been sympathetic at all times. The
letter he wrote to Eliza Fay when her husband was put under arrest,
dissociating himself from the act of the guardians of the law and
protesting his belief in his former tenant's innocence, was conceived in
a spirit so noble as to raise the estimate of human nature in the minds
of all who knew its contents. Whatever the inner convictions of the
much-tried woman to whom it was addressed, the document was too precious
to her husband's cause not to be exhibited, though in the matter of
inner convictions Lois was obliged to caution her.

"I wouldn't put it beyond him, not a mite," Mrs. Fay had confessed, with
tragic matter-of-fact; "not after the way he's talked, I wouldn't, and
Matt don't, either."

"Has your son said so?"

"He's said worse. He's said that if he didn't do it, he ought to have.
That's the way he talks. Oh, he's no comfort to me! I knew he wouldn't
be, after that awful place, but I didn't look for him to be quite what
he is, wanting to kill and blow up everything. An I. I. A. is what he
calls himself, and the Lord only knows what that is. I blame myself,"
she went on, with dry, unrelenting statement of the case. "I didn't
bring them up right. I was discontented--"

"Oh, but there's a discontent that's divine," Lois broke in,
consolingly.

"Well, this wasn't it. It was 'hateful and hating one another,' as Paul
says. I put it into their heads--I mean Fay's and the children's. Matt'd
commit murder now as quick as a kitten'll lap milk--or he says he would;
and as for Fay--"

Lois interrupted, hurriedly, "We shouldn't do him the injustice of
condemning him in advance, should we?"

The woman held herself erect, her hard, uncompromising eyes, in which
there was nevertheless an odd suffusion of softness, looking straight
over her companion's head. "I can't help what I know."

"And _I_ can't help what _I_ know, which is that you and I have nothing
to do with judgment, still less with condemnation. There are others to
attend to that, while we try to bring"--she uttered the word with
diffidence--"try to bring love."

"Oh, love!" The tone was that of one who had long ago given up anything
so illusory.

"Then whatever we can find that will take the place of love," Lois
replied, with relief at getting back to ground of which she was more
sure. "Let us call it good will."

Good will was, in fact, what Reuben Hilary had called it, and it was
from him she was quoting. Having