her the next day if she did not think Christ was divine, and marveled
at her learned reply that "All nature is divine. Matter and men are
but the manifestations of divinity, and the Galilean Teacher was
undoubtedly a wonderful character of his day."

One night, as he left her, she loaned him a French novel full of
skepticism and scorn of virtue and morality. He was tempted to throw
it in the fire, but it was hers. He read it and rather liked it. He
began to think he had been too narrow; he wished he could get out and
see the world, the great world of thinking people where Miss Bright
lived. The poison was in his soul. How commonplace the sermon sounded
the next Sunday on "I am determined to know nothing among you save
Jesus Christ and him crucified"! How narrow Paul must have been! It
was the Sunday night before Christmas. The fall term had ended, and
the schoolma'am was going home; no more school till spring. A year
before Job had stood in the great congregation and taken the solemn
vow to be loyal forever to Christ and his church; to-night the
Christmas service went on without him. Tony, who was there and who
half suspected something was wrong, yet did not like to have anyone
else think so, said to those who asked him:

"Yes, Marse Job's sick; dassen't come out."

But Job was not sick, as Tony thought. He was in the Robinson parlor,
sitting with Miss Bright before the flickering log fire, which dimly
lit the long, low room with its rag carpet and old-fashioned
furniture. They were talking over their friendship, and she was
flattering him upon his superiority to those country greenhorns who
lived up here; she always knew he had city blood in him. Job was
acting sillier than anybody would have dreamed Job Malden could act,
in his evident pride at her flattery and the strange feelings which
drew him to her. She laughed at his attempts to compliment her, and,
on his departure, followed him to the door and said how heart-broken
she was to leave the mountains and him.

Job went home in raptures, and lay awake all night planning how to get
away from the mountains and the rude people who lived there, and down
into the city somewhere--anywhere where Fanny Bright lived.

All that week he wandered about as if lost, cross and good for nothing
at work. His city idol had gone home.

It was two days after Christmas that Job tore the wrapper off a
'Frisco paper and sat down to read, when, glancing over the columns,
his eyes