shore.

"I don't want you to think that."

"But how am I going to help it?"

He smiled a little and looked grave too.

"I am going to give you a lesson to study."

"Well? --" said Elizabeth with quick pleasure; and she watched,
very like a child, while Winthrop sought in his pocket and
brought out an old letter, tore off a piece of the back and
wrote on his knee with a pencil.

Then he gave it to her.

But it was the precept, --

'Little children, keep yourselves from idols.'

Elizabeth's face changed, and her eyes lifted themselves not
up again. The colour rose, and spread, and deepened, and her
head only bent lower down over the paper. That thrust was with
a barbed weapon. And there was a profound hush, and a bended
head and a pained brow, till a hand came gently between her
eyes and the paper and occupied the fingers that held it. It
was the same hand that her fancy had once seen full of
character -- she saw it again now; her thoughts made a spring
hack to that time and then to this. She looked up.

It was a look to see. There was a witching mingling of the
frank, the childlike, and the womanly, in her troubled face;
frankness that would not deny the truth that her monitor
seemed to have read, a childlike simplicity of shame that he
should have divined it, and a womanly self-respect that owned
it had nothing to be ashamed of. These were not all the
feelings that were at work, nor that shewed their working; and
it was a face of brilliant expression that Elizabeth lifted to
her companion. In the cheeks the blood spoke brightly; in the
eyes, fire; there was more than one tear there, too; and the
curve of the lips was unbent with a little tremulous play.
Winthrop must have been a man of self-command to have stood
it; but he looked apparently no more concerned than if old
Karen had lifted up her face at him.

"Do you know," she said, and the moved line of the lips might
plainly be seen, -- "you are making it the more hard for me to
learn your lesson, even in the very giving it me?"

"What shall I do?"

Elizabeth hesitated, and conquered herself.

"I guess you needn't do anything," she said half laughing.
"I'll try and do my part."

There was a little answer of the face then, that sent
Elizabeth's eyes to the ground.

"What do you mean by these words?" she said looking at them
again.

"I don't mean anything. I simply give them to you."

"Yes, and I might see an old musket standing round the