ething that could come
but once, the day lost, the treat would be lost. But the evening before,
when she was on the very tiptoe of expectation, a celebrated action for
libel had come to an end much sooner than was expected, and when her
father returned in the evening he had to tell her that his case was to
come on the next day, and that he could not possibly take her. Even
now she could recall the bitterness of the disappointment, but not so
vividly as the look in her father's face as he lifted her off the floor
where she had thrown herself in the abandonment of her grief. He had
not said a word then about the enormity of crying, he had just held her
closely in his arms, feeling the disappointment a thousand times more
than she felt it herself, and fully realizing that the loss of such a
long-looked-for happiness was to a child what the loss of thousands of
pounds would be to a man. He had been patient with her though she had
entirely failed to see why he could not put off the case just for that
day.

"You'll understand one day, little one," he had said, "and be glad that
you have had your share of pain in a day that will advance the cause of
liberty."

She remembered protesting that that was impossible, that she should
always be miserable; at which he had only smiled.

Then it came to Erica that the life upon earth was, after all, as
compared with the eternal life, what the day is in the life of a child.
It seemed everything at the time, but was in truth such a fragment. And
as she lay there in the immeasurably greater agony of later life, once
more sobbing: "I had hoped, I had planned, this is more than I can
bear!" a Comforter infinitely grater, a Father whose love was infinitely
stronger, drew her so near that the word "near" was but a mockery, and
told her, as the earthly father had told her with such perfect truth:
"One day you will understand, child; one day you will be glad to have
shared the pain!"

In the next room there was for some time quiet. Poor Tom, heavy with
grief and weariness, fell asleep beside the fire; Raeburn was for the
most part very still as if wrapped in thought. At length a heavy sigh
made Brian ask if he were in pain.

"Pain of mind," he said, "not of body. Don't misunderstand me," he
said after a pause, with the natural fear least Brian should fancy his
secularism failed him at the near approach of death. "For myself I am
content; I have had a very full life, and I have tried always