consideration of which you and I have drifted; and I found that it had for Dr Dalton more of a personal than a philosophic interest. As it is a matter on which individual experiences are rare, and modern testimony that commands confidence is hard to find, it was natural that he should tell me certain incidents in his own life that had impressed him strongly with the presence and the active interference of the powers of evil in human affairs. What to me was a matter of faith or theory was to him a practical issue to be fought out, a danger to be encountered at any moment, on any street corner.

"To put his story in my own words, he had become a very popular priest in his own city, and his reputation for learning and piety was growing beyond it. He was healthy, happy, zealous in his duties, and glad of the powers and opportunities of priesthood. Possibly he was too prosperous, and perhaps a sense of human satisfaction, if not a touch of human vanity, began to influence his daily life. Be that as it may, a call came from a distant point in the diocese, an out-of-the-way country place, for help for a girl seemingly possessed of a demon, and he was authorised to visit her. He undertook the task with a feeling of strong distaste, inclined to think the case one for sound physician rather than an exorcist; but he was clear as to the possibility of the presence of an evil spirit, and his education in Rome was not without effect, for there you may notice at every moment

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grave personages, without interrupting the flow of conversation, crossing their fingers for a protective spell against the evil eye, as they catch the look of some passer-by on the street.

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"The case proved to be very peculiar one. The girl was ignorant and commonplace, save that she believed herself under the control of some other power than her own soul, and showed at times knowledge altogether beyond her ordinary capacity. She named the very hour when Dr Dalton would come, recognised him, though she had never seen him before, was aware of the details of an accident that had delayed him on his journey; and when asked how she knew these and other things, answered invariably, referring to her familiar devil, 'He told me so.' When guilty of some perverse action, her explanation was, 'He told me to,' and she was conscious sometimes of temptation and successful resistance wanted me to.' In the course of investigation my friend inadvertently made use of Latin, and the girl answered in the same tongue, though she did not know one word of it from another. She was docile enough at the beginning of the ceremonial, but grew stubborn and vicious in her bearing as it proceeded. The priest had prepared himself by prayer and fasting, and chose to make the trial in the church rather than at the home of the afflicted girl. The ceremony is direct and earnest. It begins with the sign of the cross, sprinkling with holy water, the Litany of the Saints, the Lord's Prayer, and the psalm, 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' The evil spirit is commanded to depart by the mysteries of the incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the sending of the Holy Spirit, and the coming again to judgment. Then follows the opening passage of St John's Gospel, and afterwards that portion of the sixteenth chapter of Mark that contains the commission of the apostles: 'And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.' Also there is read that passage of the tenth chapter of Luke beginning, 'And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through Thy name.' me.' In conclusion there is the direct address to the unclean spirit and the prayer of exorcism.

"Dr Dalton thought best to test the girl at the conclusion by requiring her to go to confession; and then came the most trying of his experiences. As she knelt at the little opening in the confessional and began, there was nothing unusual; but

on a sudden her face was changed, there came over it an expression of fury, and the eyes blazed with a strange light. The priest seemed to see over again one of those Scriptural scenes where the demon is described as flinging down and tearing his victim in a final passion, calling out, 'Let us alone! Art Thou come to destroy us? Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?' He had no doubt that the fiend showed himself clearly for an instant, and poured out the flood of denunciation and blasphemy that followed. It closed with a full tide of personal malice and menace. 'I will make you rue the day you interfered with me! Think of me when you trip! Remember me when you fall! I will set temptation and danger round about you. I will cover you with shame and drag you down to disgrace and damnation!' It was an ugly valediction, and my friend was somewhat startled by it, especially as so many puzzling things had happened in succession, and as he was fasting and had been under strong emotional strain; but he was a man that few things daunted, and nothing daunted long. He recovered his usual cheerfulness; and what helped him more than anything else was the whimsical story that came into his head about Luther flinging his inkstand at the devil. He said to himself with a laugh that if Luther could treat the master fiend with such careless disrespect it would be unbecoming in him to worry over the ravings of a demon.

"Among other cares the incident passed out of his consciousness; but a gradual change began in his life. His course as a priest, before so prosperous, began to be beset with difficulties. His very popularity with all classes of people turned into a danger; for the bishop seemed to grow jealous of his influence-captious and carping as to everything he undertook. Many of his fellow - priests whom he overshadowed grew shy of his companionship when they saw their superior become hostile; for the favour of

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foolish

bishop, like that of a prince, may be a sort of moral discredit, but it is none the less a potent thing. Those who knew him well admired him all the more for the tolerance with which he bore petty persecution and for the zeal with which he worked under discouragement; but of course multitudes of Catholics and even Protestants who had little knowledge of him took the vague rumours that began to circulate against him as not without foundation. It is assumed when a bishop and a priest are at variance that the priest is in the wrong as a matter of course, and even in a republic no one thinks to ask whether anything happens to be the matter with a person in authority. If serious accusations are suggested, the condoling whisper runs around as to how long patient authority has borne with insubordination or wrong. If only trivial charges are mentioned, there are flying hints in the air that far worse have been kept in the

