ait in vain who wait for Him," said Stephen, looking a
little wistfully from one to the other, as though he would fain hear
more. But there was no time. Little Sophy's face was growing anxious;
for her tea-cakes were in danger of being spoiled by the delay, and
there was time to think of nothing else when they appeared.

"Have you had a good time, Dolly?" asked Stephen, as they went down the
hill together in the moonlight, when the evening's frost had made the
roads fit to walk on again.

"A good time, Stephen--a very good time," said Dolly, brightly. "I
think that poor soul has renewed her strength; and, indeed I think so
have I. Yes, dear, I've had a very good time to-day."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

JOHN MORELY'S FRIEND.

In the meantime, John Morely was fighting his battle over again. He
left the house of Stephen Grattan a humbled man, without strength,
without courage, hardly daring to hope for victory over a foe which he
knew waited only for a solitary desponding hour to assail him. The
dread and terror that fell upon him when he found himself homeless and
friendless in the streets of Montreal cannot be told. Feeling deeply
his own degradation, it seemed to him that even the chance eyes that
rested on him as he passed by must see it too, and despise him; and he
hurried on through the bitter cold, eager only to get out of sight.

He had not forgotten Stephen Grattan's letter; but he said to himself
that it would be time enough to present it when he had found work and a
settled place of abode. But now, weary in mind and in body, and nearly
benumbed with the cold, when he found himself in the neighbourhood of
the great hardware establishment in which Stephen's friend was employed,
he determined to deliver it at once.

Stephen had prepared his friend Muir beforehand for Morely's coming. He
had written to him how "the Lord had most surely given him this brand to
pluck from the burning,--this poor soul to save from the roaring lion
that goeth about seeking whom he may devour;" and, reading it, his
friend never doubted that Stephen's words were the words of Stephen's
Master; and from the moment that Morely stood before him, pale and
weary, and shivering with the cold, he looked upon himself as indeed his
brother's keeper.

Muir took him to his home that night; and when he saw how weak he was,
how little able to struggle by himself against his enemy, he kept him
there; for he knew all the dangers which might b