to acquaint Mrs Oldcastle with the condition in which her daughter was left, for, influenced by motives of which I dare not take upon me to conjecture an analysis, she wrote, offering her daughter all that she required in her old home.  Whether she fore-intended her following conduct, or old habit returned with the return of her daughter, I cannot tell; but she had not been more than a few days in the house before she began to tyrannise over her, as in old times, and although Mrs Gladwyn’s health, now always weak, was evidently failing in consequence, she either did not see the cause, or could not restrain her evil impulses.  At length the news arrived of Mr Gladwyn’s departure for home.  Perhaps then for the first time the temptation entered her mind to take her revenge upon him, by making her daughter’s illness a pretext for refusing him admission to her presence.  She told her she should not see him till she was better, for that it would make her worse; persisted in her resolution after his arrival; and effected, by the help of Sarah, that he should not gain admittance to the house, keeping all the doors locked except one.  It was only by the connivance of Ethelwyn, then a girl about fifteen, that he was admitted by the underground way, of which she unlocked the upper door for his entrance.  She had then guided him as far as she dared, and directed him the rest of the way to his wife’s room.

My reader will now understand how it came about in the process of writing these my recollections, that I have given such a long chapter chiefly to that one evening spent with my good friend, Dr Duncan; for he will see, as I have said, that what he told me opened up a good deal to me.

I had very little time for the privacy of the church that night.  Dark as it was, however, I went in before I went home:  I had the key of the vestry-door always in my pocket.  I groped my way into the pulpit, and sat down in the darkness, and thought.  Nor did my personal interest in Dr Duncan’s story make me forget poor Catherine Weir and the terrible sore in her heart, the sore of unforgivingness.  And I saw that of herself she would not, could not, forgive to all eternity; that all the pains of hell could not make her forgive, for that it was a divine glory to forgive, and must come from God.  And thinking of Mrs Oldcastle, I saw that in ourselves we could be sure of no safety, not from the worst and vilest sins; for who could tell how he might not stupify himself by degrees, and by one action after another, each a little worse than the former, till the very fires of Sinai would not flash into eyes blinded with the incense arising to the golden calf of his worship?  A man may come to worship a devil without knowing it.  Only by being filled with a higher spirit than our own, which, having caused our spirits, is one with our spirits, and is in them the present life principle, are we or can we be safe from this eternal death of our being.  This spirit was fighting the evil