law binding her to this work, there was, after all, a kind of justice in it that made him the more readily acquiesce in her expressed desire. If the sins of the parents descend to the third and fourth generation, why should she not, as far as possible, atone for her father's sin; for in so doing she benefited herself, as well as Robert, and perhaps, who knows? the dead.

To me, I must own it took on the appearance of a cruel sacrifice. That a pure young life like hers, already burdened by sorrow, should be held down to wait upon, to bear with, to suffer for a poor wreck like him, seemed monstrous. It was as if the selfishness that had governed her father's life reached from his grave a controlling hand bidding her suffer for him. And I questioned her wisdom in her willingness, nay even desire, to give herself to this hopeless task. I knew better than she or Tom could know, the long, weary hours in store for her. Already in imagination I saw her fair young face wan and worn by unremitting care, aged by a fruitless struggle. I knew the time would surely come when in the depths of her heart she would cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

If I had been Tom, I would not have allowed this sacrifice for an hour. But I was not Tom; and perhaps I, too, was selfish.

CHAPTER XXI. AGNES AND ROBERT.

How much of comfort or hope Agnes derived from the change manifest in her father during the last few days of his life, I was unable to determine. To my apprehension the proportion of comfort or hope was exceedingly small. Of course it is possible that a man may live a long life devoted to selfishness, unrighteousness, and even crime, and yet on his death-bed repent and be saved, but it is not among the probabilities. As Mr. Joseph Cook puts it, by persistence in such a life a man comes into a "permanent dissimilarity with his Maker," which in all probability becomes a growing dissimilarity throughout the eternities.

There is but one record of a repentant thief upon the cross. Death-bed repentances

are doubtless, sometimes, genuine; but in most cases, followed by unexpected recovery, the man gravitates to the old, selfish life when the fear of what lies behind the veil becomes less vivid as its proximity withdraws. In this case, I believed the man, by the light of a dawning eternity, saw his own sins, as a drowning man sees all his past life in the one moment preceding unconsciousness; but that the change in him was thorough and radical I could find too little evidence. The most hopeful sign was his thought for Robert Lyon at the very last, and his desire that he should be saved.

What Agnes thought was known only to herself and to Him who gave her the power to think. She rarely alluded to her father, never, unless necessary; and all signs and tokens of his past presence were carefully placed by her own hands in his room and locked up. I knew that she sometimes passed hours alone in that room; but she came out quiet and calm, and did not break down as I expected she would after so long a period of intense watching. Probably the fact that her time and attention were so largely absorbed by Robert Lyon helped her to bear her loss with a greater degree of equanimity than would otherwise have been possible. There was no void in her time or care to remind her of the dead. The power that had sustained her hitherto sustained her still. If there was a tender solemnity about her, a sense of remoteness to things present and of nearness to things absent, she was also hopeful, cheerful and courageous, and her smile was none the less sweet that it was also a little sad. I grew to believe that she was thankful for Robert Lyon, and accepted him as the double gift of her father and of her Master. She watched the signs of returning coherency of thought with the gladness of a mother who sees the dawning intelligence of her child. The same nurse who aided her through the last months of her father's life was retained to do for Robert Lyon what she could not; but it was all under her care and supervision, and he watched her coming and going with an eagerness that told that at last his benumbed affections

were being stirred into life. I could but respond to Tom's feeling that there was now more hope for Robert Lyon than at any time the past twenty years.

I subsequently found that there were two sides to the remarkable equanimity with which Agnes bore the death of her only relative; the father she had loved and served with such earnestness and fidelity. I must own that I had been a little surprised at the utter absence of tears and expressions of grief. Either she was living on too high a plane to be touched by selfish considerations, or this calm was unnatural and would force a reaction.

