er!" replied Adelaide, sobbing, "I owe her a debt of gratitude
I can never pay. She has been all my comfort in my great sorrow; she has
taught me the way to heaven, and now she is going before." Then, with a
burst of uncontrollable grief, she exclaimed: "Oh, Elsie! Elsie! darling
child! how _can_ I give you up?"

Mr. Dinsmore hid his face, and his whole frame shook with emotion.

"My punishment is greater than I can bear!" he exclaimed in a voice
choked with grief. "Adelaide, do you not despise and hate me for my
cruelty to that angel-child?"

"My poor brother, I am very sorry for you," she replied, laying her hand
on his arm, while the tears trembled in her eyes.

There was a light tap at the door. It was Doctor Barton. "Mr. Dinsmore,"
he said, "she is begging so piteously for her papa that, perhaps, it
would be well for you to show yourself again; it is just possible she
may recognize you"

Mr. Dinsmore waited for no second bidding, but following the physician
with eager haste, was the next moment at the bedside.

The little girl was moving restlessly about, moaning, "Oh! papa, papa,
will you never come?"

"I am here, darling," he replied in tones of the tenderest affection. "I
_have_ come back to my little girl"

She turned her head to look at him. "No, no," she said, "I want my papa."

"My darling, do you not know me?" he asked in a voice quivering with
emotion.

"No, no, you shall not! I will never do it--_never_. Oh! make him go
away," she shrieked, clinging to Mrs. Travilla, and glaring at him with a
look of the wildest affright, "he has come to torture me because I won't
pray to the Virgin."

"It is quite useless," said the doctor, shaking his head sorrowfully;
"she evidently does not know you."

And the unhappy father turned away and left the room to shut himself up
again alone with his agony and remorse.

No one saw him again that night, and when the maid came to attend to his
room in the morning, she was surprised and alarmed to find that the bed
had not been touched.

Mr. Travilla, who was keeping a sorrowful vigil in the room below, had he
been questioned, could have told that there had been scarcely a cessation
in the sound of the footsteps pacing to and fro over his head. It had
been a night of anguish and heart-searching, such as Horace Dinsmore had
never passed through before. For the first time he saw himself to be what
he really was in the sight of God, a guilty, hell-deserving sinner