ered,
awe-struck, as yours or mine has done when some swift touch of music or
human love gave us a cleaving glimpse of the great I AM. The next, he
opened the newspaper in his hand. What part in the eternal order could
_that_ hold? or slavery, or secession, or civil war? No harmony could
be infinite enough to hold such discords, he thought, pushing the whole
matter from him in despair. Why, the experiment of self-government, the
problem of the ages, was crumbling in ruin! So he despaired just as Tige
did the night the mill fell about his ears, in full confidence that the
world had come to an end now, without hope of salvation,--crawling out
of his cellar in dumb amazement, when the sun rose as usual the next
morning.

Knowles sat, peering at Holmes over his paper, watching the languid
breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face
outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied the slough of
disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of this man: would
he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his
stairway, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the
depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet on Holmes's
face were stolid defiance or submission: the dumb kings might have
looked thus beneath the feet of Pharaoh. When he walked over the floor,
too, weak as he was, it was with the old iron tread. He asked Knowles
presently what business he had gone into.

"My old hobby in an humble way,--the House of Refuge."

They both laughed.

"Yes, it is true. The janitor points me out to visitors as
'under-superintendent, a philanthropist in decayed circumstances.'
Perhaps it is my life-work,"--growing sad and earnest.

"If you can inoculate these infant beggars and thieves with your theory,
it will be practice when you are dead."

"I think that," said Knowles, gravely, his eye kindling,--"I think
that."

"As thankless a task as that of Moses," said the other, watching him
curiously. "For _you_ will not see the pleasant land,--_you_ will not go
over."

The old man's flabby face darkened.

"I know," he said.

He glanced involuntarily out at the blue, and the clear-shining, eternal
stars. If he could but believe in the To-Morrow!

"I suppose," he said, after a while, cheerfully, "I must content myself
with Lois's creed, here,--'It'll come right some time.'"

Lois looked up from the saucepan she was stirring, her face growing
quit