--What are you standing there for? Go 'long and
get to work!"

In the little Beaubien cottage that afternoon the angry waves of human
fear, of human craving, of hatred, wrath, and utter misery mounted
heaven-high, and fell again. Upon them walked the Christ. As the
night-shadows gathered, Sidney Ames, racked and exhausted, fell into a
deep sleep. Then Carmen left his bedside and went into the little
parlor, where sat the Beaubien and Father Waite.

"Here," she said, handing a hypodermic needle and a vial of tablets to
the latter. "He didn't use them. And now," she continued, "you must
work with me, and stand--firm! Sidney's enemies are those of his own
mental household. It is our task to drive them out. We have got to
uproot from his consciousness the thought that alcohol and drugs are a
power. Hatred and self-condemnation, as well as self-love, voiced in a
sense of injury, are other mental enemies that have got to be driven
out, too. There is absolutely _no_ human help! It is all mental, every
bit of it! You have got to know that, and stand with me. We are going
to prove the Christ-principle omnipotent with respect to these seeming
things.

"But," she added, after a moment's pause, "you must not watch this
error so closely that it can't get away. Don't watch it at all! For if
you do, you make a reality of it--and then, well--"

"The case is in your hands, Carmen," said Father Waite gently. "We
know that Jesus would cure this boy instantly, if he were here--"

"Well--the Christ _is_ here!" cried the girl, turning upon him. "Put
away your 'ifs' and 'buts.' Stand, and _know_!"

The man bowed before the rebuke. "And these," he said, holding out the
needle and vial, "shall we have further use for them?"

"It will be given us what we are to do and say," she returned. "The
case rests now with God."

CHAPTER 9

Four weeks from that crisp morning when Carmen led the bewildered,
stupified lad to her home, she and Sidney sat out upon the little
porch of the cottage, drinking in the glories of the winter sun.
January was but half spent, and the lad and girl were making the most
of the sudden thaw before the colder weather which had been predicted
might be upon them.

What these intervening weeks had been to Carmen, none might have
guessed as she sat there with the sunlight filtering in streamlets of
gold through her brown hair. But their meaning to the boy might have
been read with ease in the thin, white face