tion as
you deserve. And, God helping me, I will do it!"

This was the second time within a few minutes that Dick Leslie had
spoken the name of the Deity, and nothing could more clearly have
indicated the change wrought in him by the knowledge of Flora's love.
Hitherto he had felt himself to be an outcast, cruelly and unjustly
deserted by his Creator; despised and condemned by his fellow-men; but
now everything was different; he firmly believed that God had at last
relented and had given him this girl's love to comfort and encourage him
in his great trouble and humiliation; and he once more took hope into
his heart. If God had relented, everything, he felt convinced, would
yet be well with him.

And what is to be said of Flora; is any excuse needed for the extreme
step that she took in forcing a confession of love from Leslie? Well,
possibly there is; it may be that there are people who would assert
that, despite her disclaimer, she was unmaidenly. If such there be, and
if excuse for her be needed, then let it be found for her in the
following facts. In the first place Leslie, despite his utmost caution,
had betrayed his intense love for her in a thousand different ways,
until the fact had become clear, unmistakable, and indisputable; a thing
not to be doubted or gainsaid. And, in the next place, she saw that,
for some unknown reason, he never intended to declare his love if he
could possibly help it. A dozen times the declaration had trembled on
his lips, yet he had resolutely withheld it. Why? Clearly for some
reason that he deemed all-sufficient, and which, she fancied, must be
intimately associated with those oft-recurring fits of gloom and
depression from which she could not help seeing that he suffered.
Finally, she loved him, and believed that--he also loving her--the
knowledge of this fact might go far toward restoring his lost happiness.
And when she had heard his story--told with all the bitterness and
grief and indignation that had been eating into his soul and destroying
his faith in God and man for over seven interminable years of
suffering--she knew that she was right; that there was but one remedy
for his misery; and, conscious of the nobility of her own motives, she
fearlessly administered it. Who can or will blame her?

Meanwhile the brooding storm was slowly gathering its forces together
for an outburst; the bank of cloud had piled itself so high above the
western horizon that it had long