"Aye, ye may laugh, but God alone knows who they may be on whom you rashly counsel that we intrude. Zounds! Tom, one is prepared to find one's very flesh and blood deep in their plots and counterplots in these mad times."

But such a promise of romantic interest was not to be made light of, and ere my words were done Mackenzie had begun to trot along the road in search of the first gate into the Abbey park.

This was not long in finding. I came up with Mackenzie as he entered and in a moment we were advancing along one of the lesser avenues of the estate, which, much to our delight, was thickly shaded and hedged in by dense shrubbery. The avenue curved sharply to the right and made the circuit of the home field, giving at length upon the side or rear of the old mansion. On coming to the end of the secluded road, we tied our horses and made our way more cautiously afoot to the long terrace, the which, it being not on that side where we had seen the lights, we deemed afforded us a safe approach.

Assuring ourselves that our great holster pistols were in readiness, we advanced with haste close to the walls and so came to the windows of the wing.

At the angle whence we both knew we could command a view of the illuminated casement, we breathlessly did pause as though not willing either to have our fears substantiated or our folly proven.

ing to me: "None looks to me for aught. Let me go first, Broadbent. Come if you hear me whistle softly. I am a fool, mayhap, but from my soul I feel you should not see, no, nor be seen here."

"We go together, man,-or neither goes," firmly say I.

"So be it! Come!"

We did then turn the corner of the wing. There was the light as we had seen it from the road, in what I knew to be the library. Mackenzie looked to me for my opinion. I nodded, we should take the half dozen paces which would enable us to see who they might be venturing thus into the haunts of the dead past.

We then stepped forward. But at that instant in which we peered into the dimly lighted room, the solitary light went out-not, oh! my God! before we saw a woman's form disappearing through the door. I felt the blood and spirit of my life ebb from my heart. Mackenzie gasped, failing to find a voice wherewith to cry. The next moment we did hear a long, low whistle, which recalled us to our calm

er reason.

Speechless we hurried to our horses, and putting spurs to them, we had gained the great park gates before a word was spoke. There standeth by the gates a then quite rank and overgrown thicket, or copse, of evergreens, and as we dashed by these my horse shied viciously, and we beheld a man plunge through the hedge in whom I thought I recognized that

Our minds, however, were yet so wrought upon by the mysterious apparition in the Abbey, that we scarce noticed him, and pressed at a smart pace upon our journey.

At the next turn in the road we came upon a horseman making at scarce a walk, in the same direction as ourselves, and would have passed him with but the hour of the day, had not

he wheeled his horse across the road as we approached.

"A chilly evening, gentlemen," he saith.

"By your leave, sergeant," then I cry out, fully recognizing him, "the evening being cold we shall pass on."

"No offence, squire, but as I am desirous henceforth to serve you, may I make bold to ask where ye are making at such an hour? Uncommon rumors have of late been spread."

"By the eternal!" burst forth Mackenzie, fingering his riding whip.

"Peace, Tom!" says I, and then pushing my horse past the good sergeant's, "Sir, had you but been only a moment since hiding beside the gates of the park yonder, you had

known that Thomas Mackenzie, Esquire, and I be just now come forth from the Abbey. Otherwise I have to tell you that we are making now as best we may for home, whither we recommend all honest folk to make (come nightfall) until the country be got well rid of just such gentlemen as he that even now impedes us."

With this we made ahead at a round pace, and came without further molestation to the Grange. Once in my study I summoned Barker.

"My compliments to Miss Broadbent, and will she wait upon her father here immediately."

In half an hour my child came to me. She was, I saw, under a terrible strain. I closed the study door.

John Duns Scotus is usually known in the halls of learning and among theologians and philosophers at large by the designation of Subte Doctor. The question of the birthplace of this man, who by his extraordinary learning shed a halo of glory on the land. of his nativity, has given rise to a diversity of opinion among the writers of England, Scotland and Ireland. Camden, Pitt and other English analists assert (without anything like solid proof) that he was born at Dunston, now contracted to Duns, a small village about three miles distant from Anewick in Northumberland, but the epitaph on his tomb in Cologne, "Scotia me genuit, Anglia suscepit,' shows the glaring impossibility of England having been the land of his birth. On the other hand, Dempster, Mackenzie and other Scotch writers (with as little authority as Mac Pherson had when he asserted that Ossian was a native of Scotland) try to maintain that Scotus was born at Duns, an insignificant little place within the Scottish border, eight miles distant from England.

