It seemed, all through the day, that Grace could not do enough for
the old man's comfort. Once she drew him into her room, as he was
passing her door, to show him some pictures that she had painted. As
he sat looking at them, he noticed a small, handsomely bound Bible
on her table. Taking it up, he said--

"Do you read this, Grace?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, "every day." And there was such a light of
goodness in her eyes, as she looked up into his face, that Mr.
Archer felt, for a moment or two, as if the countenance of an angel
was before him.

"Why do you read it?" he continued after a pause.

"It teaches us the way to heaven," said Grace.

"And you are trying to live for heaven?"

"I try to shun all evil as sin. Can I do more?"

All the minister's creeds, and doctrines, and confessions of faith,
which he had ever considered the foundations upon which Christian
life was to be built, seemed, for a moment or two, useless lumber
before the simple creed of this loving, pure-hearted maiden. To seek
to disturb this state of innocence and obedience by moody polemics,
he felt, instinctively, to be wrong.

"Perhaps not," was his half abstracted reply; "perhaps not. Yes,
yes; shun what is evil, and the Lord will adjoin the good."