the most part with
the elastic ambiguity of all oracles of any established authority,
lingered echoing in the heads and hearts of them to whom they were
given--shaping and confirming, or darkening with their denial many an
after hope and fear?

Faith Gartney came up among the very last.

"How many numbers are there to choose from?" she asked.

"Three hundred and sixty-five. The number of days in the year."

"Well, then, I'll take the number of the day; the last--no, I
forgot--the first of all."

Nobody before had chosen this, and Margaret read, in a clear, gentle
voice, not untouched with the grave beauty of its own words, and the
sweet, earnest, listening look of the young face that bent toward her to
take them in:

"Rouse to some high and holy work of love,
And thou an angel's happiness shalt know;
Shalt bless the earth while in the world above;
The good begun by thee while here below
Shall like a river run, and broader flow."

Ten minutes later, and all else were absorbed in other things
again--leave-takings, parting chat, and a few waltzing a last measure to
a specially accorded grace of music. Faith stood, thoughtfully, by the
table where the book was closed and left. She quietly reopened it at
that first page. Unconscious of a step behind her, her eyes ran over the
lines again, to make their beautiful words her own.

"And that was your oracle, then?" asked a kindly voice.

Glancing quickly up, while the timid color flushed her cheek, she met a
look as of a wise and watchful angel, though it came through the eye and
smile of a gray-haired man, who laid his hand upon the page as he said:

"Remember--it is _conditional_."

CHAPTER III.

AUNT HENDERSON.

"I never met a manner more entirely without frill."
SYDNEY SMITH.

Late into the morning of the New Year, Faith slept. Through her half
consciousness crept, at last, a feeling of music that had been
wandering in faint echoes among the chambers of her brain all those
hours of her suspended life.

Light, and music, and a sense of an unexamined, half-remembered joy,
filled her being and embraced her at her waking on this New Year's Day.
A moment she lay in a passive, unthinking delight; and then her first,
full, and distinct thought shaped itself, as from a sweet and solemn
memory:

"Rouse to some high and holy work of love,
And thou an angel's happiness shalt know."

An impulse