truth shall make you free.'"

"Free from what?" asked Rich., abruptly. The very question that Miss Marion Wilbur had asked in such anxiety. But Flossy was in a measure prepared for him. It chanced that she had asked Evan Roberts that self-same question.

"Why, free from the power and dominion of Satan; not belonging to him any more, and having a strength that is beyond and above anything earthly to lean upon, stronger than Satan's power can ever be."

Rich. gave a scornful little laugh.

"He is an old fellow that I don't particularly believe in," he said, loftily, as though that forever settled the question as to the existence of such a person. "I think a fellow is a silly coward who lays the blame of his wickedness off on Satan's shoulders; just as if Satan could make him do what he didn't choose to do! always supposing that there is such a creature."

Oh wise and wily Flossy! She knew he was wrong. She knew he had contradicted his own logic, used but a few minutes before, but she did not attempt to prove it to him; for, in the first place, she felt instinctively that the most difficult thing in the world is to convince an ignorant person that he has been foolish and illogical in his argument. You may prove this to an intelligent mind that is accustomed to reason, and to weigh the merits of questions, but it is a rare thing to find an uncultured brain that can follow you closely enough to be convinced of his own folly.

Flossy did not understand herself well enough to reason this out. It was simply a fine instinct that she had, perhaps it ought to be called "tact," that led her to be careful how she tried anything of this sort. Besides, there was another reason. She did not know how to set about doing it. It is one thing to see a sophistry, and another to take to pieces the filmy threads of which it is composed. She waived the whole subject, and jumped to one on which there could be but one opinion.

"Well, then, suppose you were right, and every one were free to be perfect if he would; that only reaches to the end of this life. We surely haven't been perfect, you and I, for instance, so our perfection cannot save us from the penalty of sin, and that is death. What a grand thing it would be to be free from that! You believe in death, don't you? and I suppose, like every other sensible person, you are afraid of death, unless you have found something that makes you free from its power."

Rich. was still in a scornful mood.

"Should like to see anybody that is free from that!" he said, sneeringly. "As near as I can make out, those persons who think they are good are just as likely to die as the rest of us."

"Ah, yes, but it isn't just that little minute of dying that you and I are afraid of; it is afterward. We are afraid of what will come next. You see, I know all about it, for I was awfully afraid; I had such a fear as I suppose you know nothing about. When it thundered I shivered as if I had a chill, and it seemed to me as if every flash of lightning was going to kill me; and when I went on a journey I could enjoy nothing for the fear that there might be an accident and I might be killed. But I declare to you that I have found something that has taken the fear away. I do not mean that I would like to be killed, or that I am tired of living, or anything of the sort. I like to live a great deal better than I ever did before; I think the world is twice as nice, and everything a great deal pleasanter; but when I was coming home from Chautauqua I would waken in the night in the sleeping-car, and I found to my surprise that, although I thought of the same thing, the possibility that there might be an accident that would cost me my life, yet I felt that horrible sense of fear and dread was utterly gone. I could feel that though death in itself might be sad and solemn, yet it was, after all, but the step that opened the door to joy. In short"—and here Flossy's face shone with a rare sweet smile—"I know that the truth as it is in Jesus has made me free."

Rich. was utterly silent. What could he reply in the face of this simple, quiet "I know?" To say, "I don't believe it," would be the height of folly, and he realized it.

As for the rest, they had listened to this talk with various degrees of interest; the most of them amused that Rich. should be drawn into any talk so serious, and be evidently so earnest.

Let me tell you a little about these young men. They were not from the very lowest depths of society; that is, they had homes and family ties, and they had enough to eat and to wear; in fact they earned these latter, each for himself. There were two of them who had the advantage of the public schools, and were fair sort of scholars. Rich. Johnson was one of these, and was therefore somewhat looked up to and respected by those, even, who would not have gone to school another day if they could.

But they were far enough out of the reach of Flossy Shipley; so far that she had never come in contact with one of them before in her life. She had no idea as to their names, or their homes, or their lives. She had no sort of idea of the temptations by which they were surrounded, nor what they needed. Perhaps this very fact removed all touch of patronage from her tone; as, when the bell rang, she found, to her great surprise, that the lesson hour was over, she turned back to them for a moment and said with that sparkling little smile of hers:

"I'm real sorry you hadn't a teacher to-day. I should have been glad to have taught the lesson if I had known how; but you see how it is; I have all these things to learn."

"Now, Rich. Johnson rather prided himself on his rudeness; a strange thing to pride one's self on, to be sure. But pride takes all sorts of curious forms, and he had actually rather gloried in his ability to say rude and cutting things at a moment's notice; words, you know, that the boys in his set called 'cute.' But he was at this time actually surprised into being almost gallant.

"We never had a better teacher," he said, quickly. "If you are only just learning you better try it again on us; we like the style enough sight better than the finished up kind."

And then Flossy smiled again, and thanked them, and said she had enjoyed it. And then she did an unprecedented thing. She invited them all to call on her, in a pretty, graceful way, precisely as she would have invited a gentleman friend who had seen her home from a concert, the quiet, courteous invitation to her father's house, which is a mere matter of form among the young ladies of her set, but which to these boys was as astonishing as an invitation to the Garden of Eden.

They had not the slightest intention of accepting the invitation, but they felt, without realizing what made them feel so, a sudden added touch of self-respect. I almost think they were more careful of their words during the rest of that day than they would have been but for that invitation.

"Isn't Sunday-school splendid?" Flossy said to Ruth Erskine, as, with her cheeks in a fine glow of glad satisfaction that she had "begun," she joined Ruth in the hall.

"It was very interesting," said Ruth, in her more quiet, thoughtful way. She was thoughtful during the entire walk home.

It was her lot to slip into one of those grand classes where Bible teaching means something more than simply reading over the verses. There had been good seed sown with a lavish hand, and there had been careful probing to see if it had taken root. Ruth had some stronger ideas about the importance of "continuing." She had a renewed sense of the blessedness of being made "free." She went