Finally, MacCaghel, Wadding, Connaeus and a host of other Irish writers, who actually lived in the libraries where the manuscripts of Scotus were preserved, and who consequently were the most competent judges on the subject, strenuously maintained, and proved beyond cavil or contradiction, that John Duns Scotus was a son of Ireland, and that he first drew the breath of life A. D. 1274 in Down, a county in the province of Ulster. The decision of these writers has been embraced by Arthur A. Monasterio of Rouen, by Paul Amalth of Italy, by Nicholas Verneuil of Louvain and by many others distinguished in the literary world for their genius, accuracy and erudition.

A complete, critical and satisfactory discussion on the subject may be found in the sixth volume of Wadding's "Annals of the Franciscan Order," a highly interesting and elaborate work, whence the reader may draw at pleasure a precious fund of antiquarian historical knowledge.

We are informed that Scotus in his early youth was admired for the acuteness of his intellect and the brilliancy of his genius, and that among his principal patrons were two Franciscans, who at that time wielded considerable influence in the university of Oxford. It is uncertain where he made his novitiate; but we are told that after he had become a member of their order, those two sons of St. Francis introduced him into that university. There, according to Joannes Major, he made the principal part of his ecclesiastical course under the guidance and instruction of William Ware (Latinized Varo), his first professor, and the only one of whom we have any cognizance.

In due course of time Scotus became a fellow of Merton College, and ultimately chief lecturer of theology in the university of Oxford. His reputation for virtue, as well as for learning, was then so highly esteemed that students flocked from various countries to hear the words of wisdom that flowed from his lips. On the authority of Pitt it is even stated that several thousand students were at one time applying themselves to the acquirement of learning within the walls of that famous institution, and that they unfailingly attended his lectures.

However this may be, "the fame of Scotus was such," we are informed by his biographer, the learned Wadding, "that his rival could not be found in any literary establishment of that age,

nor perhaps anybody comparable to him, St. Thomas alone excepted, in any national church of the Christian world for several previous centuries.' In the year 1304, the thirtieth of his age, acting in accordance with the mandate of the general of his order, he proceeded to Paris, where he was honored with the degree of Doctor of the Sorbonne, of which institution, a short time afterwards, he was appointed professor by royal edict. While delivering his public lectures. at Paris, Scotus, according to De Bustis, first undertook the defence of that celebrated question on the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, which at that period occasioned and which for years after continued to occasion clamorous controversy among the schoolmen of the times.

Scotus remained in Paris until 1308, when he was by the orders of his superior general, Gondisaeri, removed to the city of Cologne, whither the fame of his erudition had already preceded him, and where it. obtained for him a reception adequate to his acquirements. As he approached the walls of the city, this great but humble man was received with all marks of appreciation and honor by the public authorities, the nobility and the people, and conducted with all the pomp they could command to the ancient university of that capital. There his labors ended all too soon. After a short illness he breathed his last at Cologne on the eighth day of November, A. D. 1308, in the thirtyfourth year of his age. He was buried in the church attached to the Franciscan convent of that city.

St. Thomas died at the early age of fifty, on his way to the Council of Lyons, there to defend the cause of the Latin church against the Greeks. Duns Scotus died at the still earlier age of thirty-four, in the midst of his usefulness. How much the church. and humanity at large lost by the demise of those two intellectual giants!

Had they lived to a ripe old age, how many more works of splendid erudition would they not have sent forth for the honor of their own country and the enlightenment of all future ages!

The remains of Duns Scotus were afterwards removed to a more conspicuous place in the chrurch of the Franciscans at Cologne, where a monument was erected to his memory. We are told that on it the names of fifteen doctors of the order were engraved.

