he set out on his ill-fated journey. But he preferred that the mother should not know this circumstance.

All that friendship and religion could do was done; and, at length, Mrs. Percy, falling from the passion to the stupefaction of grief, was taken away from Paris, and conducted by easy stages to Rome. There a friend of Clara's had found them a house on that part of the Janiculum near St. Peter's: an apartment at once elegant and rude, as so many European, and especially Italian houses are, with fine air, full sun, a superb view, and an almost absolute quiet. On one side, hidden by a wall, was the city; on the other a smooth green hill, that was unbroken in its outlines, save for a group of huge umbrella pines, that seemed to prop that part of the sky. When the sun went down, it looked through those tall trunks as through the bars of a window, and the evening star that followed that sunset flame about the earth, dropped like a moth from branch to branch of the grand tufts overhead.

St. Peter's was ten minutes' walk from them, and the evening of their arrival they went down there for a visit. There was a Benediction that evening, and as the two, following the sound of music that drew them from the moment the heavy curtain fell behind them, reached the Coro, the choir were singing the Agnus Dei of the Litany, singing it so slowly and softly, that the sound sank into the startled hearts of the listeners. It was a sweet greeting to meet them on their first visit to the king of churches. Mrs. Percy's grief had been like one of those tempests where the wind comes before the rain, dying into the rain. First there was passion, then tears. But now, as she knelt in the heart of Christendom, and heard that soothing petition which bears its own answer, both passion and tears were lost in consolation.

"How beautiful it is!" she said, as they went homeward. "How divine is Christianity!"

One never perceives vividly that Christianity is divine, till one has felt its effects in one's own soul. Seen from without, it is but a fair statue.

The house where these two lived was very large, and all of it, except their apartment, was closed, the owner being away. It was built beside a large villa, and a gate in the garden-wall connected it with the villa grounds. The two American ladies were allowed to pass by this gate and the villa in going out, the way being both nearer and pleasanter; but the real entrance to their part of the house was a narrow lane leading up from a street near the colonnade of St. Peter's. The owner of the house and the family at the villa were relatives, and the lane had seldom been used, except to bring up marketing, and as a private entrance. An archway opened from it into the street below.

Their rooms were on the first and second floors of the wing they inhabited, with a loggia extending over the whole roof. The ground floor they used only for the kitchen. On the side of the

THE LORD'S CHAMBER.

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ground floor next the lane was a single room, entered by a door from without, having a wicket looking in on to the stair. This had been used as a sort of porter's lodge, and had no connection with the rest of the house, except by the wicket. The room was quite without furniture, was large, and had a window that looked out on a blank wall. On this blank wall, exactly opposite the window, some hand had drawn a rude cross with red paint.

The ladies had no need whatever of the room, and the two servants had their chamber upstairs. The place was left deserted during the first weeks. Then Clara observed that her aunt went there once or twice, stayed awhile, and when she came away, stood looking thoughtfully about, before coming into the house.

At length her thought found words: "I've been thinking, dear, that in a city where so many are shelterless, it is a pity to have a room like that, quite separate from the house, always unoccupied.”

"I would be glad if some poor person could use it," Clara replied directly. "The only trouble would be, that poor people never go single, and we should find ourselves housing a swarm of beggars."

"It need not be so," Mrs. Percy answered calmly. "We could have regulations, and I would see that they were enforced. We could let some one poor person come at a time to sleep there. I will put a bed in- —a common one will do, of course. In fact, it could only be a pallet with a blanket."

"But where should we find one person without finding a hundred?" Clara asked, beginning to be interested.

"It will get to be known after a time; the persons who have been here will tell of it. I will see that only one shall come, and that one shall be quiet, and come and go without a word. The one who begs, or talks, shall go unfed. The others shall have something to eat evening and morning. I will pay for it all, my dear. It will cost but little, and I want to pay it. I have a reason."

Her voice trembled, and sudden tears blinded her eyes. Clara understood that it was an expiatory charity, offered by the mother for her son, and that she wished to do all herself.

"Of course you are to do as you please, Aunt Marian," she said. "There was no need to ask me. I only questioned in order to understand, not to judge. It will be beautiful if you can manage it. I will offer nothing; but you know I shall be glad to help if you wish for help."

Permission obtained-for she considered it a permission-Mrs. Percy eagerly began her preparations, and as she made them, something of her former life and spirits returned.

Clara smiled as she witnessed her aunt's first step, the cleaning of the room. The housemaid, whose sole idea of cleaning any but a carpeted floor was to sprinkle water on it, and then sweep, could not comprehend that pails of water were to be thrown on these bricks, and the broom to be covered with a cloth, then

rubbed about after the manner of that unknown thing, a mop. She had seen this lady very sad and silent since they had been in the house together, and she now concluded that she must be crazy. All English (including Americans) were more or less mad, and this one was fast growing violent. Angelina tremblingly dashed down the water, and held the broom ready to defend herself in case she should be attacked. Mrs. Percy, with her long black dress wrapped closely about her, to secure it from being wet, stood on the threshold, and gesticulated and explained.

"You are to rub the bricks till they are clean, then sweep the water out the door, then throw down more clean water to rinse the place, and sweep that out too."

What is the use of throwing down water, if I have got to sweep it out again?" the girl asked. Rome knew nothing of such cleaning.

One might as well have attempted to explain to her Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason."

