They founded a city, the capital of the colony, and called it St. Mary’s. A Catholic chapel was subsequently erected there; and this too was dedicated to S. Mary. The city has passed away, but the little chapel still stands, preserved alike by Catholic and Protestant hands, as a monument of the faith and zeal of the Catholic pilgrims of Maryland. Mr. Griffith, the historian, uniting his voice to that of Bancroft and other writers, speaking of the object which inspired the settlement from its inception by Lord Baltimore in England, says: “Out of respect for their religion they planted the cross, and, after fortifying themselves, plainly and openly set about to obtain, by the fairest means in their power, other property and homes, where they should escape the persecutions of the religious and political reformers of their native country at that time.”[111]

The church and parish of S. Mary were for many years the headquarters of the Jesuit missions of Maryland. During the succeeding years prior to 1649 there was a steady influx of Catholics into the colony from England, as is evident by the land records and other official documents, and by the fact that the number of Catholic priests required for the settlement increased from two in 1634 to four priests and one coadjutor prior to 1644. The Catholic strength was also increased by numerous conversions, as is shown by Father White’s Narrative, in which, at page 56, he relates that, “among the Protestants, nearly all who came over from England, in this year 1638, and many others, have been converted to the faith, together with four servants … and five mechanics whom we … have in the meantime won to God.” So numerous were these conversions, and they created so great a sensation in England, that measures were taken there to check them.

That the colony was Catholic in its origin, and so continued until after the year 1649, when the Toleration Act was passed, has never been denied, according to our researches, except by Mr. Gladstone and the two Protestant ministers whom he quotes. Bancroft, writing of the religious toleration which prevailed in Maryland during this period, always speaks of it as the work of Catholics. In referring to the original colonists he adds, “most of them Roman Catholic gentlemen and their servants.” Even so unfriendly a writer as Bozman says: “The most, if not all, of them were Catholics.” Chancellor Kent speaks of the colony as “the Catholic planters of Maryland,” and Judge Story says they were “chiefly Roman Catholics.” Father White, in his Narrative, speaks of the few Protestants on board the Ark as individuals, and not as a class. Bozman, alluding to the year 1639, and to “those in whose hands the government of the province was,” says: “A majority of whom were, without doubt, Catholics, as well as much the greater number of the colonists.” Mr. Davis, a Protestant, who drew his information from the official documents of the colony and State, gives unanswerable proofs of the fact for which we are contending. We give a single passage from his work on this point:

Mr. Gladstone seems to favor the view that religious toleration in Maryland was derived from the charter. We are surprised at this, since “E. D. N.” (Rev. Edward D. Neill), whose pamphlet has furnished the substance of the entire passage we have quoted from Mr. Gladstone’s Preface, says in his Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony, “The charter of Maryland granted to Lord Baltimore was not a charter of religious liberty, but the very opposite.” McSherry, a Catholic historian, says that “the ecclesiastical laws of England, so far as related to the consecration and presentation of churches and chapels, were extended to the colony, but the question of state religion was left untouched, and therefore within the legislative power of the colonists themselves.”[113] And Bozman, a Protestant historian, adopts the same view of the charter, for he regards the “Act for Church Liberties” passed in 1639, enacting that “Holy Church within this province shall have all her rights and privileges,” as an attempt to exercise a control of religion, and says: “We cannot but suppose that it was the intention of the Catholic government to erect a hierarchy, with an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, similar to the ancient Church of England before the Reformation, and to invest it with all its rights, liberties, and immunities.”[114] The same views are expressed by the same author at pages 68 and 350 of his history. While civil liberty was guaranteed by the charter to all within the province, we find no mention of religious toleration in its provisions. Nor do we find that immigration was made free by the charter, as alleged by Mr. Gladstone; the provision to which he refers simply assures to the subjects of England, “transported or to be transported into the province, all privileges, franchises, and liberties of this our kingdom of England,” but the decision of the point as to who should be transplanted or admitted to settle there was left to the lord proprietary and the provincial legislature. The grant by the king to Lord Baltimore of all the lands of the province in itself gave him the full control over immigration, by enabling him to fix the conditions to the grants of land to colonists, which would have kept out all except such as the lord proprietary wished to enter.

We think we have shown that the Catholics were in the majority during the whole period covered by our discussion, and that the charter left them free to protect themselves from intrusion; that they were, consequently, all-powerful to perpetuate their numerical preponderance and control of the government. Why had they not the same motives for practising intolerance as the Puritans? Their positions, respectively and relatively, were the same in this particular, and the same reasons apply to both. No, they were actuated by a different spirit, and guided by different traditions. They possessed the power, and used it with mercy and benevolence; not only permitting but inviting Christians of every shade of opinion to settle in the province, but also offering grants of land on easy terms, and protecting the settlers from molestation on account of their religion. If they had not the power to proscribe, why should Bancroft, Griffith, Chambers, Kent, Story, and nearly all writers on the subject, have bestowed such encomiums on them for doing what they could not have refrained from doing? Why extol the toleration enjoined by Lord Baltimore and proclaimed by Governor Leonard Calvert, and the subsequently enacted Toleration Act of 1649, if the liberty it enacts was already secured by the charter of 1632?

It is not necessary for us to go further into this question, since in either event the honor and credit of religious toleration in Maryland is due to a Catholic source. If the charter secured it, our answer is that the charter itself was the work of a Catholic, for Lord Baltimore is the acknowledged author of that document. “The nature of the document itself,” says Bancroft, “and concurrent opinion, leave no doubt that it was penned by the first Lord Baltimore himself, although it was finally issued for the benefit of his son.”[115] “It was prepared by Lord Baltimore himself,” says McSherry, “but before it was finally executed that truly great and good man died, and the patent was delivered to his son, Cecilius, who succeeded as well to his noble designs as to his titles and estates.”[116] It will be more than sufficient to add here that both Mr. Bozman and the Rev. Ethan Allen concede that Lord Baltimore was the author of the charter.

