“What do you think about it, Mr. Laicus?” said Mrs. Hardcap.

“Think!” said I; “I should be afraid to say what I think lest your husband should account me a hopeless and irreclaimable unbeliever.”

“Speak out,” said Mr. Hardcap; “as one who at the stake should say, ‘pile the fuel on the flame, and try my constancy to its utmost.’  “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

“Well,” said I, “if I were to speak out, I should say that this way of reading the Bible reminds me of the countryman who went to a city hotel and undertook to eat right down the bill of fare, supposing he ought not to call for fish till he had eaten every kind of soup.  It is as if one being sick, should go to the apothecary’s shop, and beginning on one side, go right down the store taking in due order every pill, potion, and powder, till he was cured-or killed.”

Mr. Hardcap shook his head resolutely.  “Is it not true,” said he, “that all Scripture is profitable?”

“Yes,” said I, “but not that it is all equally profitable for all occasions.  All the food on the table is profitable, but not to be eaten at one meal.  All the medicine in the apothecary’s shop is profitable, but not for the same disease.”

“There is another thing,” said Mrs. Hardcap, “that I cannot help being doubtful about.  James is learning the New Testament through as a punishment.”

“As a punishment!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” said she.  “That is, Mr. Hardcap has given him the New Testament, and for his little offences about the house he allots him so many verses to learn; sometimes only ten or twelve, sometimes a whole chapter.  I am afraid it will give the poor boy a distaste for the word of God.”

“There is no danger,” said Mr. Hardcap, oracularly.  “The word of God is sharper than a two edged sword, and is quick even to the dividing asunder of the joints and the marrow.  It is the book to awaken conviction of sin, the proper book for the sinner.  There is no book so fitting to bring him to a sense of his sinfulness and awaken in him a better mind.”

“And how,” said I, “do you find it practically works?  Does he seem to love his Bible?”

“Says he hates it awfully,” said his mother.

“Such,” said Mr. Hardcap, “is the dreadful depravity of the human heart.  It is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”

It was quite idle to argue with Mr. Hardcap.  We left him unconvinced, and I doubt not he is still reading his three chapters a day and five on Sunday.  But I pity poor James from the bottom of my heart; and as my wife and I walked home I could not but help contrasting in my own mind Mr. Hardcap’s way of reading the Bible and that which Deacon Goodsole pursues in his family.

CHAPTER XXXI.

In Darkness.

Last Tuesday night Jennie met me at the station.  It is unusual for her to do so.  The surprise was a delightful one to me.  But as I sat down beside her in the basket wagon she did not greet me as joyously as usual.  Her mien was so sober that I asked her at once the question: