at you can
pray for them, and that 'the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man
availeth much'?"

"There is indeed, sir!" the captain said with emotion. "And also in the
promise, 'I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed
after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God
unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.'"

CHAPTER X.

"One Pinch, hungry, leanfac'd villain."
--_Shake._

Captain Raymond's two little daughters were at this time in a village in
one of the Northern States, in charge of Mrs. Beulah Scrimp, a distant
relative on the mother's side.

Mrs. Scrimp was a widow living in rather genteel style in a house and upon
means left her by her late husband. She was a managing woman, fond of
money; therefore glad of the increase to her income yielded by the liberal
sum Captain Raymond had offered her as compensation for the board and care
of his motherless little girls.

She had undertaken Max also at first, but given him up as beyond her
control; and now, though continuing to attend school in the town, he
boarded with the Rev. Thomas Fox, who lived upon its outskirts.

Mrs. Scrimp was a woman of economies, keeping vigilant watch over all
expenditures, great and small, and employing one servant only, who was
cook, housemaid, and laundress all in one, and expected to give every
moment of her time to the service of her mistress, and be content with
smaller wages than many who did less work.

Mrs. Scrimp was a woman of theories also, and her pet one accorded well
with the aforementioned characteristic. It was that two meals a day were
sufficient for any one, and that none but the very vigorous and
hard-working ought to eat anything between three o'clock in the afternoon
and breakfast-time the next morning.

That was a rule to which neither Max nor Lulu could ever be made to
submit; but Grace, the youngest, a delicate, fragile child, with little
force of will, had no strength or power to resist, so fell a victim to the
theory; each night went supperless to bed, and each day found herself too
feeble and languid to take part in the active sports in which her stronger
sister delighted.

It is quite possible that Mrs. Scrimp had no intention of being cruel, but
merely made the not uncommon mistake of supposing that what is good for
one person is of course good for everybody else. She was dyspeptic, and
insisted that she found her