We propose now to show that the religious toleration which prevailed in Maryland had its origin in the good-will, generosity, and mercy of the Catholic lord proprietary and his Catholic government and colony of Maryland; was practised from the very beginning of the settlement, and that we are not indebted for it to the Toleration Act of 1649, except perhaps as a measure by which its provisions were prolonged. Toleration was the course adopted in organizing the Maryland colony, even in England and before the landing of the pilgrims. Thus we find that some Protestants were permitted to accompany the colonists and share equal rights and protection with their Catholic associates. Father White speaks of them on board the Ark and Dove. The author of Maryland not a Catholic Colony refers to the fact that “Thomas Cornwallis and Jerome Hawley, who went out as councillors of the colony, were adherents of the Church of England,” as evidence in part that Maryland was “not a Catholic colony.” We take the same fact to show that not only were Protestants tolerated in the colony from its inception, but were liberally and generously given a share in its government. The Rev. Ethan Allen relates a succession of proofs of this fact, though not for that purpose, in the following passage: “Witness the fact of so large a portion of the first colonists being Protestants; his invitation to Capt. Fleet; his invitation to the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts to come and reside in the colony in 1643; his constituting Col. Stone his governor in 1648, who was a Protestant, and was to bring five hundred colonists; his admitting the Puritans of Virginia in the same year; and in the year following erecting a new county for Robert Brooke, a Puritan, and his colonists.”[117] McSherry says, speaking of the act of possession on landing in 1634: “Around the rough-hewn cross, on the island of St. Clement’s, gathered the Catholic and the Protestant, hand in hand, friends and brothers, equal in civil rights, and secure alike in the free and full enjoyment of either creed. It was a day whose memory should make the Maryland heart bound with pride and pleasure.”[118] The same author says that the Toleration Act of 1649 was passed “to give additional security to the safeguards which Lord Baltimore had already provided.” Bancroft makes religious toleration commence from the first landing “when the Catholics took possession,” and extend throughout the fourteen years up to the passage of the act of 1649. He says that “the apologist of Lord Baltimore could assert that his government, in conformity with his strict and repeated injunctions, had never given disturbance to any person in Maryland for matter of religion.”[119] The Rev. Ethan Allen relates that the Protestants in the colony were allowed to have their own chapel and to conduct therein the Protestant service. He cites a case in which a Catholic was severely punished for abusive language towards some Protestant servants in respect to their religion, and remarks that “the settling of the case was unquestionably creditable and honorable to the Catholic governor and council.”[120] Mr. Davis, a Protestant, says: “A freedom, however, of a wider sort springs forth at the birth of the colony—not demanded by that instrument [the charter], but permitted by it—not graven upon the tables of stone, nor written upon the paper of the statute-books, but conceived in the very bosom of the proprietary and of the original pilgrims—not a formal or constructive kind, but a living freedom, a freedom of the most practical sort. It is the freedom which it remained for them, and for them alone, either to grant or deny—a freedom embracing within its range, and protecting under its banner, all those who were believers in Jesus Christ.”[121]

Again, the same author writes: “The records have been carefully searched. No case of persecution occurred, during the administration of Gov. Leonard Calvert, from the foundation of the settlement at St. Mary’s to the year 1647.”[122] Langford, a writer contemporaneous with the period of which we are treating, in his Refutation of Babylon’s Fall, 1655, confirms the result of Mr. Davis’ investigation of the records. The Protestants of the colony themselves, in a declaration, of which we will speak again, attribute the religious toleration they enjoyed not solely to the Toleration Act, but also to “several other strict injunctions and declarations of his said lordship for that purpose made and provided.” Gov. Leonard Calvert also enjoined the same by a proclamation, which is mentioned by numerous historians. A case arising under this proclamation is given by Bozman and others in 1638, eleven years before the passage of the Toleration Act. Capt. Cornwallis’ servants, who were Protestants, were lodged under the same roof with William Lewis, a zealous Catholic, who was also placed in charge of the servants. Entering one day the room where the servants were reading aloud from a Protestant book—Mr. Smith’s Sermons—at the very moment the Protestants were reading aloud a passage to the effect “that the pope was Antichrist, and the Jesuits were anti-Christian ministers,” supposing that the passage was read aloud especially for him to hear, he ordered them with great warmth not to read that book, saying that “it was a falsehood, and came from the devil, as all lies did; and that he that writ it was an instrument of the devil, and he would prove it; and that all Protestant ministers were ministers of the devil.” All the parties were tried before the governor and his council; the case against the servants was postponed for further testimony, but Mr. Lewis, the Catholic, was condemned to pay a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco (then the currency of the colony), and to remain in the sheriff’s custody until he found sufficient sureties in the future. Bozman thus remarks upon this decision: “As these proceedings took place before the highest tribunal of the province, composed of the three first officers in the government, they amply develop the course of conduct with respect to religion which those in whose hands the government of the province was placed, had resolved to pursue.”[123] Not only did the Catholic lord proprietary, in 1648, appoint Mr. Stone, a Protestant, to be the governor of the province, but also he at the same time appointed a majority of the privy councillors from the same faith.

We will close our testimony on this point with the official oath which Lord Baltimore required the governor and the privy councillors to take; it was substantially as follows:

We cannot determine when this oath began to be used. Bancroft places it between 1636 and 1639. Chalmers, Dr. Hawks, and others give the time as between 1637 and 1657. It is certain that this oath was prescribed prior to the passage of the Toleration Act; for Governor Stone and the councillors took the oath in 1648, and there is reason to believe that it was in use at a much earlier period.

Referring to the period anterior to the passage of the Toleration Act, Bancroft says: “Maryland at that day was unsurpassed for happiness and liberty. Conscience was without restraint.”[124] Mr. Davis, in reference to this subject, writes: “The toleration which prevailed from the first, and for fifteen years later, was formally ratified by the voice of the people” (in 1649).

Mr. Gladstone’s view of the subject is evidently superficial; it relates exclusively to the passage of the Toleration Act, and was conceived and published without the knowledge of the fact, which we have demonstrated, that the toleration for which the Catholics of Maryland have been so much praised had been practised for fifteen years before the passage of that act. Surely, there can be no rival claim set forth in behalf of Protestants for the period we have mentioned. Mr. Gladstone sets up his claim for the Protestants under that act. We cannot admit the justice or truth of the pretension. Let us examine it. This law enacted that “no one professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his religion, or the free exercise thereof, nor compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against his consent.” Now here, too, the claim set up by Mr. Gladstone, and by the authors of the pamphlets he quotes, is met by stern facts.

