The next morning was the day on which he was to be
slain. There was an altar in front of the temple,
and a great crowd assembled, ranked round the open
space. At the appointed hour the priest appeared,
and with him was the youth, holding his beloved by
the hand, but she was blindfolded. He let go
her hand, knelt down, and in a moment the sacrificial
knife was drawn across his throat. His body
was placed upon the wood, and the priest was about
to kindle it when a flash from heaven struck it into
a blaze with such heat that when the fire dropped
no trace of the victim remained. The girl, too,
had disappeared, and was never seen again.
In accordance with the god’s decree, no statue
was erected, no poem was composed, and no entry was
made in the city records. But tradition did
not forget that the saviour of the city was he who
survived in the great image on which the name of the
god was inscribed.
An aged tree, whose companions had gone, having still
a little sap in its bark and a few leaves which grew
therefrom, prayed it might see yet another spring.
Its prayer was granted: and spring came, but
the old tree had no leaves save one or two near the
ground, and a great fungus fixed itself on its trunk.
It had a dull life in its roots, but not enough to
know that its moss and fungus were not foliage.
It stood there, an unlovely mass of decay, when the
young trees were all bursting. “That rotten
thing,” said the master, “ought to have
been cut down long ago.”
“Conscience,” said I, “her conscience
would have told her.”
“Yes,” said my father. “The
strongest amongst the many objections to the Roman
Catholic doctrine of confession is that it weakens
our dependence on the conscience. If we seek
for an external command to do what ought to be done
in obedience to that inward monitor, whose voice is
always clear if we will but listen, its authority will
gradually be lost, and in the end it will cease to
speak.”
“Conscience,” said my grandmother musingly
(turning to my father). “You will remember
Phyllis Eyre? She was one of my best friends,
and it is now two years since she died, unmarried.
She was once governess to the children of Sir Robert
Walsh, but remained in the house as companion to Lady
Walsh long after her pupils had grown up. She
was, in fact, more than a companion, for Lady Walsh
trusted her and loved her. She was by birth
a lady; she had been well educated, and, like her mistress,
she was devoutly and evangelically pious. She
was also very handsome, and this you may well believe,
for, as you know, she was handsome as an old woman,
stately and erect, with beautiful, undimmed eyes.
When Evelina Walsh, the eldest daughter, was about
one and twenty, Charles Fysshe, the young heir to
the Fysshe property, came to stay with her brother,
