But Archer's feelings were not those he had expected. He had brought
her, intending her to be done good to; but before the sermon was over
he wished he had not brought her. He resisted the feeling for a long
time, but at length yielded to it entirely; the object of his
solicitude all the while conscious only of the lighted stillness and
the new barrier between Charley and Newgate. The fact with regard to
Stephen was that a certain hard _pan_, occasioned by continual
ploughings to the same depth and no deeper, in the soil of his mind,
began this night to be broken up from within, and that through the
presence of a young woman who did not for herself put together two
words of the whole discourse.

The pastor was preaching upon the saying of St. Paul, that he could
wish himself accursed from Christ for his brethren. Great part of his
sermon was an attempt to prove that he could not have meant what his
words implied. For the preacher's mind was so filled with the supposed
paramount duty of saving his own soul, that the enthusiasm of the
Apostle was simply incredible. Listening with that woman by his side,
Stephen for the first time grew doubtful of the wisdom of his pastor.
Nor could he endure that such should be the first doctrine Sara heard
from his lips. Thus was he already and grandly repaid for his
kindness; for the presence of a woman who without any conscious
religion was to herself a law of love, brought him so far into
sympathy with the mighty soul of St. Paul, that from that moment the
blessing of doubt was at work in his, undermining prison walls.

He walked home with Sara almost in silence, for he found it impossible
to impress upon her those parts of the sermon with which he had no
fault to find, lest she should retort upon that one point. The arrows