In the first place, the Toleration Act of 1649 was the work of a Catholic. It was prepared in England by Lord Baltimore himself, and sent over to the Assembly with other proposed laws for their action. This fact is related by nearly all writers on Maryland history, including those consulted by Mr. Gladstone, except the writer of Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony, who does not refer to the subject, except to claim that it was but the echo of a previous and similar order of the English House of Commons in 1645 and of a statute passed by it in 1647. The last-named writer even intimates that the Rev. Thomas Harrison, the former pastor of the Puritans at Providence, afterward Annapolis, in Maryland, suggested the whole matter to Lord Baltimore. We might even admit this pretension without impairing the Catholic claim. It does not destroy the credit due to the Catholics of Maryland in passing the Toleration Act to show that others, even Puritans, entertained in one or two instances similar views and enacted similar measures. We know that the Puritans in England were proscriptive, and that in New England they did not practise the toleration of Maryland. Even if Lord Baltimore had the measure suggested to him by the Puritan Harrison, the act itself, when adopted by him and put in practice, is still his act and that of the Assembly which passed it. It remains their free and voluntary performance. The merit which attaches to the good deeds of men is not destroyed by having been suggested by others. A Puritan might even share in the act without appropriating the whole credit to himself. But whatever merit is claimed for the Puritans in these measures—which we cannot perceive—is lost by their subsequent conduct. They overturned the government of Lord Baltimore in Maryland, and under their ascendency Catholics were persecuted in the very home of liberty to which Catholics had invited the Puritans. But of the existence of the English toleration acts mentioned by the writer referred to and by Mr. Gladstone, we have been supplied with no proof. That the Puritan Harrison suggested the measure to Lord Baltimore is hinted at, not roundly asserted, certainly not sustained by proof.

But public facts give the negative to these pretensions. The Toleration Act of 1649 was the immediate echo of the actual toleration which, under the injunctions of Lord Baltimore, the proclamation of Governor Calvert, and the uniform practice of the colonists, had long become the common law of the colony. Why seek, in the turbulent and confused proceedings of the Long Parliament, a model or example for the Maryland law, when such exemplar is supplied nearer home by the colony itself from its first inception? To the people of Maryland, in 1649, the Toleration Act was nothing new; it was readily and unanimously received; it produced no change in the constitution of the province. Toleration was not the law or the practice of that day, either in England or her colonies; the echo was too remote and too readily drowned by the din of persecution and of strife.

But the Maryland Toleration Act contains intrinsic evidence of a purely Catholic origin. The clause enforcing the honor and respect due to “the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour,” which we have already quoted, gives a Catholic flavor to the whole statute, and excludes the theory of parliamentary or puritanical influence in originating the measure. The claim thus set up is also against the concurrent voice of history, which, with great accord, gives the authorship of the law to Lord Baltimore, who, as he had enjoined and enforced its provisions on the colony for fifteen years, needed no assistance in reducing them to the form of a statute, which we are informed he did.

But who were the lawgivers of 1649, and what was their religion?

By the charter the law-making power was vested in Lord Baltimore and the Assembly. It was for some years a matter of contest between them which possessed the right to initiate laws. The lord proprietary, however, finally conceded this privilege to the Assembly. It was not uncommon for the Assembly to reject the laws first sent over by the lord proprietary, and afterwards to bring them forward themselves and pass them. But in 1648, when Governor Stone was appointed, the Toleration Act was among the measures sent by Lord Baltimore, for the action of the Assembly. The government, then, consisted of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, without whose sanction no law could be enacted, and whose signature to the measure in question was given the following year. The journal of the Maryland legislature was lost or destroyed, but fortunately a fragment of it is preserved, consisting of a report from the financial committee of the Assembly, and the action of that body on the bill of charges. With this document, and the aid of the historical facts recorded by Bozman and other historians, we are enabled to ascertain the names of the members of the Assembly in 1649.

Gov. Stone was lieutenant-governor and president of the council, which was composed of Thomas Green, John Price, John Pile, and Robert Vaughan, commissioned by the lord proprietary; and the remaining councillors were Robert Clarke, surveyor-general, and Thomas Hatton, secretary of the colony, ex-officio members of the council. The other members of the Assembly were the representatives of the freemen, or burgesses, as follows: Cuthbert Fenwick, Philip Conner, William Bretton, Richard Browne, George Manners, Richard Banks, John Maunsell, Thomas Thornborough, and Walter Peake, nine in number. The governor, councillors, and burgesses made sixteen in all; but as Messrs. Pile and Hatton, one Catholic and one Protestant, were absent, the votes actually cast were fourteen. On the memorable occasion in question the councillors and burgesses sat in one “house,” and as such passed the Toleration Act. Of the fourteen thus voting, Messrs. Green, Clarke, Fenwick, Bretton, Manners, Maunsell, Peake, and Thornborough were Catholics, and Messrs. Stone, Price, Vaughan, Conner, Banks, and Browne were Protestants. The Catholics were eight to six Protestants.

But the Assembly was not the only law-making branch of the government. The executive, or lord proprietary, was a co-ordinate branch, and without his co-operation no law could pass. Now, the executive was a Catholic, and a majority of the Assembly were Catholics; so that we have it as a historical fact that in a government composed of two co-ordinate branches, both branches of the law-making power which enacted the Toleration Act were Catholic. It is an important fact that if all the Protestant members of the Assembly had voted against the law, the Catholic majority could and would have passed it, and the Catholic executive was only too ready to sanction his own measure. It cannot, therefore, be said that the Catholics could not have passed the law without the Protestant votes; for we have seen that both of the co-ordinate branches of the government were in the hands of the Catholics.

Waiving, however, the division of the government into two co-ordinate branches, by which method we have the entire government Catholic; and regarding the lord proprietary merely as individual, computing the lawgivers of 1649 simply numerically, we have the following result:

LAWGIVERS OF 1649.

