in my parish. I
couldn't stand by and see a woman ill-used without striking a blow,
could I, Phebe?"

"I hope you'll strike as few blows as you can," she answered, smiling.

"How could I help standing up for a woman when I think of my mother, and
you, and little Hilda, and her who is gone?" asked Felix.

"Is there nobody else?" inquired Phebe, with a mischievous tone in her
pleasant voice.

"When I think of the good women I have known," he answered evasively,
"the sweet true, noble women, I feel my blood boil at the thought of any
man ill-using any woman. Phebe, I can just remember my father speaking
of it with the utmost contempt and anger, with a fire in his eyes and a
sternness in his voice which made me tremble with fear. He was in a
righteous passion; it was the other side of his worship of my mother."

"He was always kind and tender toward all women," answered Phebe. "All
the Seftons have been like that; they could never be harsh to any woman.
But your father almost worshipped the ground your mother trod upon;
nothing on earth was good enough for her. Look here, my dear boy, I've
been trying to paint a picture for you."

She lifted up a stretcher which had been turned with the canvas to the
wall, and placed it on her easel in the full light of a shaded lamp. For
a moment she stood between him and it, gazing at it with tears in her
blue eyes. Then she fell back to his side to look at it with him,
clasping his hand in hers, and holding it in a warm, fond grasp.

It was a portrait of Roland Sefton, painted from her faithful memory,
which had been aided by a photograph taken when he was the same age
Felix was now. Phebe could only see it dimly through her tears, and for
a moment or two both of them were silent.

"My father?" said Felix, his face flushing and his voice faltering; "is
it like him, Phebe? Yes, yes! I recollect him now; only he looked
happier or merrier than he does there. There is something sad about his
face that I do not remember. What a king he was among men! I'm not
worthy to be the son of such a man and such a woman."

"No, no; don't say that," she answered eagerly; "you're not as handsome,
or as strong, or as clever as he was; but you may be as good a man--yes,
a better man."

She spoke with a deep, low sigh that was almost a sob, as the memory of
how she had seen him last--crushed under a weight of sin and flying from
the penalty of crime--flashed across her brain. She knew now why ther