n the prospect of coming rest, she heard a
sort of half scuffle at her door, followed by a knock. Then in came
Walter, dragging in some one after him who was evidently reluctant to be
thus introduced. "Can you, oh, can you, dear aunt, spare me--ay, spare
_us_,--that means me and Amos, or, rather, it ought to be Amos and me,--
just a few minutes? Amos doesn't want to come, just like his unselfish
self, but I do. No, I don't want to tire you after all your fatigues,
but I can't go to sleep till I have had a word from you. If you don't
let me stop, if you don't say that word, I shall lie awake all night,
thinking of those hands--not _cross_, for their owner is never cross,
but _crossed_--those crossed hands. Or if I do go to sleep, I shall do
nothing but dream of them. So pray let me stop; and Amos must stop
too."

The permission to remain having been cheerfully granted, Walter hauled
his brother into a chair, and then, stooping over him, kissed his
forehead. Then he flung himself on his knees and looked up wistfully
into Miss Huntingdon's face. Oh, how entirely did she forget all
weariness, as she marked the effect that Walter's kiss had on his
brother; how it brought tears from those eyes which had long known
little of weeping except for sorrow.

"Well, dear boy," she said, "and what would you have with me now?"

"Ah! auntie, I want those hands to talk to me, and I want Amos to hear
them talk. I want you to tell us both some of your moral courage
anecdotes; they will strengthen him and be a lesson to me; for I don't
want you to tell me this time that I was wrong. There sits the brave
man, here kneels the coward."

"Dear, dear boy," was Miss Huntingdon's reply, with a warm embrace,
"yes; what you say is true. It _did_ require true moral courage to
speak up as Amos did, at such a time and before so many; and we have
some noble instances on record of such a courage under somewhat similar
circumstances, and these show us that conduct like this will force
respect, let the world say and think what it pleases. I have two or
three heroes to bring forward on this topic, but I must be brief, as the
hour is late.

"You remember Frederick the Great, as he was called. Alas! he was great
in infidelity as well as in war; and he delighted to gather round him
those who shared in the same unbelieving views. God and his truth were
subjects of ridicule with them; and a bold man indeed would he be who
would venture to sa