As Catholics we would be quite content with this showing; but we are indebted to several Protestant authors—more impartial than Messrs. Gladstone, Allen, and Neill, who write solely in the interests of sect—for a computation of the respective Catholic and Protestant votes in the Assembly in 1649, which, leaving out Lord Baltimore, and making the number of votes fourteen, gives, according to their just and strictly legal computation, eleven Catholic votes and three Protestant votes for the Act of Toleration. Mr. Davis, in his Day-Star of American Freedom, and Mr. William Meade Addison, in his Religious Toleration in America, both Protestant authors, take this view, and enforce it with strong facts and cogent reasonings. We will quote a passage, however, from only one of these works, the former, showing their views and the method by which they arrive at the respective numbers eleven and three. Mr. Davis writes: “The privy councillors were all of them, as well as the governor, the special representatives of the Roman Catholic proprietary—under an express pledge, imposed by him shortly before the meeting of the Assembly (as may be seen by the official oath), to do nothing at variance with the religious freedom of any believer in Christianity—and removable any moment at his pleasure. It would be fairer, therefore, to place the governor and the four privy councillors on the same side as the six Roman Catholic burgesses. Giving Mr. Browne to the other side, we have eleven Roman Catholic against three Protestant votes.”[125]

We think, however, that if the computation is to be made by numbers, Lord Baltimore must be included, as the act received his executive approval, and could never have become a law without it. Thus, according to the views of Messrs. Davis and Addison, with this amendment by us, the numbers would stand twelve Catholic against three Protestant votes. But we prefer taking our own two several methods of computation, viz., by co-ordinate branches of the government, showing—

—and that estimated by numbers, counting Lord Baltimore as one, showing—

This surely is a very different result from that announced by Mr. Gladstone, following the author of Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony—viz., sixteen Protestant against eight Catholic votes. So far the numbers given by Mr. Gladstone and the writer he follows are mere assertion, unsupported by authority, either as to the composition of the Assembly or the respective religious beliefs of the members. Mr. Davis, however, gives in detail every member’s name, and refers to the proof by which he arrives at their names and number; and the same testimony is open, we presume, to the examination of all. In order that there may be no lack of proof as to the religious faiths they professed, he gives a personal sketch of each member of the Assembly in 1649, and proves from their public acts, their deeds of conveyance, their land patents, their last wills and testaments, the records of the courts, etc., that those named by him as Catholics were incontestably of that faith.

The population of the colony in 1649 was also largely Catholic beyond dispute. We have already shown that it was Catholic by a large majority during the fifteen years preceding and up to that time. The above computations, showing a majority of the legislature to be Catholic, strongly indicates the complexion of the religious faith of their constituents. Up to 1649 St. Mary’s, the Catholic county, was the only county in the State, and Kent, the seat of the Protestant population, was only a hundred of St. Mary’s. Kent was not erected into a county until the year the Toleration Act was passed. While St. Mary’s was populous and Catholic, Kent was Protestant and thinly settled. There were six hundreds in St. Mary’s, all Catholic except perhaps one, and of that one it is uncertain whether the majority was Catholic or Protestant. “But the population of Kent,” says Davis, “was small. In 1639, if not many years later, she was but a hundred of St. Mary’s county.[126] In 1648 she paid a fifth part only of the tax, and did not hold in the Assembly of that year a larger ratio of political power. That also was before the return, we may suppose, of all the Roman Catholics who had been expelled or exported from St. Mary’s by Capt. Ingle and the other enemies of the proprietary. In 1649 she had but one delegate, while St. Mary’s was represented by eight. And this year she paid but a sixth part of the tax, and for many years after as well as before this Assembly there is no evidence whatever of a division of the island (of Kent) or the county, even into hundreds. Its population did not, in 1648, exceed the fifth, nor in 1649 the sixth, part of the whole number of free white persons in the province.”[127] After a thorough examination of the records, Mr. Davis arrives at the conclusion that the Protestants constituted only one-fourth of the population of Maryland at the time of the passage of the Toleration Act, in 1649. His investigations must have been careful and thorough, for he gives the sources of his information, refers to liber and folio, and cites copiously from the public records. He thinks that for twenty years after the first settlement—to wit, about the year 1654—the Catholics were in the majority. He concludes his chapter on this subject with the following passage: “Looking, then, at the question under both its aspects—regarding the faith either of the delegates or of those whom they substantially represented—we cannot but award the chief honor to the members of the Roman Church. To the Roman Catholic freemen of Maryland is justly due the main credit arising from the establishment, by a solemn legislative act, of religious freedom for all believers in Christianity.”[128]

But, fortunately, we have another document at hand, signed in the most solemn manner by those who certainly must have known the truth of the case, as they were the contemporaries, witnesses of, and participators in, the very events of which we are treating. This is what is usually known as the Protestant Declaration, made the year after the passage of the Toleration Act, and shortly after it was known that Lord Baltimore had signed the act and made it the law of the land. This important document is an outpouring of gratitude from the Protestants of the colony to the Catholic proprietary for the religious toleration they enjoyed under his government. It is signed by Gov. Stone, the privy councillors Price, Vaughan, and Hatton—all of whom were members of the Assembly that passed the Toleration Act—by all the Protestant burgesses in the Assembly of 1650, and by a great number of the leading Protestants of the colony. They address Lord Baltimore in these words:

This important document is dated the 17th of April, 1650. It proves that the religious toleration they enjoyed was not due alone to the act of 1649, but to the uniform policy of Lord Baltimore and his government; and that even for the Toleration Act itself, which had recently become a law by his signature, they were indebted to a Catholic. Comment on such testimony is unnecessary.

Chancellor Kent, with the charter, the public policy of Lord Baltimore, of his colonial officers and colonists, and the Toleration Act of 1649, all submitted to his broad and profound judicial inquiry and judgment, has rendered the following opinion and tribute to the Catholic lawgivers of Maryland, to whom he attributes the merit of the generous policy we are considering:

Catholics have written comparatively little upon this subject. The historians of Maryland have been chiefly Protestants. As long as Protestants so unanimously accorded to the Catholic founders of Maryland the chief credit of this great event, it was unnecessary for Catholics to speak in their own behalf. It has remained for Mr. Gladstone and the two sectarian ministers he follows to attempt to mar the harmony of that grateful and honorable accord of the Protestant world, by which Catholic Maryland received from the united voice of Protestant history the enviable title of “The Land of the Sanctuary.”

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.

CHAPTER XI.
A DINNER AT THE COURT, WITH AN EPISODE.

Crossing from the station to his brougham, Sir Simon saw Mr. Langrove issuing from a cottage on the road. The vicar had been detained later than he foresaw on a sick-call, and was hurrying home to dress for dinner. It was raining sharply. Sir Simon hailed him:

“Shall I give you a lift, Langrove?”

“Thank you; I shall be very glad. I am rather late as it is.” And they got into the brougham together.

“And how wags the world with you, my reverend friend? Souls being saved in great numbers, eh?” inquired the baronet when they had exchanged their friendly greetings.

“Humph! I am thankful not to have the counting of them,” was the reply, with a shake of the head that boded ill for the sanctification of Dullerton.

“That’s it, is it? Well, we are all going down the hill together; there is some comfort in that. But how about Miss Bulpit? Don’t her port wine and tracts snatch a few brands from the burning?”

