amount of your income. This is an interposition of
Providence to save you from ruin."

"What right had you to put yourself in the way of ruin?"

"You did it to advance the interests of your family. The Bible says, 'If
any provide not for his own, especially his own kindred, he ... is worse
than an infidel.'[Footnote: Marginal rendering A. V.]"

"If you do this thing you will be dishonored in the sight of God."

"If you do not save yourself from this temporary embarrassment, you will
be disgraced in the eyes of the world. You owe it to your position in
society, and the church, to keep above the waves." The listening
spirits heard a low, malicious laugh of triumph and the white-robed
angel turned sadly away.

Judge Hildreth had thrust Evadne's letter, with his own, far under the
pile of papers, and double-locked the drawer!

* * * * *

Above the coach-house was a large room where Pompey kept a store of hay
and grain, and there Evadne often found herself ensconced with
Isabelle's Bible, during the long mornings when she was left to amuse
herself as best she might. The atmosphere of the house stifled her, and
Pompey had loved her father! It was scrupulously clean. Under Pompey's
regime spiders and moths found no tolerance, and a magnificent black cat
effectually frightened away the audacious rodents which were tempted to
depredations by the toothsome cereals in the great bins. In one corner
Pompey had improvised for her a luxurious couch of hay and rugs, and in
this fragrant retreat Evadne studied her strange new book. She brought
to it a mind absolutely untrammeled by creed or circumstance, and in
this virgin soil God's truth took root. Slowly the light dawned. Hers
was no shallow nature to leap to a hasty conclusion and then forsake it
for a later thought. Gradually through the darkness, as God's flowers
grow, this human flower lifted itself towards the light.

Sometimes she would sit for hours with the stately cat upon her knee,
thinking, thinking, thinking, while Pompey sang his favorite hymns about
his work and the mellow strains floated up the stairway and soothed her
lonely heart. His childlike faith became to her a tower of refuge, and
often, when bewildered by life's inconsistencies, she felt as if the
eternal realities were vanishing into mist, she was calmed and comforted
by his happy trust.

"I cannot imagine, Evadne," said Isabelle one evening at dinner, "what
pleasure y