Now with regard to the followers of Scotus, and those that put themselves under the leadership of St. Thomas, we are informed by authorities of great weight, that they both were Scholastics in the strictest sense of the term. The one, as well as the other, accepted the whole tradition of the church as it had been collected by Peter Lombard. "To Scotus as well as to St. Thomas the Pope is the supreme guardian and divinely instituted exponent of the deposit of faith, left to the church, the highest guide and ruler of the Christian commonwealth, the supreme representative of the church's judicial power." Werner, p. 497. Again, to Scotus, as well as to St. Thomas, Aristotle, the representative of human reason, is the decisive authority in philosophical discussion. Hence, according to Bergier, "the difference between the two schools move within very narrow limits, and save on a few occasions, they are exceedingly insignificant." Questions far wider, far more interesting and momentous arose afterwards in the conflict on the power of the Pope, begun at Constance and Basle, and prolonged for centuries, in the learned French church. Even we would say that questions far more varied, conflicting and important yet originated after the rise of scholarship and historical criticism, in the war between the old and new philosophers. Because the limits there formed were so narrow, it probably came to pass

that the Thomists and Scotists fought on so many points that have but little interest for us of the nineteenth century. So numerous, so trivial and so hairsplitting were the differences that existed between these two schools that we will make but a slight selection. from them here.

Both Thomists and Scotists were Realists, but the Realism of the latter was more pronounced than that of the former. To St. Thomas no universal exists as such. The essence is only actually found in the individual; it is by a process of intellect that we separate humanity in general from humanity as it manifests itself in this particular man, and reach the idea of humanity in general. "Universale dum intelligittur, singulare dum sentitur." At the same time St. Thomas, unlike the Nominalists, held that the universal has a "foundation in reality," because the same species exists with identical qualities in a number of individuals. It has precisely the same character, though it is not numerically one. But this universal unity was just what the Scotists maintained. To them the nature in all individuals of the same species was numerically one. The obvious difficulties of this theory led later Scotists to modify it till it was scarcely distinguishable from Thomism, or else to take refuge in unintelligible subtleties.

The Thomists made matter the principle of individuation, so that in spiritual beings like the angels there could. be only one individual in each species. The Scotists believed that in individuals there was a "haeceita," something which made them individual. apart from matter.

St. Thomas held that seconds, including the will, only move so far as they are moved by the first cause. God moves the will to act, gives the action as well as the power to act, in such a manner, however, as to leave the freedom of the will unimpaired. So at least the Dominicans, rightly as it seems to us, understood their

Master. Scotus, on the contrary, held "that the created will is the total and immediate cause of its volition, so that God, in respect thereto, has no immediate, but mediate efficacy." The will is like a "free horse, grace like the rider, and the horse can throw its rider; otherwise the will could not be free, and there could be no possibility of sin." Observe that Scotus and St. Thomas argue on general philosophical grounds.

Scotus against St. Thomas denies that the immortality of the soul can be proved by natural reason; and he separates by a much sharper line than St. Thomas, natural from supernatural theology.

Scotus taught that the Blessed Virgin had never contracted original sin, and he proved this belief to be consistent with the fact that she had been redeemed by Christ. This especially redounds to the honor and glory of Scotus, when we consider that he was the first to formulate and maintain that doctrine which more than five centuries later was proclaimed by Pius IX as a dogma of faith in the church.

With regard to the Sacraments, it may be observed that he rejected the Thomist doctrine of physical, and admitted only a moral efficacy in connection with them.

On moral points, two doctrines of Scotus can be noted here. St. Thomas denied that any deliberate action, however indifferent in itself, could really be indifferent when it is done. Either the action was referred to a good end and so morally good, or not so referred, and therefore evil. The Scotists rejected this doctrine, and held. that the end, and therefore the action itself, might be indifferent.

John Duns Scotus was the only intellectual chief capable of dividing the empire of philosophy and theology with St. Thomas, who, according to the most competent authorities, is the greatest prodigy of learning and mental ability that the world has beheld for the last thirteen centuries.