“For the love of heaven don’t speak to me of her! Don’t, I beg of you!” entreated the vicar, throwing up his hands deprecatingly, and moved from the placid propriety that seemed a law of nature to him.

“Suppose I had good news to report of her?”

“How so?” cried Mr. Langrove with sudden vivacity. “She’s not going to marry Sparks, is she?”

“Not just yet; but the next best thing to that. She is going to leave the neighborhood.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“I do indeed. How is it you’ve not heard of it before? She’s been pestering Anwyll these two years about some repairs or improvements she wants done in her house—crotchets, I dare say, that would have to be pulled to pieces for the next tenant. He has always politely referred her to his agent, which means showing her to the door; but at last she threatened to leave if he did not give in and do what she wants.”

“Oh! is that all?” exclaimed the vicar, crestfallen. “I might have waited a little before I hallooed; we are not out of the woods yet. Anwyll is sure to give in rather than let her go.”

“Nothing of the sort. He dislikes the old lady, and so does his mother, and so particularly does your venerable confrère of Rydal Rectory. I met Anwyll this morning at the club, and he told me he had made up his mind to let her go. It happens—luckily for you, I suspect—that he has a tenant in view to take her place. Come, now, cheer up! Is not that good news?”

“Most excellent!” said the vicar emphatically. “I wonder where she will move to?”

“Perhaps I could tell you that too. She is in treaty with Charlton for a dilapidated old hunting lodge of his in the middle of a fir-wood the other side of Axmut Common, about twenty miles the other side of Moorlands; it is as good as settled, I believe, and if so we are all safe from her.”

“Well, you do surprise me!” exclaimed Mr. Langrove, his countenance expanding into a breadth of satisfaction that was absolutely radiant. “Who is the incumbent of Axmut, let me see?” he said, musing.

“There is as good as none; it is a lonely spot, with no church within ten miles, I believe. I shrewdly suspect this was the main attraction; for the life of him, Charlton says, he can’t see any other. It is a tumble-down, fag-end-of-the-world-looking place as you would find in all England. It must be the clear coast for ‘dealing with souls,’ as she calls it, that baited her. There is a community of over a hundred poor people, something of the gypsy sort, scattered over the common and in a miserable little hamlet they call the village; so she may preach away to her heart’s content, and no one to compete or interfere with her but the blacksmith, who rants every Sunday under a wooden shed, or on a tub on the common, according to the state of the weather.”

“Capital! That’s just the place for her!” was the vicar’s jubilant remark.

In spite of the pleasure that lit up his features, usually so mild and inexpressive, Sir Simon, looking closely at the vicar, thought him worn and aged. “You look tired, Langrove. You are overworked, or else Miss Bulpit has been too much for you; which is it?” he said kindly.

“A little of both, perhaps,” the vicar laughed. “I have felt the recent cold a good deal; the cold always pulls me down. I’ll be all right when the spring comes round and hunts the rheumatism out of my bones,” he added, moving his arm uncomfortably.

“You ought to do like the swallow—migrate to a warm climate before the cold sets in,” observed Sir Simon; “nothing else dislodges rheumatism.”

“That’s just what Blink was saying to me this morning. He urged me very strongly to go away for a couple of months now to get out of the way of the east winds. He wants me to take a trip to the South of France.” Mr. Langrove laughed gently as he said this.

“And why don’t you?”

“Because I can’t afford it.”

“Nonsense, nonsense! Take it first, and afford it afterwards. That’s my maxim.”

“A very convenient maxim for you, but not so practicable for an incumbent with a large family and a short income as for the landlord of Dullerton,” said Mr. Langrove good-humoredly.

The baronet winced.

“Prudence and economy are all very well,” he replied, “but they may be carried too far; your health is worth more to you than any amount of money. If you want the change, you should take it and pay the price.”

“I suppose we might have most things, if we choose to take them on those terms,” remarked the vicar. “‘Take it and pay the price!’ says the poet; but some prices are too high for any value. Who would do my work while I was off looking after my health? Is that Bourbonais hurrying up the hill? He will get drenched; he has no umbrella.”

“Like him to go out a day like this without one,” said Sir Simon in an accent of fond petulance. “How is he? How is Franceline? How does she look?”

“Poorly enough. If she were my child, I should be very uneasy about her.”

“Ha! does Bourbonais seem uneasy? Do you see much of him?”

“No; not through my fault, nor indeed through his. We have each our separate work, and these winter days are short. I met him this morning coming out of Blink’s as I went in. I did not like his look; he had his hat pulled over his eyes, and when I spoke to him he answered me as if he hardly knew who I was or what he was saying.”

“And you did not ask if there was anything amiss?” said Sir Simon in a tone of reproach.

“I did, but not him. I asked Blink.”

“Ha! what did he say?” And the baronet bent forward for the answer with an eager look.

“Nothing very definite—you know his grandiloquent, vague talk—but he said something about hereditary taint on the lungs; and I gathered that he thought it was a mistake not having taken her to a warm climate immediately after that accident to her chest; but whether the mistake was his or the count’s I could not quite see. I imagine from what he said that there was a money difficulty in the way, or he thought there was, and did not, perhaps, urge the point as strongly as he otherwise would.”

Sir Simon fell back on the cushions, muttering some impatient exclamation.

“That was perhaps a case where the maxim of ‘take it first and afford it afterwards’ would seem justifiable,” observed Mr. Langrove.

“Of course it was! But Bourbonais is such an unmanageable fellow in those things. The strongest necessity will never extract one iota of a sacrifice of principle from him; you might as well try to bend steel.”

“He has always given me the idea of a man of a very high sense of honor, very scrupulous in doing what he considers his duty,” said Mr. Langrove.

“He is, he is,” assented the baronet warmly; “he is the very ideal and epitome of honor and high principle. Not to save his life would he swerve one inch from the straight road; but to save Franceline I fancied he might have been less rigid.” He heaved a sigh, and they said no more until the brougham let Sir Simon down at his own door, and then drove on to take Mr. Langrove to the vicarage.

