s Saturday evening. Holy time has begun. Let us prepare
our minds for the solemnities of the Sabbath."

She took the book, one well known to the schools and churches of this
nineteenth century.

"Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess 'Putney' will be as good a
tune as any to sing it to."

The trio began,--

"With holy fear, and humble song,"

and got through the first verse together pretty well. Then came the
second verse:

"Far in the deep where darkness dwells,
The land of horror and despair,
Justice has built a dismal hell,
And laid her stores of vengeance there."

Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and she hardly
kept up her part with proper spirit.

"Sing out, Myrtle," said Miss Cynthia, and she struck up the third
verse:

"Eternal plagues and heavy chains,
Tormenting racks and fiery coals,
And darts t' inflict immortal pains,
Dyed in the blood of damned souls."

This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle closed her lips while
it was singing, and when it was done threw down the book with a look of
anger and disgust. The hunted soul was at bay.

"I won't sing such words," she said, "and I won't stay here to hear them
sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not
going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel
hymn-book!"

She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would not cry: she felt
proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All these images, borrowed from the
holy Inquisition, were meant to frighten her--and had simply irritated
her. The blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not
penetrating, only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger to her
character, to her life itself.

Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang up-stairs to
her hanging chamber. She threw open the window and looked down into
the stream. For one moment her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming,
almost maddening thought that came over her,--the impulse to fling
herself headlong into those running waters and dare the worst these
dreadful women had threatened her with. Something she often thought
afterwards it was an invisible hand held her back during that brief
moment, and the paroxysm--just such a paroxysm as throws many a young
girl into the Thames or the Seine--passed away. She remained looking, in
a misty dream, into the water fa