entirely deserted.  The men, I suppose, were all working in the fields; the cottage doors stood open; near the little common rose an old high-shouldered church, much overgrown with ivy.  The sun lay pleasantly upon its leaded roof, and among the grass-grown graves.  I left my bicycle by the porch, and at first could not find an entrance; but at last I discovered that a low, priest’s door that led into the chancel, was open.  The church had an ancient and holy smell.  It was very cool in there out of the sun.  I turned into the nave, and wandered about for a few moments, noting the timbered roof, the remains of old frescoes on the walls; the tomb of a knight who lay still and stiff, his head resting on his hand.  I read an epitaph or two, with the faint cry of love and grief echoing through the stilted phraseology of the tomb, and then I went back to the altar.

On a broad slab of slate, immediately below the altar steps, lay something dark; I bent down to look at it, and then realised, with a curious sense of horror, that it was a little pool of blood; beside it lay two large jagged stones, also stained with blood, which had dried into a viscous paste upon them.  It seemed as if the stoning of some martyr had taken place, and that, the first horrible violence done, the deed had been transferred to the open air.  What made it still stranger to me was that in the east window was a rude representation of the stoning of Stephen; and I have since discovered that the church is dedicated to him.

I cannot give you the smallest hint of explanation.  Indeed, pondering over it, I cannot conceive of any circumstances which can in any way account for what I saw.  I wandered out into the churchyard—­for the sight gave me a curious chill of horror—­and I could see nothing that could further enlighten me.  A few yards beyond stood the rectory, embowered in thickets.  It seemed to be deserted; the windows were dark and undraped; no smoke went up from the chimneys.  It suddenly appeared to me that I must be the victim of some strange hallucination, So I stepped again within the church to see if my senses had played me false.  But no! there were the stones, and the blood beside them.

The sun began to decline to his setting; the shadows lengthened and darkened, as I rode slowly away, with a shadow on my spirit.  I felt I had somehow seen a type, a mystery.  These incidents do not befall one by chance, and I was sure, in some remote way, that I had looked, as it were, for a moment into a dark avenue of the soul; that I was bidden to think, to ponder.  These tokens of violence and death, the blood outpoured, in witness of pain, in the heart of the quiet sanctuary, before the very altar of the God of peace and love.  What is it that we do that is like that?  What is it that I do?  I will not tell you how the message shaped itself for me; perhaps you can guess; but it came, it formed itself out of the dark, and in that silent hour a voice called sharply in my spirit.