?--if I may ask so
blunt a question upon so short an acquaintance."

"This is the first time I have been on deck. I was studying the sea, in
the first place;--and then something drove me to study the Bible."

"Ah, we are driven to that on every hand," he answered. "Now go on, and
tell me the point of your studies, will you?"

There was something in the utmost genial and kind in his look and way;
he was not a person from whom one would keep back anything he wanted to
know; as also evidently he was not one to ask anything he should not.
The request did not even startle Eleanor. She looked thoughtfully over
the heaving sea while she answered.

"I had been taking a great new view of the glory of creation--over the
ship's side here. Then I had the sorrow to find--or fear--that we have
an unbeliever in our captain. From that, I suppose, I took hold of
Paul's reasoning--how without excuse people are in unbelief; how the
invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made; even his eternal
power and Godhead. And those glorious last words were what my heart
fixed upon."

"'His eternal power and Godhead.'"

Eleanor looked round without speaking; a look full of the human echo to
those words; the joy of weakness, the strength of ignorance, the
triumph of humility.

"What a grand characterizing Paul gives in those other words," said Mr.
Amos--"'the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.' Unto
him be honour and glory forever!"

"And then those other words," said Eleanor low,--"'The eternal God is
thy refuge.'"

"That is a good text for us to keep," said Mr. Amos. "But really, with
that refuge, I don't see what we should be afraid of."

"Not even of want of success," said Eleanor.

"No. If faith didn't fail. Paul could give thanks that he was made
always to triumph in Christ,--and by the power that wrought with him,
so may we." He spoke very gravely, as if looking into himself and
pondering his own responsibilities and privileges and short-comings.
Eleanor kept silence.

"How do you like this way of life?" Mr. Amos said presently.

"The sea is beautiful. I have hardly tried the ship."

"Haven't you?" said Mr. Amos smiling. "That speaks a candid good
traveller. Another would have made the first few days the type of the
whole."

And he also took to his book, and the silence lasted this time.

Mrs. Amos continued prostrated by sea-sickne