id to Letty, putting his thin, long hand in
hers--

"Mary thinks we shall know each other there, Letty."

"Tom!" interrupted Letty, "don't talk like that; I _can't_ bear it. If
you do, I shall die before you."

"All I wanted to say," persisted Tom, "was, that I should sit all day
looking out for you, Letty."

CHAPTER XLII.

THE LEPER.

The faint, sweet, luminous jar of bow and string, as betwixt them they
tore the silky air into a dying sound, came hovering--neither could
have said whether it was in the soul only, or there and in the outer
world too.

"What _is_ that?" said Tom.

"Mary!" Letty called into the other room, "there is our friend with the
violin again! Don't you think Tom would like to hear him?"

"Yes, I do," answered Mary.

"Then would you mind asking him to come and play a little to us? It
would do Tom good, I do think." Mary went up the one stair--all that
now divided them, and found the musician with his sister--his
half-sister she was.

"I thought we should have you in upon us!" said Ann. "Joe thinks he can
play so as nobody can hear him; and I was fool enough to let him try. I
am sorry."

"I am glad," rejoined Mary, "and am come to ask him down stairs; for
Mrs. Helmer and I think it will do her husband good to hear him. He is
very fond of music."

"Much help music will be to him, poor young man!" said Ann, scornfully.

"Wouldn't you give a sick man a flower, even if it only made him a
little happier for a moment with its scent and its loveliness?" asked
Mary.

"No, I wouldn't. It would only be to help the deceitful heart to be
more desperately wicked."

I will not continue the conversation, although they did a little
longer. Ann's father had been a preacher among the followers of
Whitefield, and Ann was a follower of her father. She laid hold upon
the garment of a hard master, a tyrannical God. Happy he who has
learned the gospel according to Jesus, as reported by John--that God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all! Happy he who finds God his
refuge from all the lies that are told for him, and in his name! But it
is love that saves, and not opinion that damns; and let the Master
himself deal with the weeds in his garden as with the tares in his
field.

"I read my Bible a good deal," said Mary, at last, "but I never found
one of those things you say in it."

"That's because you were never taught to look for them," said Ann.

"Very likely," returned Mary. "In th