CHAPTER VIII.

THEODORA'S DOOM.





Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise you
more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be allowed
to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have said. I am
afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this chapter.

On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last severe
frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth. The sun
was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up in the air
hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field close by a
hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass. A short distance
from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost. There alone was there
any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of the loveliest tenderest
green. I will not say the figure was such an exact resemblance as a
photograph would have been; still it was an indubitable likeness. It