A well-known place never appears so attractive as when we look at it for the last time. An indifferent acquaintance becomes pathetic when seen through the softening medium of a last look. It is like breaking off a fraction of our lives, snapping a link that can never be joined again. A sea-side lodging, if it can claim one sweet or sad memory with our passing sojourn there, wears a touching aspect when we come to say “good-by,” with the certainty that we shall never see the place again. But how if the spot has been the cradle of our childhood, the home of our fathers for generations, where every stone is like a monument inscribed with sacred and dear memories? Sir Simon was not a sentimental man; but all the tenderness common to good, affectionate, cultivated natures had its place in his heart. He had always loved the old home. He was proud of it as one of the finest and most ancient houses of his class in England; he admired its grand and noble proportions, its architectural strength and beauty; and he had the reverence for it that every well-born man feels for the place where his fathers were born, and where they have lived and died. But never had the lordly Gothic mansion looked to him so home-like as on this cold January evening when he entered it, in all human probability, for the last time. It was brilliantly lighted up to welcome him. The servants, men and women, were assembled in the hall to meet him. It was one of those old-fashioned patriarchal customs that were kept up at the Court, where so many other old customs survived, unhappily less harmless than this. As Sir Simon passed through the two rows of glad, respectful faces, he had a pleasant word for all, as if his heart were free from care.

The hall was a sombre, cathedral-like apartment that needed floods of light to dispel its oppressive solemnity. To-night it was filled with a festal breadth of light; the great chandelier that hung from the groined roof was in a blaze, while the bronze figures all around supported clusters of lamps that gleamed like silver balls against the dark wainscoting. The dining-room and library, which opened to the right, stood open, and displayed a brilliant illumination of lamps and wax-lights. Huge fires burned hospitably on all the hearths. The table was ready spread; silver and crystal shone and sparkled on the snowy damask; flowers scented the air as in a garden. Sir Simon glanced at it all as he passed. Could it be that he was going to leave all this, never to behold it again? It seemed impossible that it could be true.

As he stood once more in the midst of his household gods, those familiar divinities whose gentle power he had never fully recognized until now, it seemed to him that he was safe. There was an unaccountable sense of security in their mere presence; they smiled on him, and seemed to promise protection for their shrine and their votary.

The baronet went straight to his room, made a hasty toilet, and came down to the library to await his guests.

He was in hopes that Raymond would have come before the others, and that they might have a little talk together. But Raymond was behind them all. Everybody was assembled, the dinner was waiting, and he had not yet arrived.

It was a mere chance that he came at all. Nothing, in fact, but the dread of awakening Franceline’s suspicions had withheld him from sending an excuse at the last moment; but that dread, which so controlled his life in every act, almost in every thought, compelling him to hide his feelings under a mask of cheerfulness when his heart was breaking, drove him out to join the merry-makers. It was all true what Mr. Langrove had said. There had been a return of the spitting of blood that morning, very slight, but enough to frighten Angélique and hurry her off with her charge to the doctor. He had talked vaguely about debility—nervous system unstrung—no vital mischief so far; the lungs were safe. The old woman was soothed, and went home resolved to do what was to be done without alarming her master or telling him what had occurred. She counted, however, without Miss Merrywig. That pleasant old lady happened from the distance to see them coming from the doctor’s house, and, on meeting the count next morning, asked what report there was of Franceline. Raymond went straight to Blink’s.

“I ask you as a man of honor to tell me the truth,” he said; “it is a matter of life and death to me to know it.”

The medical man answered his question by another: “Tell me frankly, are you in a position to take her immediately to a warm climate? I should prefer Cairo; but if that is impossible, can you take her to the South of France?”

Raymond’s heart stood still. Cairo! It had come to this, then.

“I can take her to Cairo,” he said, speaking deliberately after a moment’s silence. “I will take her at once.”

He thought of Sir Simon’s blank check. He would make use of it. He would save his child; at least he would keep her with him a few years longer. “Why did you not tell me this sooner?” he asked in a tone of quick resentment.

“I did not believe it to be essential. I thought from the first it would have been desirable; but you may recollect, when I suggested taking her even to the South of France, your daughter opposed the idea with great warmth, and you were silent. I inferred that there was some insuperable obstacle in the way, and that it would have been cruel as well as useless to press the matter.”

“And you say it is not too late?”

“No. I give you my word, as far as I can see, it is not. The return of the spitting of blood is a serious symptom, but the lungs as yet are perfectly sound.” M. de la Bourbonais went home, and opened the drawer where he kept the blank check; not with the idea of filling it up there and then—he must consider many things first—but he wanted to see it, to make sure it was not a dream. He examined it attentively, and replaced it in the drawer. A gleam of satisfaction broke out on the worn, anxious face. But it vanished quickly. His eye fell on Sir Simon’s letter of the day before. He snatched it up and read it through again. A new and horrible light was breaking on him. Sir Simon was a ruined man; he was going to be turned out of house and home; he was a bankrupt. What was his signature worth? So much waste paper. He could not have a sixpence at his bankers’ or anywhere else; if he had, it was in the hands of the creditors who were to seize his house and lands. “Why did he give it to me? He must have known it was worth nothing!” thought Raymond, his eyes wandering over the letter with a gaze of bewildered misery.

But Sir Simon had not known it. It was not the first time he had overdrawn his account with his bankers; but they were an old-fashioned firm, good Tories like himself. The Harnesses had banked with them from time immemorial, and there existed between them and their clients of this type a sort of adoption. If Sir Simon was in temporary want of ready money, it was their pleasure as much as their business to accommodate him; the family acres were broad and fat. Sir Simon was on friendly but not on confidential terms with his bankers; they knew nothing of the swarm of leeches that were fattening on those family acres, so there was no fear in their minds as to the security of whatever accommodation he might ask at their hands. When Sir Simon signed the check he felt certain it would be honored for any amount that Raymond was likely to fill it up for. But since then things had come to a crisis; his signature was now worth nothing. Lady Rebecca, on whose timely departure from this world of care he had counted so securely as the means of staving off a catastrophe, had again disappointed him, and the evil hour so long dreaded and so often postponed had come. Little as Raymond knew of financial mysteries, he was too intelligent not to guess that a man on the eve of being made a bankrupt could have no current account at his bankers’. Dr. Blink’s decree was, then, the death-warrant of his child! Raymond buried his face in his hands in an agony too deep for tears. But the sound of Franceline’s step on the stairs roused him. For her sake he must even now look cheerful; love is a tyrant that allows no quarter to self. She came in and found her father busy, writing away as if absorbed in his work. She knew his moods. Evidently he did not want her just now; she would not disturb him, but drew her little stool to the chimney corner and began to read. An hour passed. It was time for her father to dress for dinner; but still the sound of the pen scratching the paper went on diligently.

