aith,' in your sense of the word, has no place in my vocabulary. I was
a very small boy when my faith took to itself wings and flew away; and,
curiously enough, it was while I was singing lustily, in the village
church at Dinglevale: 'As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be; world without end, Amen'!"

"It will come back again," said Helen. "Dick, I know it will come back.
Some day you will come to me and you will say: 'It has come back.' The
thrusting hand and the prying finger are the fashion nowadays, I know.
But the grand old faith which will win out in the end, is the faith
which stands with clasped hands, in deepest reverence of belief; and,
lifting adoring eyes, is not ashamed to say to the revelation of a Risen
Christ: 'My Lord and my God!'"

Dick stirred uneasily in his chair.

"We have got off the subject," he said, "and it's about time we looked
up Ronnie. But, first of all: how much of all this do you mean to tell
Ronnie?"

"Nothing whatever, if I can help it," replied Helen. "So far as I know,
I hope, after this morning, never to mention the subject again."

"I think you are wise. And now let me give you a three-fold bit of
advice. Smash the mirror; burn the chair; brain the Infant!"

Helen laughed. "No, no, Dick!" she said. "I can do none of those things.
I must take tenderest care of Ronnie's Infant. I have had his valuable
old chair carefully mended; and I must not let him think I fear the
mirror."

"You're a brave woman," said Dick. "Believing what you do, you're a
brave woman to live in the house with that mirror. Or, perhaps, it comes
of believing so much. A certainty of confidence, which asks no
questions, must be to some extent a fortifying thing. By the way, you
will remember that the long rigmarole I gave you was not my own
explanation, but the expert's? Mine is considerably simpler and shorter.
In fact, it can be summed up in three words."

"What is your explanation, Dick?"

"Whisky and soda," said Dr. Dick, bravely. "You mixed it stiffer than
you knew. I was dead beat, and had had no food. I have always been a
fairly abstemious chap; in my profession we have to be: woe betide the
man who isn't. But since I saw that chair standing on its four legs in
the mirror, when it was lying broken on the floor in reality, I have not
touched a drop of alcohol. There! I make you a present of that for your
next temperance meeting. Now let's go out and buck Ronnie up. Remember,
he'll fe