it's your
father they are slandering! Oh, if I could but get up for one minute and
stamp!"

"And is this untrue?" asked Charles Osmond, when he had finished the
account in question.

"There is just enough truth in it to make it worse than a direct lie,"
said Erica, hotly. "They have quoted his own words, but in a sense in
which he never meant them, or they have quite disregarded the context.
If you will give me those books on the table, I'll just show you how
they have misrepresented him by hacking out single sentences, and
twisting and distorting all he says in public."

Charles Osmond looked at the passages referred to, and saw that Erica
had not complained without reason.

"Yes, that is very unfair shamefully unfair," he said. Then, after a
pause, he added, abruptly: "Erica, are you good at languages?"

"I am very fond of them," she said, surprised at the sudden turn he had
given to the conversation.

"Supposing that Mr. Raeburn's speeches and doings were a good deal
spoken of in Europe, as no doubt they are, and that a long time after
his death one of his successors made some converts to secularism in
Italy, and wrote in Italian all that he could remember of the life and
words of his late teacher. Then suppose that the Italian life of Raeburn
was translated into Chinese, and that hundreds of years after, a
heathen Chinee sat down to read it. His Oriental mind found it hard to
understand Mr. Raeburn's thoroughly Western mind; he didn't see anything
noble in Mr. Raeburn's character, couldn't understand his mode of
thought, read through the life, perhaps studied it after a fashion, or
believed he did; then shut it up, and said there might possibly have
been such a man, but the proofs were very weak, and, even if he had
lived, he didn't think he was any great shakes, though the people did
make such a fuss about him. Would you call that heathen Chinee fair?"

Erica could not help smiling, though she saw what he was driving at.

But Charles Osmond felt much too keenly to continue in such a light
strain. He was no weak-minded, pleasant conversationalist, but a
prophet, who knew how to speak hard truths sometimes.

"Erica," he said, almost sternly, "you talk much about those who quote
your father's words unfairly; but have you never misquoted the words of
Christ? You deny Him and disbelieve in Him, yet you have never really
studied His life. You have read the New Testament through a veil of
prejudice. Mind, I am