Now, however, all mere thoughts of courtesy or honor must yield before the alternative in which James and Donald stood.  She reached the desk, drew out the concealing drawer, pushed aside the slide, and touched the paper.  There were other papers there, but something taught her at once the right one.  To take it and close the desk was but the work of a moment, then back she flew as swiftly and noiselessly as a spirit with the condemning evidence tightly clasped in her hand.

James was still muttering and moaning in his troubled sleep, and with the consciousness of her success all her unnatural strength passed away.  She could hardly secrete it in her bosom ere she fell into a semi-conscious lethargy, through which she heard with terror her husband’s low, weird laughter and whispered curses.

At length the day for the dinner came.  James had procured an invitation, and he made unusual personal preparations for it.  He was conscious that he was going to do a very mean action, but he would look as well as possible in the act.  He had even his apology for it ready; he would say that “as long as it was a private wrong he had borne the loss patiently for twenty years, but that the public welfare demanded honest men, men above reproach, and he could no longer feel it his duty,” etc., etc.

After he was dressed he bid Christine “Good-by.”

“He would only stay an hour,” he said, “and he must needs go, as Donald was her kin.”

Then he went to the desk, and with hands trembling in their eagerness sought the bill.  It was not there. Impossible! He looked again—­again more carefully—­could not believe his eyes, and looked again and again.  It was really gone.  If the visible hand of God had struck him, he could not have felt it more consciously.  He mechanically closed the desk and sat down like one stunned.  Cain might have felt as James did when God asked him, “Where is thy brother?” He did not think of prayer.  No “God be merciful to me a sinner” came as yet from his dry, white lips.  The fountains of his heart seemed dry as dust.  The anger of God weighed him down till

      “He felt as one
  Who, waking after some strange, fevered dream,
  Sees a dim land and things unspeakable,
  And comes to know at last that it is hell.”

Meantime Christine was lying with folded hands, praying for him.  She knew what an agony he was going through, and ceaselessly with pure supplications she prayed for his forgiveness.  About midnight one came and told him his wife wanted to see him.  He rose with a wretched sigh, and looked at the clock.  He had sat there six hours.  He had thought over everything, over and over—­the certainty that the paper was there, the fact that no other paper had been touched, and that no human being but Christine knew of the secret place.  These things shocked him beyond expression.  It was to his mind a visible assertion of the divine prerogative; he had really heard God say to him, “Vengeance is mine.”  The lesson that in these materialistic days we would reason away, James humbly accepted.  His religious feelings were, after all, his deepest feelings, and in those six hours he had so palpably felt the frown of his angry Heavenly Father that he had quite forgotten his poor, puny wrath at Donald McFarlane.