’Follow me over the bridge, but, for God’s sake, put your feet exactly where I put mine as we cross.  You will see why in a moment after.’

‘I will,’ said Richard, and, delayed a little by needful care, gained the other side just as the foremost of their pursuers rushed on the bridge, and with a clang and a roar were swept from it by the descending torrent.

They lost no time in explanations.  Caspar hurried Richard to the workshop, down the shaft, through the passage, and into the quarry, whence, taking no notice of his cart, he went with him to the White Horse, where Lady was waiting him.

And Richard was well rewarded for the kindness he had shown, for ere they said good bye, the German, whose heart was full of Dorothy, and understood, as indeed every one in the castle did, something of her relation to Richard, had told him all he knew about her life in the castle, and how she had been both before and during the siege a guardian angel, as the marquis himself had said, to Raglan.  Nor was the story of her attempted visit to her old playfellow in the turret chamber, or the sufferings she had to endure in consequence, forgotten; and when Caspar and he parted, Richard rode home with fresh strength and light and love in his heart, and Lady shared in them all somehow, for she constantly reflected, or imaged rather, the moods of her master.  As much as ever he believed Dorothy mistaken, and yet could have kneeled in reverence before her.  He had himself tried to do the truth, and no one but he who tries to do the truth can perceive the grandeur of another who does the same.  Alive to his own shortcomings, such a one the better understands the success of his brother or sister:  there the truth takes to him shape, and he worships at her shrine.  He saw more clearly than before what he had been learning ever since she had renounced him, that it is not correctness of opinion—­could he be sure that his own opinions were correct?—­that constitutes rightness, but that condition of soul which, as a matter of course, causes it to move along the lines of truth and duty—­the life going forth in motion according to the law of light:  this alone places a nature in harmony with the central Truth.  It was in the doing of the will of his Father that Jesus was the son of God—­yea the eternal son of the eternal Father.

Nor was this to make little of the truth intellectually considered—­of the fact of things.  The greatest fact of all is that we are bound to obey the truth, and that to the full extent of our knowledge thereof, however little that may be.  This obligation acknowledged and obeyed, the road is open to all truth—­and the only road.  The way to know is to do the known.

Then why, thought Richard with himself, should he and Dorothy be parted?  Why should Dorothy imagine they should?  All depended on their common magnanimity, not the magnanimity that pardons faults, but the magnanimity that recognises virtues.  He who gladly kneels with one who thinks largely wide from himself, in so doing draws nearer to the Father of both than he who pours forth his soul in sympathetic torrent only in the company of those who think like himself.  If a man be of the truth, then and only then is he of those who gather with the Lord.