"I feel as if I had been giving lessons in dramatic action," Mrs. Percy said, when, her strength and patience entirely exhausted, she went upstairs to Clara, and left Angelina sweeping out furiously the water that she had been for half-an-hour laboriously throwing about the floor. "I have never in so short a time exercised so many of my muscles. I have pointed up, down, and about; I have used my finger, my hand, my arm, and both arms; I have commanded, exhorted, and entreated. And, do you know," she said confidentially, "I have found out that a certain gesture which means, I give it up! and which I have seen, and pronounced vulgar, is actually the proper expression of one sort of desperate resignation. You throw your arms down straight, the palms of the hands turned forward, lift your head a little and turn it a little to the left, dropping your eyelids, and press your lips together. Just forget yourself for a moment when you are forced to yield to the stupidity of some human mule, and you will jerk yourself involuntarily into this position. I did so just now, and when I caught myself doing it, I thought it was time to retire. I wonder if Delsarte knows about it."

Clara was delighted to see that her aunt could for a moment forget her grief. She did not know that, instead of forgetting, she had become incredulous of it. Mrs. Percy had recollected that she had no positive proofs of her son's death; and to believe that so much youth and beauty could be quenched in a moment, unless she saw his lifeless form, was impossible. She had recollected, too, stories of shipwrecked men who had been taken up by vessels bound on long voyages, and carried all about the earth before being restored again to their own friends. Without some plainer sign, she would not believe that her boy was lost. A thousand plans of search had suggested themselves to her; but she was neither rich nor free. She could not fix herself on that

coast from which his ill-fated steamer had gone out, and wait and watch the waves, with the prayer:

"Oh! come in life, or come in death."

She could not pass her days in writing letters, telegraphing messages, and reading journals. There had been a space of bitter struggle against her impotency; but at last she had resigned all into the hands of God, beseeching Him from whom nothing is hidden to show her the truth when it should seem to Him best. And, having so resigned herself, she was at peace. Only some act of charity she must perform in her son's regard-some act such as the Lord spoke of when He said that it was done for Him when it was done for the least of His little ones. She would give shelter every time she slept to some poor shelterless head, and feed one hungry mouth at evening and morning, that it might have strength to give thanks. This she would do for the Lord, in the name of her son. When the thanks and blessings of the poor whom she relieved were uttered, He would remember her boy, Francis.

It was this thought that had raised her up from despair. Her charity prospered, after the first inevitable confusion and entanglement of the beginning. Of course the poor who were not well housed came and swore that they were not housed at all. Whole families came, thieves came, people came who thought to establish themselves in the chamber for the rest of their lives; some behaved very well till the morning, then, instead of going silently their way, hung about, and begged.

But gradually the irregularities were corrected by firmness and a necessary severity. Mrs. Percy dismissed, one by one, her impracticable sentimental ideas. She relinquished her first intention of allowing, or asking, each one to tell his story to her. They were too monotonous and tiresome, and the greater part of them too evidently invented with a view to further charity. She found that only the Lord can listen to all the petitions of those who come to Him. Her human strength was limited. She marked the contumacious, dismissed them severely, and bade them never come again; but to the humble and thankful poor, she was like an angel.

"It is the Lord's Chamber," she said to them, "and you are His guests. Do not thank me; thank Him. Thank Him before you lie down, and when you rise up in the morning. And, if you would serve me, say an Agnus Dei for him," pointing, as she spoke, to a small picture on the wall opposite the bed.

This picture was a photograph of her son, taken in the days of their prosperity, when he was a boy. Precious though it was to her, she had hung it there, because his life and his salvation were still more precious. Under this, which hung high, was a picture of the Lord as the Good Shepherd, with a lamb in His arms. There was no crucifix.

"They are not likely to forget the Cross," she said. "I wish them to remember the Shepherd."

The room was as poor as could well be. Such people as came there should not be tempted to steal. A thick mattress on springs, two grey blankets, and a pillow, formed the bed. There was a chair and a little wooden stand, nothing more. The wicket had been changed so as to open from the stairs instead of the chamber. Through this, at evening, was set a bowl of soup and a roll. In the morning, a cup of coffee and a roll were put in, and the wicket was immediately closed. Inside the chamber, a tiny white curtain covered it. Occasionally it happened that they never saw the face of the person either coming or going. A policeman at the foot of the lane guarded it for them. When the occupant of the chamber came up, he put a bar across the archway, and no one else might pass. Occasionally some clergyman sent a tenant for the Lord's Chamber. It was always occupied. The door fastened both outside and in; but if the occupant wished to go away before the housemaid came to unbolt the door on the outside, there was a bell to pull.

No questions were asked of any person who came there. The worst might come, but they must behave well while they stayed. One night an old man came up, leaning on his cane, and stopping every two or three steps. They saw his bent figure through the twilight, and sent Angelina down to open the door for him. Surely he would have no pride about being seen, even if she could recognise him in that dim light. He uttered not a word, but stepped slowly and laboriously over the threshold. When the girl carried the soup and bread, and thrust them through the wicket to the table underneath, she heard him praying in a trembling voice.

Early the next morning his bell rang. She made haste to prepare the visitor's coffee, and the bell rang again before she had reached him. She heard him trying to open the door, and went round to unbolt it for him. He staggered out with a strange look in his face, and went down the lane, almost falling.

"Why do you not drink your coffee?" she asked.

He did not seem to hear, but hurried on.

She entered the room, and found that only a spoonful of the soup, and not a particle of bread, had been taken of the supper.

The old man reached the street below, and lay down at the curbstone. The policeman who had sent him up the night before, saw that he was dying.

"Why did you not stay there, when you felt so bad?" he asked. "If I had died there, nobody could have slept in the bed to-night," whispered the old man, and died with that act of charity on his lips and in his heart.

Mrs. Percy and Clara sat on the roof one evening to see the sunset, and breathe the fresh air. It was the last of January; but