abroad in despair, and I have never seen anything more of him.

"You can guess now what I am going to pray of you to do. Without
hesitation, write to this girl and tell her the exact truth. Anything,
any obloquy, anything friends or enemies may say of you must be faced
even joyfully rather than what I had to endure. Better die the death
of the Saviour on the cross than live such a life as mine."

I said: "Miss Arbour, you are doubtless right, but think what it
means. It means nothing less than infamy. It will be said, I broke
the poor thing's heart, and marred her prospects for ever. What will
become of me, as a minister, when all this is known?"

She caught my hand in hers, and cried with indescribable feeling -

"My good sir, you are parleying with the great Enemy of Souls. Oh! if
you did but know, if you COULD but know, you would be as decisive in
your recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly opened at your
feet. Never mind the future. The one thing you have to do is the
thing that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you. What does the
119th Psalm say?--'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.' We have no light
promised us to show us our road a hundred miles away, but we have a
light for the next footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light
for the one which is to follow. The inspiration of the Almighty could
not make clearer to me the message I deliver to you. Forgive me--you
are a minister, I know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, but
I am an old woman. Never would you have heard my history from me, if I
had not thought it would help to save you from something worse than
death."