en to-day
and his death?"

"And the labouring classes," observed Margaret--"that prodigious
multitude of toiling, thinking, loving, trusting beings! How many of
them see further than the week which is coming round? And who spends
life to more purpose than some of them? They toil, they think, they
love, they obey, they trust; and who will say that the most secure in
worldly fortune are making a better start for eternity than they? They
see duty around them and God above them; and what more need they see?"

"You are right," said Hester. "What I said was cowardly. I wish I had
your faith."

"You have it," said her husband. "There was faith in your voice, and
nothing faithless in what you said. It is a simple truth, that we
cannot see our way before us. We must be satisfied to discern the duty
of the day, and for the future to do what we ought always to be
doing--`to walk by faith and not by sight.' Now, as to this present
duty, it seems to me very clear. It is my duty to offer moral
resistance to oppression, and to make a stand for my reputation. When
it pleases God that men should be overwhelmed by calumny, it is a
dreadful evil which must be borne as well as it may; but not without a
struggle. We must not too hastily conclude that this is to be the issue
in our case. We must stay and struggle for right and justice--struggle
for it, by living on with firm, patient, and gentle minds. This is
surely what we ought to do, rather than go away for the sake of ease,
leaving the prejudices of our neighbours in all their virulence, because
we have not strength to combat them, and letting the right succumb to
the wrong, for want of faith and constancy to vindicate it."

"Oh, we will stay!" cried Hester. "I will try to bear everything, and
be thankful to have to bear, for such reasons. It is all easy, love,
when you lay open your views of our life--when you give us your insight
into the providence of it. I believe I should have looked at it in this
way before, if you had been suffering in any great cause--any cause
manifestly great, because the welfare of many others was involved in it.
I see now that the principle of endurance and the duty of steadfastness
are the same, though--." And yet she paused, and bit her lip.

"Though the occasion looks insignificant enough," said her husband.
"True. Some might laugh at our having to appeal to our faith because we
have been mobbed on pretences which make us blush to