l her eyes to see if there were still a remnant left of that arm.
No; it had all melted into a monstrous shape, indistinct and gloomy,
partaking of the darkness of night. The brightness of the vision was
gone. But he bade her look into the clouds for new worlds, and she
seemed to feel that there was a hidden meaning in his words. As she
looked out into the coming darkness, a mystery crept over her, a
sense of something wonderful that was out there, away,--of something
so full of mystery that she could not tell whether she was thinking
of the hidden distances of the horizon, or of the distances of her
own future life, which were still further off and more closely
hidden. She found herself trembling, sighing, almost sobbing,
and then she ran again. He had wrapped her in his influence, and
filled her full of the magnetism of his own being. Her woman's
weakness,--the peculiar susceptibility of her nature, had never
before been touched. She had now heard the first word of romance that
had ever reached her ears, and it had fallen upon her with so great a
power that she was overwhelmed.

Words of romance! Words direct from the Evil One, Mrs. Prime would
have called them! And in saying so she would have spoken the belief
of many a good woman and many a good man. She herself was a good
woman,--a sincere, honest, hardworking, self-denying woman; a woman
who struggled hard to do her duty as she believed it had been taught
to her. She, as she walked through the churchyard,--having come
down the brewery lane with some inkling that her sister might be
there,--had been struck with horror at seeing Rachel standing with
that man. What should she do? She paused a moment to ask herself
whether she should return for her; but she said to herself that her
sister was obstinate, that a scene would be occasioned, that she
would do no good,--and so she passed on. Words of romance, indeed!
Must not all such words be words from the Father of Lies, seeing that
they are words of falseness? Some such thoughts passed through her
mind as she walked home, thinking of her sister's iniquity,--of her
sister who must be saved, like a brand from the fire, but whose
saving could now be effected only by the sternest of discipline. The
hours at the Dorcas meetings must be made longer, and Rachel must
always be there.

In the mean time Rachel hurried home with her spirits all a-tremble.
Of her immediately-coming encounter with her mother and her sister
she ha