tically divided the water from the land,--and
they scurried into a region as untroubled by man as was Eden on the
first morning. The little boy was not afraid, but so sorry and ashamed
that he could have cried. The little girl, however, was even deeper down
the throat of remorse, for she had sinned three times on Sunday,--first,
she had spoken to the "inventor's boy"; second, she had not "come
straight home"; third, she had been seduced into a forbidden boat,--and
there was no balm in Gilead; nor any forgiveness forever. She pictured
her grand, dark father standing like a biblical allegory of "Hell and
Damnation" within the somber leathern cube of his books, the fiercely
white, whalebone cane upon which he and old brother gout leaned, and the
vast gloomy centers at the bases of which glowed his savage eyes. She
thought of the rolling bitter voice with which she had once heard him
stiffen the backs of his constituents, and she was sore afraid. She did
not remember how much he loved her, or the impotence of his principles
where she was concerned. And she did not recollect, for she had not been
old enough to know, that the great bitter voice, with its heavy, telling
sarcasm, had been lifted for humanity--for more humanity upon earth.

"Oh, 'Laddin," she said suddenly, "I daren't go home now."

"Maybe we can get her in farther up," said Aladdin, "and go home through
the woods. That'll be something, anyhow."

Margaret shuddered. She thought of the thin aunt who gave her lessons
upon the pianoforte--one of the elect, that aunt, who had never done
wrong, and whom any halo would fit; who gave her to understand that the
Almighty would raise Cain with any little girl who did not practise an
hour every day, and pray Him, night and morning, to help her keep off
the black notes when the white notes were intended. First there would
be a reckoning with papa, then one with Aunt Marion, last with Almighty
God, and afterward, horribile dictu, pitchforks for little Margaret,
and a vivid incandescent state to be maintained through eternity at vast
cost of pit-coal to a gentleman who carried over his arm, so as not to
step on it, a long snaky tail with a point like a harpoon's.

Meanwhile, Aladdin made sundry attempts to get the boat ashore, and
failed signally. The current was as saucy as strong. Now it swept them
into the very shade of the trees, and as hope rose hot in the boy's
heart and he began to stab the water with the oars, sent