One night, some three months after her father's death, at the conclusion of one of my visits to Robert, she called me into the library for consultation in regard to some scheme she had in thought, for establishing an asylum or retreat where inebriates could be treated medically. The suggestion grew out of her care and study of Robert Lyon. As we stood talking her hand fell upon something by a chair her father was wont to occupy. She paused suddenly, and turning took up his cane that had lain forgotten since he used it last. She held it in her hands, remembering the days when, by its aid, he went slowly through the house; remembering the last evening he passed in that room; how, with his own hand, he put the cane in its place, and leaning on her arm went to his bed never to rise again. A sudden realization of her loss rushed upon her; it was as if he had that moment died. Her lips quivered, her breath came quickly, and all at once the grief so long held in abeyance burst in such an agony of cries and tears as I never witnessed before, and hope never to witness again.

It was to me an inexpressible relief that in her anguish she turned to me and not from me. I took her in my arms as I would have taken Maud, and tried my utmost to soothe and comfort her. It was all of no use; there was no staying the tide now. I knew that she carried beneath her quiet exterior the still intensity that characterized her father; but I was wholly unprepared for such an intensely passionate outburst. I grew seriously alarmed and laid her on

the lounge, praying that peace and rest might speedily come.

At last, utterly exhausted, she fell into a heavy slumber, disturbed ever and anon by long shuddering sobs. Her pallid face, drenched and worn, was a pitiful thing to see. I sent the driver home with my horse, and sat by her till late in the evening she awoke.

For days after this she moved wearily about the house, and her eyes were often full of unshed tears; but she kept up bravely, declining to be sick. A curious sympathy, recognized but unexpressed, existed between us from the first; and ever after that night, if she was seriously troubled or perplexed, she sought me out and gave me her hand to hold for a moment, seemingly comforted and quieted by the unspoken sympathy she was sure to find.

As the days and months went on, Robert Lyon recovered strength of body and mind; and though he was never to walk again, when the anniversary of Joel Dyer's death came around, he could be put into a chair and rolled about the house and grounds, thoroughly happy and content. In the absence of temptation, and under the influence of Agnes's gentle teachings and affectionate ministrations, the change Tom had predicted gradually came. Patient, humble, grateful and loving, there could be no doubt that Robert Lyon was a regenerate soul. Tom passed an hour or more with him every day, and the interchange of thought and feeling was blessed to both. Agnes, she glowed like a star.

CHAPTER XXII.

As for

MISSIONARIES AND MARRIAGES.

HAL was now ready for practice, and hesitated between starting out for himself in New Haven, and going into partnership with me.

"I can tell better to-morrow," answered Hal one day when his mother pressed him for a decision.

That evening he dressed with scrupulous care and went out. He had called upon Miss Dyer frequently of late, and I surmised that he was going to see her now.

The next morning he followed me into

me.

Hal did not return to New Haven at once. He was to remain with us till after his sister's marriage, which was proving a severe trial to us all. At the meeting of the American Board, the previous year, Northrop Duff conceived it his duty to offer himself as a missionary to the far-away heathen. His offer was accepted, and he was assigned to a station in South Africa. In a few days he would sail, and Maud would go with him. Maud, our pet-Maud who was so homesick in Italy-Maud who could not bear to leave her mother's side, was going a stranger to a strange land, probably never

to return.

We could not endure the thought at first, and we used every argument to dissuade her. It was of no use. If it was Northrop's duty it was her duty; where he went she would go, and the Lord would bless them both. Mary cried herself into a fever, but she yielded before I did. Jack was the only one in the family who encouraged Maud. He told her that she was all right, and bade her stick to her choice and go ahead, like a brave little girl as she was.

When we found that arguments and entreaties only distressed her, we submitted. All that could be done for her present or future comfort was done with loving alacrity, and for her sake the parting was made as easy as possible.

One morning they were quietly married. I took leave of her at home, but her mother, Hal, and Jack, accompanied them to New York in order to remain with Maud to the last moment.

That night I left the deserted house and went over to see Agnes.

