pathetic meeting of Henry and Lilian. Mr. Maitland had gradually ceased to believe in his guilt. "But I could never forgive the man who let you suffer in his stead," he says. Lilian shudders at this. Cyril is discussed. "Our dear Chrysostom; our golden-mouth!"

Next day, Sunday, old friends welcome Everard. He has a great reception from the villagers. Lilian presses him to say who was the guilty man. Mark Antony, the cat, is still alive. "Only once did Mark make a mistake," she says, "when he ran after that grey figure in the dusk. Else he never ran after any but myself and Cyril. Henry, you know who killed Ben Lee. Tell me," she sobs, "oh, tell me it was not he!" Henry cannot tell her. Lilian is deeply distressed. "His burden was heavier than mine," Henry says. He comforts her.

The same day, at morning prayer, Cyril enters the cathedral. The organ is playing Mendelssohn's "O Lord, have mercy upon me!" The cathedral is packed with people of all degrees, known and unknown, friends and strangers. The thought that all these will soon know his shame turns Cyril sick. The faces of all those he has injured rise and reproach him. He goes through another great spiritual conflict, but his soul emerges at last, stripped of all pretence, in the awful presence of his Maker, shuddering with the shame of its uncovered sin, and alone. He nerves himself to an effort beyond his strength, as he stands in the pulpit before the innumerable gaze of the vast congregation, by holding Henry's letter as a talisman in his hand. Thus he preaches his last and greatest sermon. "I will confess my wickedness, and be sorry for my sin." This he does literally. He tells the whole story in detail, but without names, sometimes unable to go on for agony and shame, sometimes with tears streaming from his eyes. He tells it there that all may take warning from him. He intends to give himself up to justice as soon as possible. He does not spare himself. Since his first sin, he says, "I have not had one happy hour." He never repented, though always consumed with remorse, until his friend forgave him. "That broke my stony heart," he says. The congregation are deeply moved and horrified. Many think he is under a delusion caused by sorrow for his friend, and mental strain. Having finished in the usual way, he sat down in the pulpit, and neither spoke nor moved again. There he was found later, dead.

Next day Henry, who deeply moved, has watched by the dead body of the dean in his library, has to break the news of Cyril's death to Mr. Maitland, in the very room in which Mr. Maitland had accused him of Cyril's crime and given him up to the police. The 

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