She finished her long story at last.  The minister had listened to it in perfect silence.  He sat still even when she had done speaking,—­still, and lost in thought.  It was a very awkward matter for him to have a hand in.  Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Veneers had a pew in the Reverend Mr. Fairweather’s meeting-house.  It would seem that he, Mr. Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested.  Had he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people?  Was there enough capital of humanity in his somewhat limited nature to furnish sympathy and unshrinking service for his friends in an emergency? or was he too busy with his own attacks of spiritual neuralgia, and too much occupied with taking account of stock of his own thin-blooded offences, to forget himself and his personal interests on the small scale and the large, and run a risk of his life, if need were, at any rate give himself up without reserve to the dangerous task of guiding and counselling these distressed and imperilled fellow-creatures?

The good minister thought the best thing to do would be to call and talk over some of these matters with Brother Fairweather,—­for so he would call him at times, especially if his senior deacon were not within earshot.  Having settled this point, he comforted Sophy with a few words of counsel and a promise of coming to see her very soon.  He then called his man to put the old white horse into the chaise and drive Sophy back to the mansion-house.

When the Doctor sat down to his sermon again, it looked very differently from the way it had looked at the moment he left it.  When he came to think of it, he did not feel quite so sure practically about that matter of the utter natural selfishness of everybody.  There was Letty, now, seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that old black woman, and indeed in poor people generally; perhaps it would not be too much to say that she was always thinking of other people.  He thought he had seen other young persons naturally unselfish, thoughtful for others; it seemed to be a family trait in some he had known.

But most of all he was exercised about this poor girl whose story Sophy had been telling.  If what the old woman believed was true,—­and it had too much semblance of probability,—­what became of his theory of ingrained moral obliquity applied to such a case?  If by the visitation of God a person receives any injury which impairs the intellect or the moral perceptions, is it not monstrous to judge such a person by our common working standards of right and wrong?  Certainly, everybody will answer, in cases where there is a palpable organic change brought about, as when a blow on the head produces insanity.  Fools!  How long will it be before we shall learn that for every wound which betrays itself to the sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen mutilations that cripple, each of them, some one or more of our highest faculties?  If what Sophy told and believed was the real truth, what prayers could be agonizing enough, what tenderness could be deep enough, for this poor, lost, blighted, hapless, blameless child of misfortune, struck by such a doom as perhaps no living creature in all the sisterhood of humanity shared with her?