“What,” cried Philip, slyly, “not on $2,000 a year!  But I’ll eat the biscuits.  They can’t possibly be any worse than those we had a week after we were married—­the ones we bought from the bakery, you remember,” Philip added, hastily.

“You saved yourself just in time, then,” replied the minister’s wife.  She came close up to the desk and in a different tone, said, “Philip, you know I believe in you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Philip simply; “I am sure you do.  I am impulsive and impractical, but heart and soul, and body and mind, I simply want to do the will of God.  Is it not so?”

“I know it is,” she said, “and if you go to Milton it will be because you want to do His will more than to please yourself.”

“Yes.  Then shall I answer the letter to-night?”

“Yes, if you have decided, with my help, of course.”

“Of course, you foolish creature, you know I could not settle it without you.  And as for the biscuits—­”

“As for the biscuits,” said the minister’s wife, “they will be settled without me, too, if I don’t go down and see to them.”  She hurried downstairs and Philip Strong, with a smile and a sigh, took up his pen and wrote replies to the two calls he had received, refusing the call to Elmdale and accepting the one to Milton.  And so the strange story of a great-hearted man really began.

When he had finished writing these two letters, he wrote another, which throws so much light on his character and his purpose in going to Milton, that we will insert that in this story, as being necessary to its full understanding.  This is the letter:—­

My dear Alfred:—­Two years ago, when we left the Seminary, you remember we promised each other, in case either of us left his present parish, he would let the other know at once.  I did not suppose, when I came, that I should leave so soon, but I have just written a letter which means the beginning of a new life to me.  The Calvary Church in Milton has given me a call, and I have accepted it.  Two months ago my church here practically went out of existence, through a union with the other church on the street.  The history of that movement is too long for me to relate here, but since it took place I have been preaching as a supply, pending the final settlement of affairs, and so I was at liberty to accept a call elsewhere.  I must confess the call from Milton was a surprise to me.  I have never been there (you know I do not believe in candidating for a place), and so I suppose their church committee came up here to listen to me.  Two years ago nothing would have induced me to go to Milton.  Today it seems perfectly clear that the Lord says to me “Go.”  You know my natural inclination is toward a quiet, scholarly pastorate.  Well, Milton is, as you know, a noisy, dirty, manufacturing town, full of working men, cursed with saloons, and black with coal smoke and unwashed humanity.  The church is quite