through his experience, Graeme caught a glimpse of that wonderful
paradox of the life that is hid with Christ in God,--constant warfare--
and peace that is abiding; and could the true peace be without the
warfare? she asked herself. And what was awaiting them after all these
tranquil days?

It was not the fear that this might be the lull before the storm that
pained her, so much as the doubt whether this quiet time had been turned
to the best account. Had she been to her brothers all that father had
believed she would be? Had her influence always been decidedly on the
side where her father's and her mother's would have been? They had been
very happy together, but were her brothers really better and stronger
Christian men, because of her? And if, as she had sometimes feared,
Harry were to go astray, could she be altogether free from blame?

The friends that had gathered around them during these years, were not
just the kind of friends they would have made, had her father instead of
her brother been at the head of the household; and the remembrance of
the pleasure they had taken in the society of some who did not think as
their father had done on the most important of all matters, came back to
her now like a sin. And yet if this had worked for evil among them, it
was indirectly; for it was the influence of no one whom they called
their friend that she feared for Harry. She always came back to Harry
in her thoughts.

"But I will not fear for him," she repeated often. "I will trust God's
care for Harry and us all. Surely I need not fear, I think I have been
beginning at the wrong end of my tangled thoughts to-night. Outward
circumstances cannot make much difference, surely. If we are humble and
trustful God will guide us."

And busy still with thoughts from which renewed trust had taken the
sting, Graeme sat still in the moonlight, till the sound of approaching
footsteps recalled her to the present.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

The shining boots crashed the gravel, and the white dress gleamed
through the darkness, some time after the young men were seated in Mr
Elphinstone's handsome drawing-room. The master of the mansion sat
alone when they entered, gazing into a small, bright coal fire, which,
though it was not much past midsummer, burned in the grate. For Mr
Elphinstone was an invalid, with little hope of being other than an
invalid all his life, though he was by no means an old man yet.

If he had b