“Petit père, it is half-past six, do you know?” said the bright, silvery voice, and Raymond started as if he had been stung.

“So late, is it? Then I must be off at once.” And he hurried away to dress, and only looked in to kiss her as he ran down-stairs, and was off.

“Loiterer!” exclaimed Sir Simon, stretching out both hands and clasping his friend’s cordially.

“I have kept you waiting, I fear. The fact is, I got writing and forgot the hour,” said the count apologetically.

Dinner was announced immediately, and the company went into the dining-room.

They were a snug number, seven in all; the only stranger amongst them being a Mr. Plover, who happened to be staying at Moorlands. He was an unprepossessing-looking man, sallow, keen-eyed, and with a mouth that superficial observers would have called firm, but which a physiognomist might have described as cruel. His hair was dyed, his teeth were false—a shrunken, shrivelled-looking creature, whose original sap and verdure, if he ever had any, had been parched up by the fire of tropical suns. He had spent many years in India, and was now only just returned from Palestine. What he had been doing there nobody particularly understood. He talked of his studies in geology, but they seemed to have been chiefly confined to the study of such stones as had a value in the general market; he had a large collection of rubies, sapphires, and diamonds, some of which he had shown to Mr. Charlton, and excited his wonder as to the length of the purse that could afford to collect such costly souvenirs of foreign lands simply as souvenirs. Mr. Plover had met his host accidentally a week ago, and discovered that he and the father of the latter had been school-fellows. The son was not in a position either to verify or disprove the assertion, but Mr. Plover was so fresh in his affectionate recollection of his old form-fellow that young Charlton’s heart warmed to him, and he then and there invited him down to Moorlands. He could not do otherwise than ask Sir Simon to include him in his invitation to the Court this evening; but he did it reluctantly. He was rather ashamed of his pompous, self-sufficient friend, whose transparent faith in the power and value of money gave a dash of vulgarity to his manners, which was heightened by contrast with the well-bred simplicity of the rest of the company. He had not been ten minutes in the room when he informed them that he meant to buy an estate if he could find an eligible one in this neighborhood; if not, he would rent the first that was to be had on a long lease. He wanted to be near his young friend Charlton. Sir Simon was extremely civil to him—surprisingly so.

The other faces we know: Mr. Langrove, bland, serious, mildly exhilarated just now, like a man suddenly relieved of a toothache—Miss Bulpit was going from the parish; Mr. Charlton running his turquois ring through his curly light hair, and agreeing with everybody all round; Lord Roxham, well-bred and lively; Sir Ponsonby Anwyll, a pleasant sample of the English squire, blond-visaged, good-tempered, burly-limbed, and displaying a vast amount of shirt-front; M. de la Bourbonais, a distinct foreign type, amidst these familiar English ones, the face furrowed with deep lines of study, of care too, unmistakably, the forehead moulded to noble thought, the eyes deep-set under strong projecting black brows, their latent fire flashing out through the habitually gentle expression when he grew animated. He was never a talkative man in society, and to-night he was more silent than usual; but no one noticed this, not even Sir Simon. He was too much absorbed in his own preoccupation. Raymond sat opposite him as his alter ego, doing the honors of one side of the hospitable round table.

The conversation turned at first on generalities and current events; the presence of Mr. Plover, instead of feeding it with a fresh stream, seemed to check the flow and prevent its becoming intimate and personal. Sir Simon felt this, and took it in his own hands and kept it going, so that, if not as lively as usual, it did not flag. Raymond looked on and listened in amazement. Was yesterday’s letter a dream, and would this supreme crisis vanish as lesser ones had so often done? Was it possible that a man could be so gay—so, to all appearance, contented and unconcerned, on the very brink of ruin, disgrace, beggary, banishment—all, in a word, that to a man of the baronet’s character and position constitute existence? He was not in high spirits. Raymond would not so much have wondered at that. High spirits are sometimes artificial; people get them up by stimulants as a cloak for intense depression. No, it was real cheerfulness and gayety. Was there any secret hope bearing him up to account for the strange anomaly? Raymond could speculate on this in the midst of his own burning anxiety; but for the first time in his life bitterness mingled with his sympathy for the baronet. Was it not all his own doing, this disgrace that had overtaken him? He had been an unprincipled spendthrift all his life, and now the punishment had come, and was swallowing up others in its ruin. If he had not been the reckless, extravagant man that he was, he might at this moment be a harbor of refuge to Raymond, and save his child from a premature death. But he was powerless to help any one. This is what his slavish human respect had brought himself and others to. A few hundred pounds might save, or at any rate prolong for perhaps many years, the life of the child he professed to love as his own, and he had not them to give; he had squandered his splendid patrimony in the most contemptible vanity, in selfish indulgence and unprofitable show. And there he sat, a piece of tinsel glittering like true gold, affable, jovial, as if care were a hundred miles away from him. M. de la Bourbonais felt as if he were in a dream, as if everything were unreal—everything except the vulture that was gnawing silently at his own heart.

The conversation grew livelier as the wine went round. Mr. Plover was attending carefully to his dinner, and was content to let others do the most of the talking. A discussion arose as to a case of something very like perjury that a magistrate of the next county had been involved in. Some were warmly defending, while others as warmly condemned, him. Mr. Plover suspended the diligence of his knife and fork to join with the latter; he was almost aggressive in his manner of contradicting the other side. The story was this: A magistrate had to judge a case of libel where the accused was a friend of his own, who had saved him from being made a bankrupt some years before by lending him a large sum of money without interest or security. The evidence broke down, and the man was acquitted. It transpired, however, a few days later, that the magistrate had in his possession at the time of the trial proof positive of his friend’s guilt. In answer to this charge he replied that the evidence in question had come to his knowledge under the seal of confidence; that he was therefore bound in honor not only not to divulge it, but to ignore its existence in forming his judgment on the case. The statement was denied, and it was affirmed that the only seal which bound him was one of gratitude, and that he was otherwise perfectly free to make use of his information to condemn the accused.

The dispute as to the right and the wrong of the question was growing hot, when Sir Ponsonby Anwyll, who noticed how silent Raymond was, called out to him across the table:

“And what do you say, count?”

“I should say that gratitude in such a case might stand in the place of a verbal promise and compel the judge to be silent,” replied Raymond.

“The temptation to silence was very strong, no doubt, but would it justify him in pronouncing an acquittal against his conscience?” asked Mr. Langrove.

