an angle of the wall. It was only a small thatched roof, like a bird’s nest; under which stood a rude wooden image of the Saviour on the cross. A real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly beyond expression, and wore a look of unutterable bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given it this, but his art could go no further. The sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth, was not there. The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from his theme. All was coarse, harsh, and revolting to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned away with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing at him, with its fixed and half-shut eyes.
He soon reached the hotel, but that face of agony still haunted him. He could not refrain from speaking of it to a very old woman, who sat knitting by the window of the dining-room, in a high-backed, old-fashioned arm-chair. I believe she was the innkeeper’s grandmother. At all events, she was
