A knock; the curtain which masked the door was drawn aside, and a servant asked an audience for Monsieur Olivier Logonna.

The bishop bowed, and then summoned a welcoming smile. He had no reason to dislike Logonna, he was not liberal, but the priest of Locmaria asserted that he paid his dues, and led a good life-and yet the bishop had always shrunk from the dark-browed subtly smiling man.

Good day, my son,' he said, as Olivier bent low to kiss his hand; what can I do for you?'

Olivier looked very sad.

'My lord, I am cast down with trouble. My fellow-townsman and friend Jehan Kergrist, whom we all thought dead, has returned —though, indeed, from what I hear, it is like enough that it is not he, but some impostor who has learned his story, and is passing himself off on the poor wife as her husband-if it be the true Jehan, then, alas, he is distraught and possessed.'

The words jarred on the bishop; he looked up sharply at Olivier.

'On what do you found this charge?'

But there was another rapping at the door, and before the bishop had given leave the servant came in hurriedly.

'Pardon, my lord-but there is good news; Jehan Kergrist is not dead after all, he is waiting without.'

The man had known Jehan all his life, and his eyes were bright with pleasure.

'He may come in;' the bishop turned his head away from Olivier, who tried to interpose.

Jehan came in, followed by the priest and Françoise; they all knelt and kissed his hand, but the bishop was shocked by the change he saw in Jehan.

Logonna came forward and greeted him.

"Welcome home, friend,' he said; why, we had all given you up; he looked into Jehan's eyes, and Kergrist's doubts melted into renewed trust in his friend.

'I came to Quimper to find you, Olivier; to ask you to restore the precious deposit I confided to you. I have lost all besides,' he said frankly; that is to say, while this war lasts and trade is at an end with foreign countries.'

Logonna looked at the bishop, and touched his forehead.

'My good Jehan, you mistake,' he said gently. 'Do you not remember what passed between us? you gave me this precious charge, but at the last you changed your mind and I restored it to you-surely you remember that?'

Jehan looked at him keenly, but Olivier met his eyes with a look of gentle pity in his dark narrow gaze.

'You are distraught, Olivier Logonna, or you are the blackest of liars. Recollect yourself; it was you who first urged this journey on me, and then you bade me secretly sell all that I had, and give you the money to take care of.'

The bishop looked earnestly from one face to the other.

'You are both men of good repute,' he said, ' and yet one of you must be a great sinner. Jehan, are you sure of what you say?'

Spite of his secret shrinking from Logonna, the man's calm gentleness seemed to attest his innocence; the angry face and impetuous gestures of miserable-looking, beggarly Jehan went against him in the bishop's mind.

'Oh my lord, do not you doubt me,' he said imploringly; 'I have no proof but my word, but I have never broken that.'

'Did you take no receipt, then, for this money?' The bishop's manner had become colder towards Jehan.

'No-I would have as soon thought of asking a receipt from yon, my lord.'

The bishop sat musing; at last he looked sadly at Jehan.

'I must summon the chapter, and you shall know the result of their conference; but I must warn you, Jehan, that I fear it can not be favourable to you. Till you went away, your good repute was equal to Monsieur Logonna's; but you have been away for more than a year, and we do not know of your doings; this will, I fear, go against you.'

Françoise had stood clasping her hands on her bosom, but now she stepped forward and fell on her knees.

'My lord, we do not know what Jehan has been doing all this while, but a straight tree does not at once grow crooked; until he went, his life had been spotless. Ah, my lord, no one knew how good he was but I.' She paused to get courage.

'Peace, my poor child,' said the bishop; if Logonna had a wife, she would say as much for him as you do for Jehan. Now I must send you all away that I may consider this matter."

6

he is not a Ah, my lord,

Françoise started up. She could not say so, for good man,' she cried with passion in her voice. through this year you and others have seen but the outside of that false man; he affirmed to me that my husband was beggared and had left me for a new wife, and he besought me to love him—him, Olivier Logonna-traitor, you know this is truth!'

She almost screamed out the last words, and pointed at Olivier,

who had flushed deeply while she spoke.

The bishop looked very stern. I cannot enter into a fresh

matter till the first is settled; but if this is true, Logonna, it will deeply injure your cause.'

Olivier had recovered himself. I forgive her, my lord,' he said quietly; 'no one can blame a wife's expedient to save her husband's credit.'

