disturbing its apparently tranquil surface, and ready in due course
to be consecrated to his office, and to take some benefice if he
could get it, and live and die as the average priest of those times
did, without troubling himself over the vexed questions of papal
encroachment and traffic in pardons and indulgences which were
setting Germany in a flame.

But he had been first aroused by seeing the light in Freda's eyes
as these questions had been discussed in the hearing of her and her
sister. From the first moment of his presentation to Dr. Langton's
family Dalaber had been strongly attracted by the beautiful
sisters, and especially by Freda, whose quick, responsive eagerness
and keen insight and discrimination made a deep impression upon
him. The soundness of her learning amazed him at the outset; for
her father would turn to her to verify some reference from his
costly manuscripts or learned tomes, and he soon saw that Latin and
Greek were to her as her mother tongue.

When she did join in the conversation respecting the interpretation
or translation of the Holy Scriptures, he had quickly noted that
her scholarship was far deeper than his own. He had been moved to a
vivid admiration at first, and then to something that was more than
admiration. And the birth and growth of his spiritual life he
traced directly to those impulses which had been aroused within him
as he had heard Freda Langton speak and argue and ask questions.

That was how it had started; but it was Clarke's teaching and
preaching which had completed the change in him from the careless
to the earnest student of theology. Clarke's spirituality and
purity of life, his singleness of aim, his earnest striving after a