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background lest scandal should come. In the case of Dr Dalton trouble was bound to increase; for as he met mere criticism, rebuke, and hostility in simple silence, and all orders, however capricious, with unhesitating obedience so long as they concerned matters within the episcopal discretion, the impulse to tyranny grew stronger as the expectation of resistance grew less. As a consequence, the bishop, who had not been consecrated for his scholarship, began to transgress the canon law in order to have his will, and then clashed against a determination as strong as his own. The priest, a far abler man, had halted hair'sbreadth within the verge of his rights and waited for the contest; and whenever an unlawful command came he set it aside. It is needless to say that their relations were very much strained. About this time Dr Dalton went to see his superior on parish business in regard to which the bishop had to be consulted. As he stepped into the study he knelt to kiss the episcopal ring; but the bishop snatched away his hand and exclaimed, 'Keep away from me! How dare you come here?' The priest rose and said with a softly contemptuous smile, 'I can assure your lordship that I came here as a matter of business necessity. You did not imagine for a moment, did you, that it was any expectation of the pleasure to be in your company that brought me?' 'Go,' said the bishop furiously. You are a disobedient and rebellious priest.

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Leave the room, and never let me see your face again!' The priest went; but in telling me the story afterwards, he said that just as he turned he started with horror; for he caught in the bishop's eyes the same fiendish gleam that shone in the eyes of the possessed girl when she began to rave at him in the confessional. It had been more than two years since he had thought of that incident, and yet at once it seemed as if the same demon were speaking to him again. After the first rush of certainty, he shook himself free from the impression; but it kept returning, notwithstanding his disposition to treat it as morbid and fantastic.

"Not long after, the final issue was joined between bishop and priest on which they went to Rome for a decision; but in the meanwhile something curious happened. There was a sensation in the Western papers, which I distinctly recall, about the death of a mysterious stranger in a hotel in the city where Dr Dalton, then unknown to me, lived. The stranger had gone into the hotel late at night, called for a room and taken possession of it, sending down for a bottle of wine. The next day, as he made no sign, the room was broken open and he was found sitting in a chair dead. had taken a dose of chloral, drunk the wine, sat for a time reading novel evidently bought on a railroad train, lit a small fire in the grate, burned several letters, cut pieces out of his clothes that had his name on and burned them, and partly

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He

burned the book. There was no means of identification, and the name on the hotel register was clearly false. The man was young and apparently rather delicate, photographs were taken and his picture was published far and wide in the papers for recognition, but to no purpose. That much the public knew; but there was something the public never found out. On the night when the stranger took lodging in the hotel, Dr Dalton was sitting in his study alone; and this very man called to see him and was shown into the room. He sat down, but acted in an odd, uneasy way, and glanced furtively about him. The priest bade him welcome in his frank, manly fashion, and asked his business. The stranger looked up and stared at him a moment, and then said, 'I came here to kill you.' Dr Dalton at once concluded that his visitor was crazy, but too weak and uncertain to be dangerous, and he answered, 'Oh, nonsense! You are a little out of sorts, nervous and worried about something, and you have caught at the first wild whim that came into your head. How could you want to kill me, a man that you never saw before in your life?' 'I know you well enough,' said the stanger, 'and I must kill you. I came to do it.' 'And I tell you,' said the priest, speaking easily and confidently, but keeping a commanding eye on his curious visitor, 'you are going to do nothing of the sort. You have a fit of the blues, or your nerves are on the quiver after too much liquor; and what you need is a good sound sleep.' 'I am commissioned to kill you,' repeated the stranger with dull reiteration, 'and it will have to be you or myself!' He rose as he spoke, as if to act; but Dr Dalton rose also, alert, powerful, and controlling by his force of will the wavering creature before him. Go to a hotel,' he said, 'take something that will quiet your nerves, have a sound sleep, and the world will look like a new place to you in the morning.' 'If I do not kill you to-night,' the stranger said, 'I shall not see morning!' For an instant there seemed to be a struggle to attempt the crime, but he faltered, gave way, and exclaimed, 'I am going! I will kill myself!' and then turned and darted out; but at the very instant he turned the priest was startled to catch once more in the furtive eyes that met his own for an instant the look of furious, malicious, and baffled hate that he had encountered in the eyes of the possessed girl in the confessional. He felt such a thrill of fear that he was glad that the contest of wills had been decided before the last moment. On thinking the matter over next morning, he went to the chief of police, who was a friend, and made inquiry as to his visitor of the night before: the discovery of the unknown stranger dead in his room in the hotel followed; but as to his visit to the priest nothing was ever said."

As Father Lyndon came to

a pause at this point there was a call to luncheon, and he said as we stepped into the diningroom, "I shall go on with the story by-and-by."

rather

In the meanwhile I felt like making some observation on what he had told already, for my mind is strongly indisposed to a supernatural, or spiritual, explanation of anything, and is much given to the natural, or rather the material, aspect of things-readier to grant the unknown as a concept of reason than to conceive our relationship to it. I said

"All this is odd; but it seems to me that if we look for commonplace causes and not extraordinary ones, it becomes simple enough. Was there demoniac possession in the case of the girl? Is it not easier to suppose that she was afflicted in some merely physical way, involving temporary mental excitement? The notion that she was possessed might suggest itself readily, for the first impulse of humanity in ignorance is to look for a supernatural cause of what comes through natural process not understood. sanest of us is puzzled to know the working of his own thought; why should we accept the theory of a silly and hysterical girl about her own ravings? It was easy, simple, and doubt very convenient at times to throw all responsibility for her vagaries on the indefinite 'Him' that 'told her to.' Even Socrates condescended to that delusion.”

The

no

"How," asked my friend, "would you explain her know