“Well, it’s persecution to bring up those old stories against her now.”

“Is it? when she will not disavow them, but maintains that she has always done right? and more than that, tells us she will do the same again if ever she has the power.”

“I’m sure all Romanists are not so cruel as to wish to torture or kill their Protestant neighbors,” cried Isadore indignantly.

“And I quite agree with you there,” he said; “I have not the least doubt that many of them are very kind-hearted; but I was speaking, not of individuals, but of the Romish Church as such.  She is essentially a persecuting power.”

“Well, being the only true church, she has the right to compel conformity to her creed.”

“Ah, you have already imbibed something of her spirit.  But we contend that she is not the true church.  ’To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.’  Brought to the touch-stone of God’s revealed word, she is proved to be reprobate silver; her creed spurious Christianity.  In second Thessalonians, second chapter, we have a very clear description of her as that ’Wicked whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.’  Also, in the seventeenth of Revelation, where she is spoken of as ’Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.’”

“How do you know she is meant there?” asked Isadore, growing red and angry.

“Because she, and she alone, answers to the description.  It is computed that fifty millions of Protestants have been slain in her persecutions; may it not then be truly said of her that she is drunken with the blood of the saints?”

“I think what you have been saying shows that the priests are right in teaching that the Bible is a dangerous book in the hands of the ignorant, and should therefore be withheld from the laity,” retorted Isadore hotly.

“But,” returned Mr. Daly, “Jesus said, ’Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me.’”

CHAPTER NINETEENTH.

    “Let us go back again mother,
     Oh, take me home to die.”

“And so, Isa, my uncle’s predictions that your popish teachers would violate their promise not to meddle with your faith, have proved only too true,” said Calhoun Conly, stepping forward, as Mr. Daly finished his last quotation from the Scriptures.

In the heat of their discussion, neither the minister nor Isadore had noticed his entrance, but he had been standing there, an interested listener, long enough to learn the sad fact of his sister’s perversion.

“They only did their duty, and I shall not have them blamed for it,” she said, haughtily.

“They richly deserve blame, and you cannot prevent it from being given them,” he answered firmly, and with flashing eyes.  “I have come, by my mother’s request, to take you and Virginia home, inviting Miss Reed to accompany us.”