to see him alone a
while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and
she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant
confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they
did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery
like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to
himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of
wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the
foundation of the world.

They were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister came in as
if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did so at last, and, with a
simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic
approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's
compassionate and reverent eye. He spared Corey's name, but he did not
pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their daughters who
were concerned.

"I don't know as I've got any right to trouble you with this thing," he
said, in the moment while Sewell sat pondering the case, "and I don't
know as I've got any warrant for doing it. But, as I told my wife
here, there was something about you--I don't know whether it was
anything you SAID exactly--that made me feel as if you could help us.
I guess I didn't say so much as that to her; but that's the way I felt.
And here we are. And if it ain't all right."

"Surely," said Sewell, "it's all right. I thank you for coming--for
trusting your trouble to me. A time comes to every one of us when we
can't help ourselves, and then we must get others to help us. If
people turn to me at such a time, I feel sure that I was put into the
world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, my sympathy."

The brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome in them that
these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt.

"Yes," said Lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe the tears again
under her veil.

Sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak. "We can
be of use to one another here, because we can always be wiser for some
one else than we can for ourselves. We can see another's sins and
errors in a more merciful light--and that is always a fairer
light--than we can our own; and we can look more sanely at others'
afflictions." He had addressed these words to Lapham; now he turned to
his wife. "If some one had come to you, Mrs. Lapham, in just this
perplexit