know how, anyway; and she hasn't even got a comb to comb her hair
with, her father he took it to sell; and everything there is horrid, and
Dirk, he's awful."

It was strange, she could not herself account for it; but with every
added word of misery that set poor Dirk Colson lower and lower in the
scale of humanity, there seemed to come into this woman's heart, and
shine in her face, an assurance that he was to be a "chosen vessel unto
God."

The doctor was watching her again, curious, apparently, to see how this
pitiful appeal for forbearance in judging of poor Mart affected her, and
something in his face made her say, speaking low, "an inheritance among
them which are sanctified."

"Amen!" he said. And there came to Mrs. Roberts a feeling that this
earnest prayer, for the second time repeated by two men who prayed,
was a sort of seal from the Master.

She turned away from both gentlemen then; the tears were very near the
surface. She must do something to tone down the beating of her heart.
Sallie was at hand, and she went with her to another corner of the room,
and a low-toned conversation was carried on, scraps of which floated
back to the gentlemen in the form of "sheets," "grape jelly," "mutton
broth," "a soft pillow," and the like.

"I feel my patient growing better," the doctor said, with satisfaction.

"Is there no father here?" Mr. Roberts asked.