when the disciples, fishing thus, were called by the Divine Voice, saying “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” And in silence he helped to row the laden boat homewards, for there was no wind to fill the sail,—­and the morning gradually broke like a great rose blooming out of the east, and the sun came peering through the rose like the calyx of the flower,—­and still in a dream, Aubrey walked through all that splendour of the early day home to his lodging,—­there to find himself,—­like Byron,—­famous.  His book was in everyone’s hand—­his name on everyone’s tongue.  Letters from the publisher whom his visit to London had made his friend, accompanied by a bundle of the chief newspapers of the day, informed him that he had in one bound taken his place at the very head and front of opinion,—­and, finest proof of power, the critics were out like the hounds in full cry, and were already baying the noble quarry.  The Church papers were up in arms—­indignant articles were being added to the “weeklies” by highly respectable clergymen with a large feminine “following”, and in the midst of all these written things, which in their silent print seemed literally to make a loud clamour in the quiet of his room, Aubrey, in his sea-stained fisherman’s garb, with the sparkle of the salt spray still glittering on his closely curling bright hair, looked out at the clear horizon from which the sun had risen up in all its majesty, and devoutly thanked God!

“I have written part of my message,” he said to himself, “And now by-and-by I shall speak!”

But he lived on yet for a time in the remote fishing village, waiting,—­without knowing quite what he waited for,—­while the great Gargantuan mouth of London roared his name in every imaginable key, high and low, and gradually swept it across the seas to America and Australia, and all the vast New World that is so swiftly rising up, with the eternal balance of things, to overwhelm the Old.  And presently the rumour of his fame reached those whom he had left behind in the quiet little town of his birth and boyhood,—­and his mother, reading the frantic eulogies, and still more frantic attacks of the different sections of press opinion, wept with excitement and tenderness and yearning; and his father, startled at the strange power and authority with which this new Apostle of Truth appeared to be invested, trembled as he read, but nevertheless held himself more erect with a pride in his own old age that he had never felt before, as he said a hundred times a day in response to eager questioners—­ “Yes,—­Aubrey Leigh is my son!” Then mother and father both wrote to Aubrey, and poured out their affectionate hearts to him and blessed him, which blessing he received with that strange heaving of the heart and contraction of the throat, which in a strong man means tears.  And still he waited on, earning his bread in the humble village which knew nothing of him, save as one of themselves,—­for the inhabitants of the place were deaf and blind to