son's destroyer? Would she have acquiesced in that dread obedience,
that sacrificial rite?

"But, father dear," still persisted Flurry, "I can't help thinking
about it; it would have been so dreadful for poor Sarah. Do you think
you would have been like Abraham, father; would you have taken the
knife to slay your only child?"

"Hush, Florence," cried her father, hoarsely, and he suddenly caught
her to him and kissed her, and bade her run away to her Aunt Ruth
with some trifling message or other. I could see her childish
question tortured him, by the strained look of his face, as he
approached the window. He had not known I was there, but when he saw
me he said almost irritably, only it was the irritability of
suppressed pain:

"What can put such thoughts in the child's head? I hope you do not
let her think too much, Miss Cameron?"

"Most children have strange fancies," I returned, quietly. "Flurry
has a vivid imagination; she thinks more deeply than you could credit
at her age; she often surprises me by the questions she asks. They
show an amount of reasoning power that is very remarkable."

"Let her play more," he replied, in a still more annoyed voice. "I
hate prodigies; I would not have Flurry an infant phenomenon for the
world. She has too much brain-power; she is too excitable; you must
keep her back Miss Cameron."

"I will do what I can," I returned humbly; and then, as he still