was indeed a worse terror to him than Apollyon had been to Christian, for it seemed to his faithlessness that not even the weapon of All-prayer was equal to his discomfiture; nothing could render him harmless but the payment of his bill.  He began to look back with something like horror upon the sermons he had preached on honesty; for how would his inability to pay his debts appear in the eyes of those who had heard them?  Oh! why had he not paid for every thing as they had it?  Then when the time came that he could not pay, they would only have had to go without, whereas now, there was the bill louring at the back of the want!

When Miss Drake returned from the chapel, she found her father leaning on the sun-dial, where she had left him.  To all appearance he had not moved.  He knew her step but did not stir.

“Father!” she said.

“It is a hard thing, my child,” he responded, still without moving, “when the valley of Humiliation comes next the river Death, and no land of Beulah between!  I had my good things in my youth, and now I have my evil things.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder lovingly, tenderly, worshipfully, but did not speak.

“As you see me now, my Dorothy, my God’s-gift, you would hardly believe your father was once a young and popular preacher, ha, ha!  Fool that I was!  I thought they prized my preaching, and loved me for what I taught them.  I thought I was somebody!  With shame I confess it!  Who were they, or what was their judgment, to fool me in my own concerning myself!  Their praise was indeed a fit rock for me to build my shame upon.”

“But, father dear, what is even a sin when it is repented of?”

“A shame forever, my child.  Our Lord did not cast out even an apostle for his conceit and self-sufficiency, but he let him fall.”

“He has not let you fall, father?” said Dorothy, with tearful eyes.

“He is bringing my gray hairs with sorrow and shame to the grave, my child.”

“Why, father!” cried the girl, shocked, as she well might be, at his words, “what have I done to make you say that?”

“Done, my darling! you done?  You have done nothing but righteousness ever since you could do any thing!  You have been like a mother to your old father.  It is that bill! that horrid butcher’s bill!”

Dorothy burst out laughing through her dismay, and wept and laughed together for more than a minute ere she could recover herself.

“Father! you dear father! you’re too good to live!  Why, there are forks and spoons enough in the house to pay that paltry bill!—­not to mention the cream-jug which is, and the teapot which we thought was silver, because Lady Sykes gave it us.  Why didn’t you tell me what was troubling you, father dear?”