be gone for ever! Each moment's delay was a disobedience to her
conscience, a yielding to love's sinful reluctance! With "sick
assay" she heaved at the weight on her heart, but not a word would
come. If Ian would but speak again, and break the spell of the
terrible stillness! She must die in eternal wrong if she did not
speak! But no word would come. Something in her would not move. It
was not in her brain or her lips or her tongue, for she knew all the
time she could speak if she would. The caitiff will was not all on
the side of duty! She was not FOR the truth!--could she then be OF
the truth? She did not suspect a divine reluctance to urge that
which was not good.

Not always when the will works may we lay hold of it in the act:
somehow, she knew not how, she heard herself speaking.

"Are you sure it was God, Ian?" she said.

The voice she heard was weak and broken, reedy and strained, like
the voice of one all but dead.

"No, mother," answered Ian, "but I hope it was."

"Hopes, my dear hoy, are not to be trusted."

"That is true, mother; and yet we are saved by hope."

"We are saved by faith."

"I do not doubt it."