The bishop seemed as if he did not hear; he went out with a troubled look, but he bade Father Felix keep Jehan and his wife safely in a room by themselves, till they were summoned to the Chapter-house. Logonna, he said, could return to his own house and hold himself in readiness.

The trial is over. Logonna and Jehan stand in the midst of the Chapter-house, with the circle of grave faces bent on them. Most of the reverend judges side with Logonna, a few with Jehan, but these last are silenced, when all at once Logonna stands up and prays to be heard.

Holy Fathers,' he says fervently, 'I am ready to swear before the Blessed Crucifix on the high altar that I restored to Jehan the money he accuses me of; will the proof content you?'

There is universal assent, and the bishop decrees that the oath shall at once be taken.

The procession forms, and slowly enters the cathedral from the long vaulted passage that connects the chapter-house with it. The church is full of the excited townsmen and women of Quimper. Françoise walks as close as she can to her husband.

And now they stand before the high altar; Logonna and Kergrist are side by side, and after some moments of solemn prayer, the bishop mounts the steps and stretches out his hands towards the crucifix; presently he beckons Logonna forward.

Olivier turns to his neighbour: Hold this for me,' he whispers, and he hands Jehan the stick he has been walking with; then he too mounts the steps of the altar.

'Swear,' the bishop says, and there is a breathless hush. The population of Quimper have thronged into the cathedral, but there is no sound; in the deep stillness Françoise hears the throbbing of her heart.

'I swear,' Olivier says-how feeble his voice sounds! that I restored to my friend and neighbour Jehan Kergrist the money which he says I have received from him. I swear it on this holy symbol.'

Ah, what is that! He stretches out his hand and touches the crucifix; the feet of the holy image loosen from the cross-a drop of blood falls-another, and then another.

Jehan's horror overmasters him, he let falls the stick and reels

against Father Felix who stands near him with Françoise. There is a chink of metal, and lo! the staff has broken and from it has poured the stolen treasure, the precious deposit of Jehan Kergrist.

There is a pause, a deep hush, and then a groan rises from the assembled people; the bishop waves his hand to motion Logonna from the altar which he has profaned.

But he stands immovable, and they seize him and drag him away; he bursts into a shriek-he does not resist, but laughs and mocks at them with the gestures of an idiot. The awful judgment had taken away his reason.

In one of the side chapels of the fair cathedral of St. Corentin, there is over the altar the representation of this legend, and of the crime of Logonna of Quimper.

Thomas Moore.1

BY R. H. STODDARD.

TWENTY-SIX years have passed since the flickering light of Moore's genius went out in darkness in his cosy cottage at Sloperton. It had burned dimly for several years, carefully watched by his good wife Bess, who outlived the little man she had loved so long and well. They had been very happy together-he in London and Paris, she at Sloperton, Mayfield, Marly, and elsewhere in France. and England-and they had been very wretched together, for they had seen their children perish one after the other, their eldest son, if I remember rightly, by a violent death.

What rank Moore will hold with Posterity, can be determined only by that august personage, who will make and unmake reputations at her sovereign pleasure; the rank he held among his contemporaries has been determined by them, and their verdicts are recorded in many volumes. No one, not even his enemies (and he had scores of them), questioned his amazing talent as a writer of vers de société, whether the society was that of high-born ladies and gentlemen, that of politicians and tuft-hunters, that of the pretentious ancestors of our Potiphars and Shoddies-the Fudges, and their followers, or that of the great pugilistic arena, wherein such gladiators as Jackson and Cribb struggled for honour and supremacy. He was widely known in England and America as a translator of Anacreon, and disreputably known as a scribbler of amatory verses, which he published under a diminutive pen-name. He was everywhere, and gloriously, known as a singer of Irish melodies, which still have a charm for the warm and impressionable hearts of his volatile countrymen and fair countrywomen. Mr. Thomas Moore, the grocer's son, of Dublin, was a great little man in the morning of the present century. So, at least, thought a young gentleman of twenty, who had been cruelly flogged by the pedagogue of the Edinburgh Review' for a volume of schoolboy rhymes, and who turned in his natural indignation, and ran amuck at his fellow-singers and unneighbourly professors of the ungentle craft. Hear this noble lay preacher :

Who, in soft guise, surrounded by a choir

Of virgins melting-not to Vesta's fire,

1 Prose and Verse, Humorous, Satirical, and Sentimental, by Thomas Moore. Edited by R. Herne Shepherd. London, 1878.