own right hand had so mercifully begun? What could I do but beg and implore of Him, as the choicest grace which He could give me, so to watch over and to protect me, so to keep his watchful and his loving hand ever upon me, that I might be, at least, a humble and a faithful, if not a profitable, servant in his holy vineyard--that, through time and through eternity, I might be a holocaust laid upon the altar of his love, a holocaust to be consumed to the greater honour and glory of his adorable name ?

I think I could not well have told you the story of my vocation in fewer words than I have done. If you deem that I could have done so, I beg of you to think those words unsaid. It was, after my conversion, the great grace of my life, a grace so immense and of such infinite import, to me, at least, that, although, if I could pour out my whole being in one gushing act of thanksgiving, I should still fall far short of what is due from me for such a gift, I would not willingly say one word more than is absolutely necessary about it; and it was necessary to my purpose to inform you of the fact.

For some little time I thought that Eustace would have been drawn in a like direction. Naturally speaking, and if such should be the will of God, he was very anxious to enter the ecclesiastical state; but, in the mysterious designs of Providence, he, who was so infinitely my superior in everything that was holy and pure, was left to serve his God and save his soul in the midst of the world; whilst I was taken to cooperate in that most divine of all divine works, the salvation of immortal souls. It was the will of God that Eustace, living in the midst of the world, discharging its duties, and surrounded by its follies,

should exhibit to that world the sublime picture of a Catholic and a Christian gentleman; the picture of one who knows how to use the things of the world, even in their abundance, without being contaminated by them; the picture of a gentleman, so perfect in its idea, so true and so complete in its verification, so bright and so radiant in its fair garment of Christian virtues and their heroic practice, that, many and many a time, I am fain to blush with shame, but a shame that is full of admiring love, as I think of the lessons of faith, and of sanctity, and of truth, which his life teaches to me, me who, infinitely less worthy as I was, was, nevertheless, called to a state so much. more holy and perfect in itself than that in which he serves his God with such a faithful and an earnest

care.

Thus my poor mother's wish that I should enter the Church was fulfilled, but in a way that she had little thought. It was another great blow to her, but she bore it like a loving and true-hearted woman, as she was. When I told her of it, after the first great burst of grief was over, she only drew me closer to herself, and strove to murmur through her tears, "Thy will be done, my God, thy will, not mine, be done." Then a little while, and once again her arms were clinging to my neck, her mother's lips were pressed upon my brow, her mother's tears were raining down upon my face. Then once again, as she held me in what, perchance, might be a last embrace, forgetful of the great change which had come upon me, with all that such a change might well import; forgetful how her own long-cherished hopes, her expectations, nourished through so many weary years, had been scattered to the winds in what, under any other circumstances, would have been such a cruel

way; forgetful of all except that she yet held me in her arms, that I was the only son of my mother, and she a widow, all her mother's heart came gushing out upon me still once more; as still once more she clung about my neck, and sobbed and cried as though her very heart would break, "My child! my child! I had not thought of this, and God only knows how hard it is to bear-but, still, my child-oh, surely still, my darling, darling child!"

CHAPTER XIV.

LIGHT UPON THE WATERS.

NOTHER period of some five years, and I have attained the summit of my hopes, and the object of my highest ambition. We are all living together, my mother, Eustace, and I, in a small country town, some few miles from London, where I have been placed by my superior. Whilst these five years have been years of quiet happiness and almost undisturbed calm to me, it has been very different with poor Eustace. They have been years of searching trial, of anxious, weary care, to him. Whilst I can see the marks of them in his face and on his brow, I can read their effects still more plainly in every action of his daily life. Not a trial has passed over him which he has not turned to its account. Not a tribulation from which he has not derived its profit. The unrelenting anger, the unbending pride of Sir Percy, have but driven him into closer union with that Fatherly Heart which is ever alive to the wants and the necessities of even the humblest of his children; and he has experienced to the full with what a plentiful and an overflowing love the Lord taketh up

those who are forsaken by father and mother for following his Divine call.

Eustace has never seen his father since they parted after that dreadful interview in the narrow country' lane. Whenever he has called at his father's house, and acting under a strong sense of duty, he has several times done so, he has been rigorously denied admittance. When, acting under that same sense of duty, he has written to his father, his letters have been invariably returned with a bitter and unforgiving message scrawled upon the back of them. It has been a heavy trial, a trial such as a sensitive and delicate nature like his feels in its most touching poignancy; but it has only taught him to draw nearer, as I have just said, to his Heavenly Father; has only filled his affectionate soul with a more tender compassion and with a greater yearning towards the earthly parent who has cast him off, and who has thus hardened his heart, or allowed it to be hardened, against his child; has only caused him to pray with an ever-increasing fervour and earnestness that God, in his own good time, may deign to soften that poor father's heart.

It has been a hard struggle with him, too, to earn his daily bread. Before I left England, in order to complete my studies, I had a long and anxious conversation with my mother about the future of Eustace. The result was that, acting under her advice, I positively refused to stir until Eustace had promised us to take up his abode beneath her roof. Perceiving, instinctively, that Peroymoate was no place for him to live in, she declared that she had already made up her mind to leave it, and that nothing should induce her to change this determination. Poor Eustace tried to resist for some little time, but when he per