low and with a
timidity wholly new to her.

"I think so,--I earnestly believe it. He seems to me to have more
ability, more strength, and more tenderness than he has shown yet.
Some wrong ideas have twisted themselves persistently among the very
fibres of his life and warped it; but it is not yet too late to tear
them away."

"Some one else may do it," said Winifred, in exaggerated
discouragement, "I let the opportunity slip by. He will never ask me
again, and as for me--do you think I will ever go to any man with the
offer of my love? Not if my heart broke for him!"

"He said he would never ask you again?"

"Yes, Papa; he said it twice."

"Well, if he said it twice fifty times, it was a lie, or would have
been if he had not believed it himself at the time. Never fear but you
will have a chance to tell him that you have changed your mind, and
without any wound to your pride either."

"Oh, Papa!" cried Winifred, rising and throwing her arms about his
neck, "you are such a comfort!"

The old clock on the landing of the stairway struck one.

"There, it is morning already," said her father. "Off to bed with you,
else I shall have no one to pour out my cup of coffee to-morrow." As
he spoke, he gently unclasped her arms from about his neck, but she
would not go quite yet.

"If--if--all this should ever come about, are you quite sure you would
be willing to have me leave you?"

"Quite sure, my dear. It is the natural thing, and what is natural
must be right. Now, good-night."

Winifred wiped away the tears which had been hanging on the fringe of
her eyelashes, and after a parting hug gathered up her wraps and swept
away to her room. Her father watched her tenderly till the last trace
of her gown had vanished up the stairs; then he closed the door
softly, took a miniature from its case in the drawer, laid it on the
table, and bowed his head on both arms above it.

"'Father and Mother both.' Yes, that was what I promised, and that is
what I must be so far as I can, and may God help me!" he murmured.

CHAPTER XIX

A SLUM POST

"Sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."

Despair fells; suspense tortures. The forty odd hours which lay
between the ending of the Grahams' dinner and the promised interview
with Winifred Anstice stretched out into an eternity to the impatience
of Flint. By turns he tried occupation and diversion; yet his