350 A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.

thing. You will come with me to my darling child; you will
pray with her and speak to her of heaven. How could I pray
when my whole heart is rising in rebellion against God taking
the dear child from us ? Forgive me! forgive my wickedness—■
but she is the only one left—the only one !"

If Johnston had been asked to go up to a cannon's mouth,
that he might be blown into a thousand fragments, he would
have gone mora cheerfully than to the task required. His pale
cheeks crimsjred—the first blush that had visited them for
many a day—then he as swiftly became a ghastly white. He
tried to speak, but the words choked him, and the hand which
grasped that of his benefactor was nerveless and feeble, and
cold as ice.

" Excuse me," he at length managed to falter forth, " but I'd
rather not. I had a girl of my own once who was taken away
much in the same way, and to go through the same experience
again would tear my heart open;" and he sank down in a chair
and abjectly covered his face with his hands.

"Yourare not in earnest—you cannot be!" cried the old man,
opening his eyes in wonder. "You surely will not desert me
in my hour of need ? I cannot believe you are ungrateful, and
your very experience in the same affliction should help you to
console us. I do not care so much for myself, but my poor wife
has set her whole heart upon that child. Come with me and
speak to her—tell her of your own child—of all you endured,
and how God blessed the calamity to your soul—come, for I
fear she will go mad ! "

Who could hold out against such an appeal ? Johnston rose,
and allowed the old man to lead him slowly to the sick chamber.
He was in a dream—the present and much of the past had
fallen away from him as by magic, and he was looking on a
familiar little room, with a sick child and a tending mother,
both of whom hung on his words with reverence arid love. He
saw the whole as vividly as if he had looked upon the real
faces there and then, and a great cry struggled for utterance
in his heart—■

"My God! my God! have mercy upon me, a sinner!"

He felt some one place a book in his hand, and he opened
it mechanically, and began to read part of Christ's Sermon on
the Mount; but all the words which fell, in such rich tones and
eloquent accents from his Hps, seemed to him to come from
the mouth of his own visionary sick child. The gentle eyes
seemed to flash' out fire into his very soul as the words were

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