coming. Suddenly she raised herself up from whence she had fallen
across the bed, and looking at her husband with an expression that
caused him to step back a pace, involuntarily answered.

"By what authority do you speak to me thus?"

"By the authority vested in me as your husband," was promptly
answered.

"I was on God's errand, Mr. Howland; searching after the weak, the
simple, and the erring! Have you anything to say against the
mission? Does your authority reach above His?"

And the mother, lifting her hand, pointed trembling finger upward,
while she fixed an eye upon her husband so steady that his own sunk
beneath its gaze.

For the space of nearly a minute, the attitude of neither changed,
nor was the silence broken. Twice during the time did Mr. Howland
lift his eyes to those of his wife, and each time did they fall,
after a few moments, under the strange half-defiant look they
encountered. At last he said firmly, yet in a more subdued, though
rebuking voice,

"This to me, Esther?"

"Am I not a mother?" was asked in response to this, yet without a
perceptible tremor in her voice.

"You are a wife, as well as a mother," replied Mr. Howland, "and, as