with a scourge of contempt. What did he want now with her? Her
duty was light; she took it up,--she was glad to take it up; what
more would he have? She put the whole matter away from her.

It grew late. She sat down by the lamp and began to read to her
father, as usual. Her mother put away her knitting; Joel came in
half-asleep; the Doctor put out his everlasting cigar, and
listened, as he did everything else, intently. It was an old
story that she read,-- the story of a man who walked the fields
and crowded streets of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago.
Knowles, with his heated brain, fancied that the silence without
in the night grew deeper, that the slow-moving air stopped in its
course to listen. Perhaps the simple story carried a deeper
meaning to these brooding mountains and solemn sky than to the
purblind hearts within. It was a far-off story to them,--very
far off. The old school-master heard it with a lowered head,
with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive his
leader's orders. Was not the leader a knights the knight of
truest courage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man
sprang up to own him Lord. That he not only preached to, but ate
and drank with publicans and sinners, was a requirement of his
mission; nowadays----. Joel heard the "good word" with a
bewildered consciousness of certain rules of honesty to be
observed next day, and a maze of crowns and harps shining
somewhere beyond. As for any immediate connection between the
teachings of this book and "The Daily Gazette," it was pure
blasphemy to think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His
hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was
quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch
of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on