“It was not against his conscience,” replied the count; “on the contrary, it was in accordance with it, since it was on the side of mercy.”

“Quite a French view of the subject!” said Mr. Plover superciliously, showing his shining teeth through his coal-black moustache. “If I were a criminal, commend me to a French jury; but if innocent, give me an English one!”

“Mercy has perhaps too much the upper hand with our tender-hearted neighbors,” observed Sir Simon; “but justice is none the worse for being tempered with it.”

“That is neither here nor there,” said Mr. Plover. “Justice is justice, and law is law; and it strikes me this Mr. X—— has tampered with both, and it’s a very strange thing if he is not tabooed as a perjurer who has dodged the letter of the law and escaped the hulks, but whom no gentleman ought from this out to associate with.”

“Come, come, that is rather strong language,” said Mr. Langrove. “We must not outlaw on mere inferential evidence a man who has borne all his life a most honorable name; and if worse comes to worst, we must remember it would go hard with the best of us to put a social brand on a friend that we were deeply indebted to, if we could by any possibility find a loophole of escape for him. A man may remain strictly honest in the main, and yet not be heroic enough not to save a friend on a quibble.”

“Why, to be sure; there are honest men and honest men,” assented Plover. “I’ve known some whose moral capacity expanded to camels when expediency demanded the feat and it could be done discreetly. It’s astounding what some of these honest men can swallow.”

Sir Simon felt what this speech implied of impertinence to Mr. Langrove, and, indeed, to everybody present. “Roxham,” he said irrelevantly, “why is your glass empty? Bourbonais, are you passing those delectable little patés de foie gras?”

Raymond helped himself mechanically, as the servant presented again the rejected dish.

“It would be a nice thing to define exactly the theory of truth and its precise limits,” observed Mr. Langrove in his serious, sententious way, addressing himself to no one in particular.

“One should begin by defining the nature of truth, I suppose,” said Mr. Plover. “Let us have a definition from our host!”

“Oh! if you are going in for metaphysics, I hand you over to Bourbonais!” said Sir Simon good-humoredly. “Take the pair of them in hand, Raymond, and run them through the body for our edification.”

Raymond smiled.

“I should very much like to have the count’s opinion on this particular point of metaphysics or morals, whichever it may be,” said Mr. Plover. “Do you believe it possible for a man to effect such a compromise with his conscience, and yet be, as our reverend friend describes him, a blameless and upright man?”

“I do,” answered M. de la Bourbonais with quiet emphasis. “I doubt if any simple incident can with safety be taken as the key of a man’s character. One fault, for instance, may stand out in his life and color it with dishonor, and yet be a far less trustworthy index to his real nature than, a very slight fault committed deliberately and involving no consequences. We are more deliberate in little misdeeds than in great ones. When a man commits a crime, he is not always a free agent as regards the command of his moral forces; there are generally a horde of external influences at work overpowering his choice, which is in reality his individual self. When he succumbs to this pressure from without, we cannot therefore logically consider him as the sole and deliberate architect of his sin; hard necessity, fear of disgrace, love of life, nay, some generous feeling, such as gratitude or pity, may hurry a man into a criminal action as completely at variance with the whole of his previous and subsequent life as would be the act of a Christian flinging himself out of the window in a fit of temporary insanity.”

“Subtly put,” sneered Mr. Plover. “If we were to follow up that theory, we might find it necessary on investigation to raise statues to our forgers and murderers, instead of sending them to the hulks and the gallows.”

“It opens a curious train of thought, nevertheless,” remarked Lord Roxham.

“I don’t fancy it would be a very profitable one to pursue,” said Plover.

“I have sometimes considered whether it may not on given occasions be justifiable to do evil; I mean technically evil, as we class things,” said Lord Roxham.

“For instance?” said Mr. Langrove.

“Well, for instance—I’ll put it mildly—to convey a false idea of facts, as your friend X—— seems to have done in this libel business. I suppose there are cases where it would be morally justifiable?”

“To tell a lie, you mean? That is a startling proposition,” said the vicar, smiling.

“It has the merit of originality, at least,” observed Mr. Plover, helping himself to a tumblerful of claret.

“I’m afraid it can’t boast even that,” said Lord Roxham; “it is only an old sophism rather bluntly put.”

“I should like to hear the Count de la Bourbonais’ opinion on it,” said Mr. Plover, rolling the decanter across to his self-elected antagonist.

Raymond had feigned unconsciousness of the stranger’s insolent tone thus far, though he had detected it from the first, and was only too deeply possessed by other thoughts to resent it or to care a straw for what this stranger or any human being thought of him or said to him. But the persistency of the attack forced him to notice it at last, if not to repel it; he was not sufficiently interested in the thing for that. But he was roused from the kind of stinging lethargy in which he had hitherto sat there, nibbling at one thing or another, oftener playing with his knife and fork, and touching nothing. He laid them down now, and pushed aside his glass, which had been emptied to-night oftener than was his wont.

“You mean to ask,” he said, “if, according to our low French code of morals, we consider it justifiable to commit a crime for the sake of some good to ourselves or others?”

“I don’t go quite that length,” replied Mr. Plover; “but I assume from what you have already said that you look on it as permissible to—tell a lie, for example, under given circumstances.”

“I do,” said Raymond.

There was a murmur of surprise and dissent.

“My dear Bourbonais! you are joking, or talking for the mere sake of argument,” cried Sir Simon, forcing a laugh; but he looked vexed and astonished.

“I am not joking, nor am I arguing for argument’s sake,” protested Raymond with rising warmth. “I say, and I am prepared to prove it, that under given circumstances we are justified in withholding the truth—in telling a lie, if you like that way of putting it better.”

“What are they?”

“Prove it!”

“Let us hear!”

Several spoke together, excited and surprised, and every head was bent towards M. de la Bourbonais. Raymond moved his spectacles, and, fixing his dark gray eyes on Mr. Plover as the one who had directly challenged him, he said:

“Let us take an illustration. Suppose you entrust me with that costly diamond ring upon your finger, I having promised on my oath to carry it to a certain person and to keep its possession a secret. We will suppose that your life and your honor depend on its being delivered at its destination by me and at a given time. On my way thither I meet an assassin, who puts his pistol to my breast and says, ‘Deliver up your purse and a diamond which I understand you have on your person, or I shoot you and take them; but if you give me your word that you have not got it, I will believe you and let you go.’ Am I not justified, in order to save your honor and life and my own in answering, ‘No, I have not got the diamond’?”