Dorothy was six years old the father, because of failing health, purchased a large ranch in the West and he moved his family there and became very prosperous."

"She is a child, therefore, of the South and West," said Sterling.

"Yes, she has Southern blood and Western experience. Mrs. Page said their home was ten miles from the nearest store and the nearest neighbor was seven miles distant."

"That must have been a dismal life for Dorothy. You say she lived on the plains from six years of age until three years ago, when she went to the college? Did she have no other schooling?"

"Oh, yes. Her education was directed at home by a governess of unusual culture and refinement. I learned also from Mrs. Page that none of the family make any pretensions to religion, and that the governess was as irreligious as they."

"What a home!"

"She said that there was no church near them in the West and that Dorothy had never been in a church up to the time she went off to the college, and that she doubted if she had ever attended church while there."

"You make her out a wild girl of the plains," remarked Sterling with a smile. "I could easily see the traces of it tonight in her open, eager, almost wild manner, and yet through it all there was a culture, a sweetness, a loveliness that is indescribable."

Mrs. Sterling continued: "Mrs. Page said that Dorothy, perfectly at home on the wildest horse, roamed untrammeled over the ranch, and reveled in its beauty and its freedom. But let me continue the story. At seventeen she went to Carrollton College and at the end of three years she won her diploma."

"I'll venture she came out at the head of the list, mother; she is as bright and sparkling as a diamond."

"You are right, for she took the honors of her class. A year ago Mr. Page sold his ranch and came here to Kentucky to live, but this is Dorothy's first sight of her Kentucky home."

CHAPTER II.

DOROTHY'S CONVERSION.

"Oh, a tennis court! How glorious!" exclaimed Dorothy next morning as she stepped out on the porch and caught her first glimpse of the side lawn.

Sterling considered it a special providence that no intervening fence separated the two residences, and nearly every afternoon found him on the tennis grounds, an eager contestant in the game with Dorothy.

"Good-bye, Mr. Sterling," she said to him one afternoon at the close of the game. "I must hurry in and do some packing. I shall turn traveler tomorrow."

"What—going away?" he asked with a startled expression.

"Yes, I am going to Chicago for a few weeks to visit a girl friend."

The light fled from the sky for Sterling. For the next three weeks not only Dorothy, but the center of the universe seemed to him to be located in Chicago.

During Dorothy's visit a crisis occurred in her life. While attending a church service with her girl friend she heard a strange sermon. How new and startling it sounded. The preacher's theme was "Salvation Through Christ", and she heard things she had never dreamed of before. Wild questionings set her heart aflame and there was no rest for her that night. Her soul's destiny was a subject to which she had never given serious reflection.

She felt that the man whose sermon had thrown her into this dark confusion was the only one who might give her light. She sought him out. A father in Israel he was—Rev. Dr. Moreland, one of the most eminent ministers in that city. He saw that as a little child she was eagerly groping in the dark, and with the Bible as a lamp he led her step by step into the light. She saw herself in God's sight a sinner, guilty and condemned, and how helpless and hopeless to her seemed her condition.

The story of the Gospel sounded to her like music from Heaven. The love of Christ for sinners melted her heart and she yielded herself in child-like trust to him. In her own room at night the surrender was made and it was complete.

"Son, I could easily tell that Dorothy is coming tomorrow," said Mrs. Sterling.

"How do you know, mother?"

"By your face. You would have passed for an undertaker during the past three weeks, and I have tried by every art, but in vain, to chase away your funereal countenance."

Sterling broke into a hearty laugh.

"Mother, your imagination is out on a frolic. You will have to put a bridle on it."

Mrs. Sterling was right. Gilbert had learned that Dorothy would arrive on the morrow.

Dorothy had written her parents about her new-found joy, but they understood it not. They thought that it was some girlish emotion that her home life would quickly dissipate.

The news of her conversion came to Sterling as a burst of sunlight. In speaking of it to his mother he said:

"Of one thing I am sure, and that is that she will make a glorious Christian. What a light she will be in her home. And, mother, how fine to have her in my church!"

Dorothy had shortened her visit that she might hurry home and tell her loved ones of the change in her life. She could not explain the change, but she knew that for her old things had passed away and all things had become new.

She was anxious to tell her parents the simple story of Christ's love and sacrifice for sinners. She recited it almost immediately after her return, but their eyes seemed holden that they could not see. Possibly they did not want to see. At any rate, Dorothy received her first biting disappointment in the reception that her parents gave to her report about her new-found Savior.

With Mr. Sterling it was different, and in him she found a sympathetic listener to her story. Not that she impulsively bared her secrets to him; he was eager to know it all, and his keen interest in contrast to the utter lack of responsiveness on the part of the parents encouraged her to confide in him, and to Dorothy, with her new and trembling faith, Sterling was a friend in need.

A week had passed after her return, and one afternoon Sterling said to her at the close of a tennis game that her coming into his church would make their membership exactly 300.

"Mr. Sterling," she replied, "I am anxious to talk with your pastor, Dr. Vincent, about which church I ought to join."

Her words smote him. The possibility of her uniting with any other church than his own had not occurred to him, and the bare thought of it put a load on his heart. He asked her what she meant by her remark regarding Dr. Vincent.

"Dear old Dr. Moreland," she said, "whose church I attended in Chicago, and who so kindly led me into the light, told me that I must be sure to join some church, and when I asked him what church it should be he told me that I must study my New Testament and let that guide me. I have carefully read it through twice, and I cannot see that it has helped me at all to decide about my church membership. I really do not know what he meant."

Sterling was relieved and the load rolled off his heart, for he felt sure that with her New Testament as her guide she would turn her steps towards the Presbyterian church.

By this time they had reached the front porch, where the rest of the family were seated, and when Dorothy made her last remark the brother, who was sitting nearby, heard and said:

"What's the need, sister, of your joining any church? You don't think the church will take you to Heaven, do you?"

"Hold on, son," spoke up the father, "I am not an expert on religious matters, but it is a plain proposition to me that if Dorothy has accepted Christianity and