brained church. You were using those same four elements of mine."

The demon came to the door and filled it with darkness. He passed a hairy hand over his guest, and went back to his bellows saying:

"Your body is dead Earth; your soul, chill Air; your pity, thin Water; and your energy, such as it is, Fire of my forge. Any one of 'em may damn you for ever. But come you in to supper-you little halfwitted clergyman with your sing-song Cornish accent!"

The Rev. Mr. Trevenna stood for a few minutes leaning on the door to check his shivering. He was chilled to his marrow by the malignant touch; yet in face of the devil's sneers, he was the prouder to be just a Cornish fisher of men. With a laugh he vaulted

over the half door.

The demon now sat down at a table-nay, it was the forge itself and motioned his guest to a stool on the other side.

Over the fire hung a pot of stew, into which the smith now and again thrust a long spoon to see if the supper was yet cooked. As the creature stirred the mess about, a red-hot salamander crawled out from the fire: the smith seized it, and in spite of its struggles and the appeal in its sapphire eyes, threw it again into the pot. Again he stirred. A sylph of the air flew in at the door unconscious of the darkness: the smith knocked it down, plucked off its blue wings, then thrust and held it down in the boiling mess, and yet again stirred. Then a green gnome, driving a little plough with a yoke of white oxen across a tract of fallow land with the blue sky overhead, came up to the forge: the smith flung it also, plough, oxen and gnome, fallow land and blue sky, into the pot; and he stirred them about. At last Mr. Trevenna saw a rainbow rising from St. Neot's tower. Out from the North Door flew a white-robed nymph, forsaken and weeping. The rainbow perished and the door closed with its own slam. But the face

over that North Door was peering into the boiling pot, and the hairy hand ceased its stirring.

"And now!" the demon hissed, "Now for our supper! You did well to sneak out at my North Door and get quit of your rotting church."

Mr. Trevenna said never one word, but rose and looked into the stew. Bubbles were rising furiously. Some expanded into globes and hovered upon the lip of the pot, where they broke with a sound of misery. Yet others, light as soap-bubbles, rose out of the pot and up to the roof; where, breaking against the rafters, they also vanished in misery.

But the bubbles grew bigger. Black they were: poison-smoke curled about them, and in them were seen points of yellow light. Still one or other would break, and always with that sound of misery; but some disappeared silently through the roof.

Mr. Trevenna rose, said he had no appetite, and with a courteous word went to the door.

'No one enters my church by that door, Mr. Hoblyn,' quoted the demon between snarl and chuckle; and he that goes forth thereby, goes at his soul's peril!'"'

"Nay, I thank you," said the other. "That spoon is not long enough for a little man like me to reach into your pot."

"You'll need no spoon, you little Cornish clergyman, if I set you right in the stew. But this is Liberty Hall-spoon or no spoon "; and he thrust out his hand to seize his guest.

Then Mr. Trevenna saw a ladder reaching up to the roof. A door in it stood open and the sky flashed with stars. He leaped aside and ran up the ladder. It was night; and Mr. Trevenna breathed sweet living air and walked among bare trees.

Far below and indistinctly seen through the trees was

M

a strange building. Hundreds of yellow eyes shone through its walls, so that the man knew it for one of the bubbles that had risen from the stew, to break through Earth's thin crust and settle on her pastures.

Parson Christopher sat down on a frozen bank covered with white mosses, ferns and ground-ivy. He heard running water below tinkling with music as it travelled beneath its thin, frozen coverings. Through the bare trees that bordered the brook's tumbling course, he saw the Hell-bubble, solid against the glory of the night. From one corner of the building rose a slender tower; and from out of it issued a curling blackness, that, intermittently rent with fire, hid much of the firmament.

Down the rocks of the torrent he went, often slipping at first, and then, with that semi-flight of childhood's nightmare, touching earth but once in twenty paces. The waters gathered into a grassy conduit, whence with the stars a-glitter in its deeps, it rushed on to a black and motionless water-wheel dripping from its slimy weeds.

As he stood looking up at the round monster it began to revolve with hideous screech. Pitiful cries came muffled from within doors; and the waters slunk away, dark as the blood-ooze of a slaughter-house, to fill ever fuller the frozen quagmire of Cocytus.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BOYS PRONOUNCE SENTENCE

R. HOBLYN, returning a little later, altered his diagnosis to that of a low fever complicated with dropsy and antagonized by a hectic pneumony: but his prognostic was no less hopeful, though he wished the pulse had been sufficiently bounding to justify its reduction by blood-letting. Persistent feeding, feverpowders and wine, were soon to restore full conscious

ness.

Throughout the morning Lady Evangeline sat by the bedside of the fever-troubled man, giving him warm posset by the horn-spoonful or cooling his head with her handkerchief wrung out in sea-water. Martha must go to her brother's for fresh meat, linseed and hartshorn. Charity was already gone down with Genny to the village to see what supplies could be had, as she dared not meet her father; but they were expected back every minute, and her ladyship would not be left alone very long.

Martha had been less willing to leave her charge but for the visitor's happy influence upon the patient. For, no sooner did she touch his forehead or hand than the restlessness lessened and there came promise of sleep. At that bedside Lady Evangeline's soul sank down into a content past all dreaming. The anguish and fear that would have been intolerable had she been unable to assuage his suffering, were almost swept away in the joy of serving one whose life, even though

separated from her these sixteen years, had been the consummation of all its faith and ministry stood for. In his presence now she felt no fear. She knew he was to recover through God's mercy in sending her to him. The two dormer windows looked upon nothing but the grey swelling sea and the sound of its waves, though once the quiet was broken by the scrunch of a boat upon the shingle, and the bark of dogs. The attic was barer than any peasant's room. The low bedstead uncurtained, the rush chair on which she was seated, and the deal table by her side, were the only furniture. Upon the table lay a white, homespun cloth, a pair of brass candlesticks, and, hanging on the wall, the silver crucifix that had been her one gift to him during these years of separation. All her protestant prejudices fell from her like a garment that had been foolishly protecting her from the sun and wind of the heavens. She dropped upon her knees before this symbol: did it not hold for this beloved man the truth and glory of the universe? And when she rose, her understanding of him was perhaps finer than either his letters, or her one week of companionship with him, had ever made possible.

She was thus a full hour; and Watchman, motionless with nose between his paws, shared her vigil. Then a change upon the man's face filled her with alarm; it had turned grey and his eyes opened, yet not, as in death, beholding nothing, but rather filled with dismay. The terror of that look deepened and the room grew very dark as if a storm was brewing. She leaned over and set her hands upon his shoulders:

"Christopher," she said scarce audibly, "it is I !" But his brow contracted fiercely.

The room grew darker and the darkness was full of drifting shadows. Helpless, and terrified, she drifted with them. What they portended she could not tell, unless she was caught up within the borders of his disordered and tormented mind. A heavy door