three times on Sunday,--first, she had spoken to the
"inventor's boy"; second, she had not "come straight home";
third, she had been seduced into a forbidden boat,--and there
was no balm in Gilead; nor any forgiveness forever. She
pictured her grand, dark father standing like a biblical
allegory of "Hell and Damnation" within the somber leathern
cube of his books, the fiercely white, whalebone cane upon
which he and old brother gout leaned, and the vast gloomy
centers at the bases of which glowed his savage eyes. She
thought of the rolling bitter voice with which she had once
heard him stiffen the backs of his constituents, and she was
sore afraid. She did not remember how much he loved her, or the
impotence of his principles where she was concerned. And she
did not recollect, for she had not been old enough to know,
that the great bitter voice, with its heavy, telling sarcasm,
had been lifted for humanity--for more humanity upon earth.

"Oh, 'Laddin," she said suddenly, "I daren't go home now."

"Maybe we can get her in farther up," said Aladdin, "and go
home through the woods. That'll be something, anyhow."

Margaret shuddered. She thought of the thin aunt who gave her
lessons upon the pianoforte--one of the elect, that aunt, who
had never done wrong, and whom any halo would fit; who gave
her to understand that the Almighty would raise Cain with any
little girl who did not practise an hour every day, and pray
Him, night and morning, to help her keep off the black notes
when the white notes were intended. First there would be a
reckoning with papa, then one with Aunt Marion, last with