“Oh,” she faltered, “I wish I felt as you do, believed as you do.  I hope you will get strong soon.  I would like to tell you some things which trouble me very much, and there is no one I can tell.”

“By and by,” he whispered.  “Don’t worry.  All right.”

“Oh, what does this mean?” she thought as she returned to the house.  “Awfully wounded, suffering, dying perhaps, yet ’glad with an exceeding joy’!  Uncle and aunt haven’t any idea of such a religion, and for some reason Dr. Williams never gave me any such idea of it at church.  Why didn’t he?  Was it my fault?  What he said seemed just words that made little or no impression.  Since he tried to marry me to Cousin Mad I feel as if I could scarcely bear the sight of him.”

Yet he was the first one to greet her on the veranda.  He spoke with formal kindness, but she responded merely by a grave salutation, and passed on, for she felt that he should have understood and protected her in the most terrible emergency of her young life.

Having looked after the safety of his family, he had returned with the best and sincerest intentions to minister to the wounded.  If the good he would do corresponded with these intentions he would have been welcomed in most instances; but he possessed that unfortunate temperament which is only one remove for the better from a cold indifference to his sacred duties.  He did not possess a particle of that mysterious, yet in his calling priceless, gift termed magnetism for the lack of a better definition.  All respected him, few warmed toward him or thought of opening to him their hearts.  His mind was literal, and within it the doctrines were like labelled and separate packages, from which he took from time to time what he wanted as he would supplies from a store-room.  God was to him a Sovereign and a Judge who would save a few of the human race in exact accordance with the creed of the Church in which the good man had been trained.  What would happen to those without its pale was one of those solemn mysteries with which he had naught to do.  Conscientious in his idea of duty to the last degree, he nevertheless might easily irritate and repel many minds by a rigid presentation of the only formula of faith which he deemed safe and adequate.  It seemed his chief aim to have every form and ceremony of his Church complied with, and then his responsibility ceased.  He and Mr. Baron had taken solid comfort in each other, both agreeing on every point of doctrine and politics.  Both men honestly felt that if the world could be brought to accept their view of life and duty little would be left to be desired.  When summoned to perform the marriage ceremony Dr. Williams no more comprehended the desperate opposition of Miss Lou to the will of her guardian, the shrinking, instinctive protest of her woman’s nature, than he did the hostility of so many in the world to the tenets of his faith.  His inability to understand the feelings, the mental