She came to me in the library. Not with many words, but full of tender sympathy, she tried to comfort me for the loss of my pet. We talked long of Maud and her prospects.

At length I arose to go. Agnes gave me her hand, visibly moved. As I looked in her face all manner of possibilities were in my thoughts. Surely it could do her no harm to know that I loved her, and if-and if she loved me, had I not a right to know that

Years have passed. Years of earnest toil, years strewn with blessings, for no evil has befallen us that has not proved a blessing in disguise. And now, as

"I sit by my fireside dreaming,
This still October night,
Tracing a backward journey

By memory's pale moonlight;"

I hear in an adjoining room a sound of happy voices. Maud, our wee pet, "the moon-faced darling of all," is pleading with Uncle Robert for just one more story before bed-time; and Robbie, curly-headed, impetuous Robbie, is clamoring for a promise that the very first thing in the morning Uncle Robert will make him a new kite. And I see, as well as if I were in the room, Robert Lyon, the Uncle Robert of the little ones, in the center of the happy group, smiling, benignant, and ineffably content, a child among the children. They delight to roll him about the house in the chair from which he may never rise without help. He spends his days, and profitably, in cutting out paper dolls, making kites, performing surgical operations on broken horses, fitting on eccentric wagon wheels, and telling stories; most wonderful stories, of ships at sea, of foreign lands, of mermaids, fairies, princes in disguise; and he is the most besought if not the most beloved member of our household. The only sorrow he has known in all these years was a sorrow that he shared in common with us all, when we surrendered our first-born, our angel Agnes, to Him who gave her.

Now I hear the mother's voice, to which the years have lent a mellower music, saying:

"Come little ones! it is bed-time: Uncle Robert and say Good night."

Tom, whose black hair is fast turning gray, steps in to have his daily chat with Robert, and to say that he has heard from the travelers. Jack has married one of Tom's daughters, a most beautiful girl, and they have gone to South Africa to see Northrop and Maud, and to bring home their two sons to be educated here, after which Jack is to settle over a city pastorate. Hal has married a brilliant young widow, has an elegant home, and is stepping into my shoes as fast as possible. Mary is prouder than ever of her eldest son. Here comes Agnes with her father's leisurely step and her hands clasped behind her in the old way; and she looks at me with a

case.

WHEN the communists gained possession of Paris, they were seized with a mad eagerness to obliterate every vestige of the empire. It was not enough to have established republican methods. They could not rest till they had burned the government offices, sacked the palaces with vandal hands, drilled out the old mottoes of glory on the walls, and chiseled in their places the watchwords that stood for their own wild theories.

There is a secularizing party in our country that seems anxious to perform the same service for the State in its relation to religion. Not content with abandoning the organic union of the civil and religious powers, it seems feverishly anxious to abolish from civil affairs every religious idea and practice whatever. For centuries hardly a civilized government in the world has thought it could safely or successfully exist without a close alliance with the Christian Church. But this party desires to legislate every recognition of Divine Sovereignty out of our public documents, and every token of reverence out of our public institutions. Individuals may be religious if they choose, but the State, as such, is to know no God, no

ideal of life higher than the notions of its legislators, no motive but expediency, no law above "the will of the majority."

Very different motives actuate the various advocates of this theory; but whether the purpose springs from wrong conceptions of a State and of right, or from mere hatred of religion, they are united in the common aim of the complete secularization of all civil affairs. They expect the State to thrive after they have eliminated every vestige of religion from education, law, and every public institution. If their ideas have full sweep, the State must no more invoke Divine help in any civic gathering; it must not speak of God in its Constitution nor in its courts; it must not thank Him for its prosperity. The soldier, dying in hospital, must expire without the comforts of religion; for the State can employ no chaplain. No ray of heavenly comfort may be cast by song or sermon over the dark trouble of our insane in State asylums, for the State can know of no gospel. No Reform School may invoke the aid of the Bible; the State must not recognize the existence of such a book. Children in its schools may read Shakes