ay, 'Thou shalt not lie,
except when it is necessary to lie, to avoid hurting thy neighbor's
feelings,' It says, 'Thou shalt not lie.' Oh, what a horrible word 'lie'
is! It stings like a short, sharp stroke with a lash." And Mercy would
turn away from the thought with a shudder, and resolutely force hersef to
think of something else. Sometimes she would escape from the perplexity
for weeks: chance would so favor her, that no opportunity for what she
felt to be deceit would occur; but, in these intervals of relief, her
tortured conscience seemed only to renew its voices, and spring upon her
all the more fiercely on the next occasion. The effect, of all these
indecisive conflicts upon Mercy's character had not been good. They had
left her morally bruised, and therefore abnormally sensitive to the least
touch. She was in danger of becoming either a fanatic for truth, or
indifferent to it. Paradoxcal as it may seem, she was in almost as much
danger of the one as of the other. But always, when our hurts are fast
healing without help, the help comes. It is probable that there is to-day
on the earth a cure, either in herb or stone or spring, for every ill
which men's bodies can know. Ignorance and accident may hinder us long
from them, but sooner or later the race shall come to possess them all. So
with souls. There is the ready truth, the living voice, the warm hand, or
the final experience, waiting for each soul's need. We do not die till we
have found them. There were yet to enter into Mercy Philbrick's life a new
light and a new force, by the help of which she would see clearly and
stand firm.

The secret which she had now for nearly a year kept from her mother was a
very harmless one. To people of the world, it would appear so trivial a
thing, that the conscience which could feel itself wounded by reticence on
such a point would seem hardly worth a sneer. Mr. Allen, who had been
Mercy's teacher for three years, had early seen in her a strong poetic
impulse, and had fostered and stimulated it by every means in his power.
He believed that in the exercise of this talent she would find the best
possible help for her loneliness and comfort for her sorrow. He recognized
clearly that, to so exceptional a nature as Mercy's, a certain amount of
isolation was inevitable, all through her life, however fortunate she
might be in entering into new and wider relations. The loneliness of
intense individuality is the loneliest loneliness i