un."

"Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached
to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and
tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must
have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any
outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and
left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor
fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself."

Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her
elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between
whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the
preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit,
between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face.
Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so
difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it
and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath,
answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then
passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so
smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people
all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road,
where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the
foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.

Valmai looked round her with awe and horror.

"Did these innocent-looking, simple people belong to that thronging
crowd who were hurrying on to their own destruction? was she herself
one of them? Cardo?--her uncle?"

The thought was dreadful, her breath came and went quickly, her eyes
were full of tears, and she felt as if she must rise suddenly and rush
into the open air, but as she looked round the chapel she caught sight
through one of the windows of the dark blue sky of night, bespangled
with stars, and a glow of purer and healthier feeling came over her.
She would not believe it--outside was the fresh night wind, outside was
the silver moonlight, and in the words of the poet of whom she had
never heard she said within herself, "No! God is in Heaven, it's all
right with the world!" Her joyous nature could not brook the saddening
influences of the Methodist creed, and as she passed out into the clear
night air amongst the crowd of listeners, and heard their mournful
sighs and their evident appreciation of the serm