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This was a palpable hit at more than one stumbler and fumbler after the truth, and several hoary heads were bowed. My Father then went on to explain very fully the position which I have already attempted to define. He admitted the absence in my case of a sudden, apparent act of conversion resulting upon conviction of sin.
This was nothing else but to throw myself straight down into hell. O my God, was there ever such madness as mine! Where could I think to find either pardon for the past, or power for the time to come, but from Thee? What folly to the stumbler to run away from the light! Let all those who would give themselves to prayer, and to a holy life, look well to this.
"What, sir," I exclaimed, in admiration, "the entire population!" "Virtually, sir. There is, now and then, a stumbler; but he is instantly kicked out of sight, and uniformly counts for nothing." "But as yet, commodore, your evolutions are altogether too general to admit of the chance selection of patriots, since patriotism is usually a monopoly."
On its edge I placed my chair and seated myself. "A leafy nook Where wind never entered, nor branch ever shook," known only to my equine friends and to me. I exulted in it! No discoverer of a new land, no stumbler upon a gold mine, was ever more exhilarated over his find than I over my solitary wild rose path. The tangle was composed of a varied growth.
'Look out for his 'eels! cries one; and another, 'Sit on his 'ed! If this doesn't come to an end we shall die of laughter. Lot one of the funniest of the party is wearing a gigantic cardboard nose and flame-coloured whiskers. There, the stumbler is on his feet again. ''Ere he comes up smilin'! cries his friend of the cardboard nose, and we shake our diaphragms with mirth.
The poor stumbler tottered across his own threshold into that brilliant room where he had always received an enthusiastic welcome, but which he had not visited since his sickness. If ever a man needed kindness and encouragement it was he; but his sensitive spirit instantly discovered that all was changed.
The son of a tradesman, if a boy fell under the imputation, was worthy of honour with him, let the fellow but show grip and toughness. He loathed a skulker, and his face was known for any boy who would own to fatigue or confess himself beaten. "Go to bed," was one of his terrible stings. Matey was good at lessons, too liked them; liked Latin and Greek; would help a poor stumbler.
"A bad omen, coming as it does as he enters the house," replied the soldier in the same low tone, tinged with the superstition of his race. "I pray God," he continued, "that he turn out no weak-kneed stumbler." The incident naturally enough had not served to increase the King's self-confidence.
And, now, when one or other of the gaunt, dry-lipped survivors stumbled a dozen pairs of hungry eyes glittered, a dozen pairs of lips were wrinkled backward from as many sets of fangs, and consciousness of this had a sinister meaning for the stumbler; a meaning which brought a savage snarl to his throat as he regained his footing with quick, threatening looks from side to side and hackles bristling.
"You must look into the Nun's Room first, Lord Rosmore," said Barbara, and she was so interested in the legend that she forgot to ask herself whether she liked or disliked her companion as she led the way to the sunken stone chamber. "Be careful you do not stumble and fall into it, for it is said that death comes to such a stumbler within the year." "A fable, of course?" he laughed.
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