o, by negligence, had
permitted her to fall. Hell was yawning for all such. You must walk
the straight and narrow way if you would escape eternal punishment,
and a just God was angry with sinners every day.

Gerhardt and his wife, and also Jennie, accepted the doctrines of
their Church as expounded by Mr. Wundt without reserve. With Jennie,
however, the assent was little more than nominal. Religion had as yet
no striking hold upon her. It was a pleasant thing to know that there
was a heaven, a fearsome one to realize that there was a hell. Young
girls and boys ought to be good and obey their parents. Otherwise the
whole religious problem was badly jumbled in her mind.

Gerhardt was convinced that everything spoken from the pulpit of
his church was literally true. Death and the future life were
realities to him.

Now that the years were slipping away and the problem of the world
was becoming more and more inexplicable, he clung with pathetic
anxiety to the doctrines which contained a solution. Oh, if he could
only be so honest and upright that the Lord might have no excuse for
ruling him out. He trembled not only for himself, but for his wife and
children. Would he not some day be held responsible for them? Would
not his own laxity and lack of system in inculcating the laws of
eternal life to them end in his and their damnation? He pictured to
himself the torments of hell, and wondered how it would be with him
and his in the final hour.

Naturally, such a deep religious feeling made him stern with his
children. He was prone to scan with a narrow eye the pleasures and
foibles of youthful desire. Jennie was never to have a lover if her
father had any voice in the matter. Any flirtation with the youths she
might meet upon the streets of Columbus could have no continuation in
her home. Gerhardt forgot that he was once young himself, and looked
only to the welfare of her spirit. So the Senator was a novel factor
in her life.

When he first began to be a part of their family affairs the
conventional standards of Father Gerhardt proved untrustworthy. He had
no means of judging such a character. This was no ordinary person
coquetting with his pretty daughter. The manner in which the Senator
entered the family life was so original and so plausible that he
became an active part before any one thought anything about it.
Gerhardt himself was deceived, and, expecting nothing but honor and
profit to flow to the family from such