round courses of their minds are
laid in the Roman cement of tradition, and that stately and splendid
structures may be reared on such a foundation. But to see one laying a
platform over heretical quicksands, thirty or forty or fifty years deep,
and then beginning to build upon it, is a sorry sight. A new convert
from the reformed to the ancient faith may be very strong in the arms,
but he will always have weak legs and shaky knees. He may use his hands
well, and hit hard with his fists, but he will never stand on his legs in
the way the man does who inherits his belief.

The services were over at last, and Dudley Venner and his daughter walked
home together in silence. He always respected her moods, and saw clearly
enough that some inward trouble was weighing upon her. There was nothing
to be said in such cases, for Elsie could never talk of her griefs. An
hour, or a day, or a week of brooding, with perhaps a sudden flash of
violence: this was the way in which the impressions which make other
women weep, and tell their griefs by word or letter, showed their effects
in her mind and acts.

She wandered off up into the remoter parts of The Mountain, that day,
after their return. No one saw just where she went,--indeed, no one knew
its forest-recesses and rocky fastnesses as she did. She was gone until
late at night; and when Old Sophy, who had watched for her, bound up her
long hair for her sleep, it was damp with the cold dews.

The old black woman looked at her without speaking, but questioning her
with every feature as to the sorrow that was weighing on her.

Suddenly she turned to Old Sophy.

"You want to know what there is troubling me;" she said. "Nobody loves
me. I cannot love anybody. What is love, Sophy?"

"It's what poor Ol' Sophy's got for her Elsie," the old woman answered.
"Tell me, darlin',--don' you love somebody?--don' you love? you
know,--oh, tell me, darlin', don' you love to see the gen'l'man that
keeps up at the school where you go? They say he's the pootiest
gen'l'man that was ever in the town here. Don' be 'fraid of poor Ol'
Sophy, darlin',--she loved a man once,--see here! Oh, I've showed you
this often enough!"

She took from her pocket a half of one of the old Spanish silver coins,
such as were current in the earlier part of this century. The other half
of it had been lying in the deep sea-sand for more than fifty years.

Elsie looked her in the face, but did not answer in wor