t Feldwick, and we prayed together for grace.
The hypocrite. The abandoned wastrel. That he, who might have been the
pastor of Feldwick, ay, and have been chosen to serve in the towns even,
should have wandered so miserably."

The younger girl was watching a smoke-begrimed sparrow on the sill with
eyes at once vacant and tender. She was slighter and smaller than her
sister, of different complexion, with soft, grey eyes and a broad,
humorous mouth. Her whole expression was kindly. She had a delicate
prettiness of colouring, and a vivacity which seemed to place her
amongst a different order of beings. Never were sisters more like and
unlike in this world.

"Sometimes," she said reflectively, "I have wondered whether Father was
not very hard upon Douglas. He was so different from everybody else
there, so fond of books and pictures, clever people, and busy places.
There was no one in Feldwick with whom he could have had any tastes at
all in common--not a scholar amongst the lot of us."

Joan frowned heavily. Her dark brows contracted, the black eyes
flashed.

"Pictures and books," she muttered. "What has a minister of the gospel
to do with these? Douglas Guest had chosen his path in life."

"Nay," Cicely interrupted eagerly. "It was chosen for him. He was
young, and Father was very stern and obstinate, as who should know
better than ourselves, Joan? Douglas never seemed happy after he came
back from college. His life was not suitable for him."

Joan was slowly getting angry.

"Not suitable for him?" she retorted. "What folly! Who was he, to pick
and choose? It was rare fortune for him that father should have brought
him up as he did. You'll say next that I was forced on him, that he
didna ask me to be his wife--ay, and stand hand in hand with me before
all of them. You've forgotten it, maybe."

But Cicely, to whom that day had been one of agony, marked with a black
stone, never to be forgotten, shook her head with a little shudder.

"I'm sure I never hinted at it, Joan," she said; "but for all you can
say, I believe he's dead."

"Maybe," Joan answered coldly, "but I'm not yet believing it. It's led
astray I believe he was, and heavy's the penalty he'll have to pay.
It's my notion he's alive in this city, and that's why I'm here. It'll
be a day of reckoning when we meet him, but it'll come, Cicely. I've
dreamed of it, and it'll come. I'll never bend the knee at Meeting till
I've found him."

Cicely shuddered.