can't. It's awful, John--I can't."

"But, Molly," he replied as gently as he could, "you must. You can't
afford to be squeamish about this business. This is a woman's job,
Molly, not a child's."

She rose and looked at him a fleeting moment as if in search of some
mercy in his face. Then she looked away. He stood beside her, barring
her way to the door. "But you'll try, Molly, won't you--you'll try?"
he cried. She looked at him again with begging eyes and stepped around
him, and said breathlessly as she reached the door: "Oh, I don't know,
John--I don't know. I must think about it."

She felt her way down the stairs, and stopped a minute to compose
herself before she crossed the street and walked wearily up the hill.

That night at supper Colonel Culpepper addressed the assembled family
expansively. "The ravens, my dears, the ravens. Behold Elijah fed by
the sacred birds. By Adrian P. Brownwell, to be exact. This morning I
went down town with the sheriff selling the roof over our heads. This
afternoon who should come to me soliciting the pleasure of lending, me
money--who, I say, but Adrian P. Brownwell?"

"Well, I hope you didn't keep him standing," put in Buchanan.

"My son," responded the colonel, as he whetted the carving knife on
the steel--a form which was used more for rhetorical effect than,
culinary necessity, as there were pork chops on the platter, "my son,
no true gentleman will rebuke another who is trying to lend him money.
Always remember that." And the colonel's great body shook with
merriment, as he proceeded to fill up the plates. But one plate went
from the table untouched, and Molly Culpepper went about her work with
a leaden heart. For the world had become a horrible phantasm to her, a
place of longing and of heartache, a place of temptation and trial,
lying under the shadow of tragedy. And whose world was it that night,
as she sat chattering with her father and the man she feared, whose
world was it that night, if this is a real world, and not the shadow
of a dream? Was it the colonel's gay world, or John's golden world, or
Ward's harmonious world, or poor little Molly's world--all askew with
miserable duties and racking heartaches, and grinning sneering fears,
with the relentless image of the Larger Good always before her? Surely
it was not all their worlds, for there is only one world. Then whose
was it? God who made it and set it in the heavens in His great love
and mercy only knows. Watt