rstand by your silence that there is not a Christian man
or woman in all this company who has an unconverted friend whom he or
she would like to have us pray for?"

Then the watching Angel of the Covenant came to the help of this
trembling, struggling Ester, and there entered into her heart such a
sudden and overwhelming sense of longing for Sadie's conversion, that
all thought of what she would say, and how she would say it, and
what people would think, passed utterly out of her mind; and rising
suddenly, she spoke, in clear and wonderfully earnest tones:

"Will you pray for a dear, dear friend?"

God sometimes uses very humble means with which to break the spell of
silence which Satan so often weaves around Christians; it was as if
they had all suddenly awakened to a sense of their privileges.

Dr. Van Anden said, in a voice which quivered with feeling: "I have
a brother in the profession for whom I ask your prayers that he may
become acquainted with the great Physician."

Request followed request for husbands and wives, mothers and fathers,
and children. Even timid, meek-faced, low-voiced Mrs. Ried murmured
a request for her children who were out of Christ. And when at last
Harry Arnett suddenly lifted his handsome boyish head from its bowed
position, and said in tones which conveyed the sense of a decision,
"Pray for _me_" the last film of worldliness vanished; and there are
those living to-day who have reason never to forget that meeting.

"Is it your private opinion that our good doctor got up a streak of
disinterested enthusiasm over my unworthy self this evening?" This
question Dr. Douglass asked of Sadie as they lingered on the piazza in
the moonlight.

Sadie laughed gleefully. "I am sure I don't know. I'm prepared for any
thing strange that can possibly happen. Mother and Ester between them
have turned the world upside down for me to-night. In case you are the
happy man, I hope you are grateful?"

"Extremely! Should be more so perhaps if people would be just to me in
private, and not so alarmingly generous in public."

"How bitter you are against Dr. Van Anden," Sadie said, watching the
lowering brow and sarcastic curve of the lip, with curious eyes. "How
much I should like to know precisely what is the trouble between you!"

Dr. Douglass instantly recovered his suavity. "Do I appear bitter?
I beg your pardon for exhibiting so ungentlemanly a phase of human
nature; yet hypocrisy does move me to--" A