hick veil, turned aside, but ready to conceal
her features. It was natural enough that she should not wish to be
looked in the face by curious persons who would be staring to see what
effect the occurrence of the past week had had on her spirits. Her
father attended her willingly; and they took their seats in the pew,
somewhat to the surprise of many, who had hardly expected to see them,
after so humiliating a family development as the attempted crime of
their kinsman had just been furnishing for the astonishment of the
public.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was now in his coldest mood. He had passed
through the period of feverish excitement which marks a change of
religious opinion. At first, when he had begun to doubt his own
theological positions, he had defended them against himself with more
ingenuity and interest, perhaps, than he could have done against
another; because men rarely take the trouble to understand anybody's
difficulties in a question but their own. After this, as he began
to draw off from different points of his old belief, the cautious
disentangling of himself from one mesh after another gave sharpness to
his intellect, and the tremulous eagerness with which he seized upon the
doctrine which, piece by piece, under various pretexts and with various
disguises, he was appropriating, gave interest and something like
passion to his words. But when he had gradually accustomed his people
to his new phraseology, and was really adjusting his sermons and his
service to disguise his thoughts, he lost at once all his intellectual
acuteness and all his spiritual fervor.

Elsie sat quietly through the first part of the service, which was
conducted in the cold, mechanical way to be expected. Her face was
bidden by her veil; but her father knew her state of feeling, as well by
her movements and attitudes as by the expression of her features. The
hymn had been sung, the short prayer offered, the Bible read, and the
long prayer was about to begin. This was the time at which the "notes"
of any who were in affliction from loss of friends, the sick who
were doubtful of recovery, those who had cause to be grateful for
preservation of life or other signal blessing, were wont to be read.

Just then it was that Dudley Venner noticed that his daughter was
trembling,--a thing so rare, so unaccountable, indeed, under the
circumstances, that he watched her closely, and began to fear that some
nervous paroxysm, or other malad