not care much about our present life, thinking only of the hereafter,
there must be some blind fate or luck that crushes some and lifts up
others."

Thus Dennis, too sad and morbid to take a just view of anything, plodded
on till he reached his boarding-place, and stealing in as if he had
no business to be there, or anywhere else, sat down in a dusky corner
behind the stove, and was soon lost to surrounding life in his own
miserable thoughts.




CHAPTER VII

A GOOD SAMARITAN


Dennis was too good a Christian, and had received too deep a lesson
in his father's case, to become bitter, angry, and defiant, even if
he had believed that God was against him. He would have felt that it
was simply his duty to submit--to endure patiently. Somehow Until
to-day his heart had refused to believe that God could be against any
of His creatures. In fact, it was his general impression that God had
everything to do with his being a good Christian, but very little with
his getting a good place. The defect in his religion, and that of his
mother, too, was that both separated the spiritual life of the soul
too widely from the present life with its material, yet essential,
cares and needs. At this point they, like multitudes of others, fell
short of their full privilege, and enjoyment of God's goodness. His