ttern,--it will come out a rose by and by.
Life is like that, Myrtle, one stitch at a time, taken patiently, and the
pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. You can trust me.
Good-by, my dear."

"Let her finish the slippers," the old man said to himself as he trudged
home, "and make 'em big enough for Father Pemberton. He shall have his
feet in 'em yet, or my name is n't Byles Gridley!"

CHAPTER XV.

ARRIVAL OF REINFORCEMENTS.

Myrtle Hazard waited until the steps of Master Byles Gridley had ceased
to be heard, as he walked in his emphatic way through the long entry of
the old mansion. Then she went to her little chamber and sat down in a
sort of revery. She could not doubt his sincerity, and there was
something in her own consciousness which responded to the suspicions he
had expressed with regard to the questionable impulses of the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker.

It is not in the words that others say to us, but in those other words
which these make us say to ourselves, that we find our gravest lessons
and our sharpest rebukes. The hint another gives us finds whole trains
of thought which have been getting themselves ready to be shaped in
inwardly articulated words, and only awaited the touch of a burning
syllable, as the mottoes of a pyrotechnist only wait for a spark to
become letters of fire.

The artist who takes your photograph must carry you with him into his
"developing" room, and he will give you a more exact illustration of the
truth just mentioned. There is nothing to be seen on the glass just
taken from the camera. But there is a potential, though invisible,
picture hid in the creamy film which covers it. Watch him as he pours a
wash over it, and you will see that miracle wrought which is at once a
surprise and a charm,--the sudden appearance of your own features where a
moment before was a blank without a vestige of intelligence or beauty.

In some such way the grave warnings of Master Byles Gridley had called up
a fully shaped, but hitherto unworded, train of thought in the
consciousness of Myrtle Hazard. It was not merely their significance, it
was mainly because they were spoken at the fitting time. If they had
been uttered a few weeks earlier, when Myrtle was taking the first stitch
on the embroidered slippers, they would have been as useless as the
artist's developing solution on a plate which had never been exposed in
the camera. But she had been of late in training