published these pages to have expressed his entire and passionate
loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church in faith and deed, and to have
disclaimed any word therein which conflicted with the intimacies of
its truth. I can do no more than to echo his wish, and mourn the
unhappy chance which took him from us on an April tide, though it
befell on the Easter that he loved and at that hour when the flaming
symbol of the Divine Sacrifice was setting in the west. So the passion
of the sun and tide which reflected his belief witnessed the
consummation of his great desire.--THE EDITOR.

THE FORGOTTEN THRESHOLD


THE JOURNAL

(N.B.--On the opening pages of the blank book in which this journal is
contained there is a short fragment which bears no relation that I can
discover to the entries that follow, and I am inclined to believe that
it is the beginning of an autobiography which Middleton never
continued. In my uncertainty, however, I print it, and accordingly it
is transcribed below.--THE EDITOR.)

_Fragment_.--I was not more than three years old when the sunlight
first made me happy as it stole through the curtains and over the
coverlet till it kissed my lips and wrapped me in its warm embrace.
Then I would fall asleep again and my dreams, if I dreamed at all,
were white and faintly stirred me to a smile. I never tried to catch
the sunbeams, for I felt their gold in my heart, nor could they have
been nearer than they were, being associated with my mother's
watchfulness as she stole in to smile upon my slumbers and claim the