of fatigue which enveloped him, he did his best to describe Susan as he had seen her last, and repeated with melancholy mechanical iteration the one circumstance he knew about the other companion of her flight-the blue veil. This dreadful piece of female drapery seemed to float through the occurrences of the past week, visible through the feverish haze which obliterated all distinctions of day and night, and made a kind of dull eternity, broken by no divisions of time, of this terrible crisis in Vincent's history. The description, however, gained him some information, though not what he sought. The party had left the inn an hour or two before

suddenly, as if upon some sudden news or unexpected necessity—where, nobody could tell. Vincent received the account of their departure dimly, scarcely able to follow its details; but he understood that it was most probable they must have gone across the Channel, and had consciousness enough left to rush as fast as his wearied limbs would carry him to the pier. Had he been in time enough, he would have leaped on board the boat without further question, and gone hopelessly far away from poor. Susan and her terrible fate; but the colored lamp on the mast of the steamer was just gliding out of the shelter of the harbor as he stumbled down through the darkness into the midst of the dispersing lookers-on. Nobody there could tell him anything about that blue veil; there was no other boat till morning-and whether the party he pursued had gone in this one, he could get no information. It was very late, very dark and cold, and the ominous moan of the sea again bewildered all the confused powers he had left. He took his troubled way back again to the inn, possessed above everything with an overwhelming desire to throw himself down somewhere and rest. When he had got into a room there, he summoned once more the waiter who had first identified the fugitives. He wanted to hear over again, if perhaps he could understand a little more clearly this time the particulars of their departure.

"It's my opinion they've not gone off yet," said the man: "just afore you come in, sir, going the opposite way from the pier,