soul! But Philippa did not listen much to his certainties; she coaxed his little sister into her pew, and sat with the child cuddled up against her, watching her turn over the leaves of the hymn-book or trying to braid the fringe of Miss Philly's black silk mantilla into little pigtails. Sometimes Miss Philly would look up at the careworn young face in the pulpit and think how holy Mary's brother was, and how learned—and how shabby; for he had only a housekeeper, Mrs. Semple, to take care of him and Mary. Not but what he might have had somebody besides Mrs. Semple! Philippa, for all her innocence, could not help being aware that he might have had—almost anybody! For others of Philly's sex watched the rapt face there in the pulpit. When Philippa thought of that, a slow blush used to creep up to her very temples. She saw him oftener in the pulpit than out of it, because when he came to call on her father she was apt not to be present. At first he came very frequently to see the Irvingite, because he felt it his duty to "deal" with him; but he made so little impression that he foresaw the time when it would be necessary to say that Ephraim was joined to his idols. But though it might be right to "let him alone," he could not stop calling at Henry Roberts's house; "for," he reminded himself, "the believing daughter may sanctify the unbelieving father!" He said this once to Dr. Lavendar, when his roan and old Goliath met in a narrow lane and paused to let their masters exchange a word or two.

"But do you know what the believing daughter believes?" said Dr. Lavendar. He wiped his forehead with his red bandanna, for it was a hot day; then he put his old straw hat very far back on his head and looked at the young man with a twinkle in his eye, which, considering the seriousness of their conversation, was discomfiting; but, after all, as John Fenn reminded himself, Dr. Lavendar was very old, and so might be forgiven if his mind was lacking in seriousness. As for his question of what the daughter believed: "I think—I hope," said the young minister, "that she is sound. She comes to my church quite regularly." "But she comes to my church quite irregularly," Dr. Lavendar warned him; and there was another of those disconcerting twinkles.

The boy looked at him with honest, solemn eyes. "I still believe that she is sound," he said, earnestly.

Dr. Lavendar blew his nose with a flourish of the red bandanna. "Well, perhaps she is, perhaps she is," he said, gravely. But the reassurance of that "perhaps" did not make for John Fenn's peace of mind; he could not help asking himself whether Miss Philippa WAS a "believing daughter." She did not, he was sure, share her father's heresies, but perhaps she was indifferent to them? which would be a grievous thing! And certainly, as the old minister had declared, she did go "irregularly" to the Episcopal Church. John Fenn wished that he was sure of Miss Philippa's state of mind; and at last he said to himself that it was his duty to find out about it, so, with his little sister beside him, he started on a round of pastoral calls. He found Miss Philly sitting in the sunshine on the lowest step of the front porch—and it seemed to Mary that there was a good deal of delay in getting at the serious business of play; "for brother talks so much," she complained. But "brother" went on talking. He told Miss Philippa that he understood she went sometimes to Old Chester to church?

"Sometimes," she said.

"I do not mean," he said, hesitatingly, "to speak uncharitably, but we all know that Episcopacy is the handmaid of Papistry."

"Do we?" Philly asked, with grave eyes.

"Yes," said Mr. Fenn. "But even if Dr. Lavendar's teachings are defective,"—Mary plucked at his sleeve, and sighed loudly; "(no, Mary!)—even if his teachings are defective, he is a good man according to his lights; I am sure of that. Still, do you think it well to attend a place of worship when you cannot follow the pastor's teachings?"

"I love him. And I don't listen to what he says," she excused herself.

"But you should listen to what ministers say," the shocked young man protested—"at least to ministers of the right faith. But you should not go to church because you love ministers."

Philippa's face flamed. "I do not love—most of them."

Mary, leaning against the girl's knee, looked up anxiously into her face. "Do you love brother?" she said.

They were a pretty pair, the child and the girl, sitting there on the porch with the sunshine sifting down through the lacy leaves of the two big locusts on either side of the door. Philippa wore a pink and green palm-leaf chintz; it had six ruffles around the skirt and was gathered very full about her slender waist; her lips were red, and her cheeks and even her neck were delicately flushed; her red-brown hair was blowing all about her temples; Mary had put an arm around her and was cuddling against her. Yes, even Mary's brother would have thought the two young things a pretty sight had there been nothing more serious to think of. But John Fenn's thoughts were so very serious that even Mary's question caused him no embarrassment; he merely said, stiffly, that he would like to see Miss Philippa alone. "You may wait here, Mary," he told his little sister, who frowned and sighed and went out to the gate to pull a handful of grass for the roan.

Philippa led her caller to her rarely used parlor, and sat down to listen in silent pallor to his exhortations. She made no explanations for not coming to his church regularly; she offered no excuse of filial tenderness for her indifference to her father's mistaken beliefs; she looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, then out of the window at the big roan biting at the hitching-post or standing very still to let Mary rub his silky nose. But John Fenn looked only at Philippa. Of her father's heresies he would not, he said, do more than remind her that the wiles of the devil against her soul might present them-selves through her natural affections; but in regard to her failure to wait upon the means of grace he spoke without mercy, for, he said, "faithful are the wounds of a friend."

"Are you my friend?" Philly asked, lifting her gray eyes suddenly.

Mr. Fenn was greatly confused; the text-books of the Western Seminary had not supplied him with the answer to such a question. He explained, hurriedly, that he was the friend of all who wished for salvation.

"I do not especially wish for it," Philippa said, very low.

For a moment John Fenn was silent with horror. "That one so young should be so hardened!" he thought; aloud, he bade her remember hell fire. He spoke with that sad and simple acceptance of the fact with which, even less than fifty years ago, men humbled themselves before the mystery which they had themselves created, of divine injustice. She must know, he said, his voice trembling with sincerity, that those who slighted the offers of grace were cast into outer darkness?

Philly said, softly, "Maybe."

"'Maybe?' Alas, it is, certainly! Oh, why, WHY do you absent yourself from the house of God?" he said, holding out entreating hands. Philippa made no reply. "Let us pray!" said the young man; and they knelt down side by side in the shadowy parlor. John Fenn lifted his harsh, melancholy face, gazing upward passionately, while he wrestled for her salvation; Philly, looking downward, tracing with a trembling finger the pattern of the beadwork on the ottoman before which she knelt, listened with an inward shiver of dismay and ecstasy. But when they rose to their feet she had nothing to say. He, too, was silent. He went away quite exhausted by his struggle with this impassive, unresisting creature.

He hardly spoke to Mary all the way home. "A hardened sinner," he was thinking. "Poor, lovely creature! So young and so lost!" Under Mary's incessant chatter, her tugs at the end of the reins, her little bursts of joy at the sight of a bird or a roadside flower, he was thinking, with a strange new pain—a pain no other sinner had