a scream from the white
chamber some night and find him in spasms such as that woman came so
near dying with. And then there was something about Elsie she did not
know what to make of: she would sit and hang her head sometimes, and
look as if she were dreaming; and she brought home books they said a
young gentleman up at the great school lent her; and once she heard her
whisper in her sleep, and she talked as young girls do to themselves
when they're thinking about somebody they have a liking for and think
nobody knows it.

She finished her long story at last. The minister had listened to it in
perfect silence. He sat still even when she had done speaking,--still,
and lost in thought. It was a very awkward matter for him to have a
hand in. Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Veneers had a pew in
the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house. It would seem that he, Mr.
Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested. Had
he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people? Was there enough
capital of humanity in his somewhat limited nature to furnish sympathy
and unshrinking service for his friends in an emergency? or was he too
busy with his own attacks of spiritual neuralgia, and too much occupied
with taking account of stock of his own thin-blooded offences, to forget
himself and his personal interests on the small scale and the large,
and run a risk of his life, if need were, at any rate give himself up
without reserve to the dangerous task of guiding and counselling these
distressed and imperilled fellow-creatures?

The good minister thought the best thing to do would be to call and talk
over some of these matters with Brother Fairweather,--for so he would
call him at times, especially if his senior deacon were not within
earshot. Having settled this point, he comforted Sophy with a few words
of counsel and a promise of coming to see her very soon. He then called
his man to put the old white horse into the chaise and drive Sophy back
to the mansion-house.

When the Doctor sat down to his sermon again, it looked very differently
from the way it had looked at the moment he left it. When he came to
think of it, he did not feel quite so sure practically about that matter
of the utter natural selfishness of everybody. There was Letty, now,
seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that old black woman, and
indeed in poor people generally; perhaps it would not be too much to
say that she was al