affections on things above, on the realities
beyond the grave."

"But all that is so far away, New Papa!"

"Not so far as you think, child; they may come to-day."

Adele is sobered in earnest now, and tosses her little feet back and
forth, in an agony of apprehension.

The Doctor continues,--

"_To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts_"; and the
sentiment and utterance are so like to the usual ones of the pulpit,
that Adele takes courage again.

The little girl has a profound respect for the Doctor; his calmness, his
equanimity, his persistent zeal in his work, would alone provoke it. But
she sees, furthermore,--what she does not see always in "Aunt Eliza,"--a
dignity of character that is proof against all irritating humors; then,
too, he has appeared to Adele a very pattern of justice. She had taken
exceptions, indeed, when, on one or two rare occasions, he had reached
down the birch rod which lay upon the same hooks with the sword of Major
Johns, in the study, and had called in Reuben for extraordinary
discipline; but the boy's manifest acquiescence in the affair when his
cool moments came next morning, and the melancholy air of kindness with
which the Doctor went in to kiss him a goodnight, after such regimen,
kept alive her faith in the unvarying justice of the parson. Therefore
she tried hard to torture her poor little heart into a feeling of its
own blackness, (for that it was very black she had the good man's
averment,) she listened gravely to all he had to urge, and when he had
fairly overburdened her with the enumeration of her wicked, worldly
appetites, she could only say, with a burst of emotion,--

"Well, but, New Papa, the good God will forgive me."

"Yes, Adaly, yes,--I trust so, if forgiveness be sought in fear and
trembling. But remember, 'When God created man, he entered into a
covenant of life with him upon condition of perfect obedience.'"

This brings back to poor Adele the drudgery of the Saturday's Catechism,
associated with the sharp correctives of Aunt Eliza; and she can only
offer a pleading kiss to the Doctor, and ask plaintively,--

"May I go now?"

"One moment, Adaly,"--and he makes her kneel beside him, while he prays,
fervently, passionately, drawing her frail little figure to himself,
even as he prays, as if he would carry her with him in his arms into the
celestial presence.

The boy Reuben, too, has had his seasons of this closet struggle; but
they are ra