and their society was both powerful and well-organized, while their
personal devotion to Raeburn lent a vigor and vitality to the whole
body which might otherwise have been lacking. Perhaps
comparatively few would have been enthusiastic for the cause of
atheism had not that cause been represented by a high-souled,
self-denying man whom they loved with all their hearts.

The dreary evening ended at length, Erica helped her mother to bed,
and then with slow steps climbed up to her little attic room. It
was cold and comfortless enough, bare of all luxuries, but even
here the walls were lined with books, and Erica's little iron
bedstead looked somewhat incongruous surrounded as it was with
dingy-looking volumes, dusky old legal books, works of reference,
books atheistical, theological, metaphysical, or scientific. On
one shelf, amid this strangely heterogeneous collection, she kept
her own particular treasures--Brian's Longfellow, one or two of
Dickens's books which Tom had given her, and the beloved old Grimm
and Hans Andersen, which had been the friends of her childhood and
which for "old sakes' sake" she had never had the heart to sell.
The only other trace of her in the strange little bedroom was in a
wonderful array of china animals on the mantlepiece. She was a
great animal lover, and, being a favorite with every one, she
received many votive offerings. Her shrine was an amusing one to
look at. A green china frog played a tuneless guitar; a pensive
monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into
futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid
rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable
embrace, an enormous lobster, a diminutive polar bear, and in the
center of all a most evil-looking jackdaw about half an inch high.