ically, and noticed that the
hand on the other side was white and shapely, the wrist softly rounded
and blue-veined. The voice that sounded by his side was low and musical.

'Oh! Harry, what are you going to do?' His neighbour had ceased singing,
and was whispering tremulously under cover of the voices of the
congregation.

Harry's face hardened, and he set it resolutely towards the platform.

'Don't you know me, Harry? I am Christina Shine. You remember Chris? We
were school mates.'

His daughter! The young man let his left hand fall to his side.

'Please don't. You have come to quarrel with father, but you won't do it,
Harry? You saved my life once, when we were boy and girl. You will
promise me this?'

Harry Hardy answered nothing, and the pleading voice continued:

'For the sake of the days when we were friends, Harry, say you won't do
it--you won't do it here, in--in God's house.'

'It was here, in God's house, he slandered my mother.' The man's voice
sounded relentless.

'No, no, not that! He prayed for her. He did not mean it ill.'

'I have heard of his praying--how under the cover of his cant about
saving souls he scatters his old-womanish scandals an' abuses his
betters.'

'He means well. Indeed, indeed, he means well.'

'An' he prays for my mother--him! Says she's bred up thieves because she
did not come here to learn better. Says she's an atheist because she does
not believe in Ephraim Shine. He's said that, an' I'm here to make him
eat his words.'

Harry's whispering was almost shrill in the heat of his passion, and the
singing of the hymn became faint and thin, so eager were the singers to
catch a word of that most significant conversation. Dick had not taken
his eyes off the pair, and already had woven a very pretty romance about
Chris and the young man. Christina Shine had only recently been raised to
the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had
betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged
his sense of poetical fitness. He espoused her cause with his whole soul,
whatever it might be.

The young woman in the stress of her fears had clasped Harry's arm, as if
to restrain him, and he felt the soft agitation of her gentle bosom with
a new emotion that weakened his tense thews, and stirred the first doubt;
but he fought it down. His revenge had become almost a necessity within
the last three days. Nothing he had heard offered the faintest hope f