were but her natural progress down the narrow path on which he had
set her feet the moonlit night of their first meeting. Remembering the
experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock
of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.
But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those
few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older,
the wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes,
it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people had
made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was enabled to assume
the garments of respect and civilization; and often a rough shake of
the hand, and words of homely commendation from a red-shirted and burly
figure, sent a glow to the cheek of the young master, and set him to
thinking if it was altogether deserved.

Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and the
master was sitting late one evening over the moral and sententious
copies, when there came a tap at the door and again Mliss stood before
him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps
but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his
former apparition. "Are you busy?" she asked. "Can you come with
me?"--and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she
said, "Come, then, quick!"

They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As they
entered the town the master asked her whither she was going. She
replied, "To see my father."

It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial title, or
indeed anything more than "Old Smith" or the "Old Man." It was the first