of my juvenile hours, into whose care and warm affections I was committed by the parting words of a dying mother!  How ardently does your sister love you! how deep for you is the affection of Perreeza’s heart!  What can I say that will cause one sweet ingredient to drop into your bitter cup?  Nothing better do I know, than the favorite sentence of our beloved Jeremiah.  If the good prophet were here would he not say, ’Jehovah is the strength of all his saints; trust in him and be at peace!’ Oh, how sweetly flowed the gentle words of the man of God!  Brothers! dear as ye seem to my throbbing heart, terrible as the fiery furnace may rage, Perreeza has no desire that your safety should be purchased at a dishonorable price.  Nay, brothers! if for a moment I should indulge in such an unholy desire, that moment I should forfeit all right to call you brothers.  I shall not even advise you to stand firm in the fiery trial.  Ah! too well do I know that your noble souls already scorn the command of an apostate king, who once acknowledged the supremacy of the God of Israel.

“My precious Jupheena came to see me this morning, and she is very confident that the God in whom we trust will bring you through this trial triumphantly.  Dear brothers, accept this hasty dispatch as an offering of pure affection.  Farewell, until our next meeting.”

“Perreeza.”

With full hearts, the brothers bowed before the Lord and rolled their burdens upon the Almighty.  The entire consecration was now made, and they were ready for the trial.  The struggle was over and their minds became as calm and tranquil as a summer evening.

CHAPTER XVIII.

In an extravagantly furnished apartment of a fine-looking mansion in the heart of the city, sits a family group, consisting of a father, mother, two sons, and one daughter.  They are far from exhibiting in their countenances that contentment of mind which is a “continual feast,” and yet something has transpired that gives them, for the time being, an unusual degree of pleasurable emotion.

The father leaves his seat, and with folded arms he begins to pace slowly backward and forward the length of the apartment with an air of pompous dignity, while ever and anon a smile of extreme selfishness plays on his lips.  He has received intelligence which he considers by no means displeasing.

The mother, to whom nature has been rather niggardly in the endowment of outward charms, is loaded with a superabundance of golden ornaments, in the vain attempt to supply the lack of the natural with the artificial.  In her eye you look in vain for intelligence, or in her countenance for benevolence; but she smiles! yea, indeed, with something the mother is evidently pleased.

The two sons, in making a declaration of their brotherhood to a stranger, would stand in no danger of being suspected on that point as deceivers.  The resemblance is quite striking.