est voice. Richling looked up
at him as a child looks at a thundercloud. The Doctor pointed to the
document:--

"Is that a subscription paper?"

"Yes."

"You needn't unfold it, Richling." The Doctor made a little pushing
motion at it with his open hand. "From whom does it come?"

Richling gave a name. He had not changed color when the Doctor looked
black, but now he did; for Dr. Sevier smiled. It was terrible.

"Not the little preacher that lisps?" asked the physician.

"He lisps sometimes," said Richling, with resentful subsidence of tone
and with dropped eyes, preparing to return the paper to his pocket.

"Wait," said the Doctor, more gravely, arresting the movement with his
index finger. "What is it for?"

"It's for the aid of an asylum overcrowded with orphans in consequence
of the late epidemic." There was still a tightness in Richling's throat,
a faint bitterness in his tone, a spark of indignation in his eye. But
these the Doctor ignored. He reached out his hand, took the folded paper
gently from Richling, crossed his knees, and, resting his elbows on them
and shaking the paper in a prefatory way, spoke:--

"Richling, in old times we used to go into monasteries; now we subscribe
to orphan asylums. Nine months ago I warned this community that if it
didn't take the necessary precautions against the foul contagion that
has since swept over us it would pay for its wicked folly in the lives
of thousands and the increase of fatherless and helpless children. I
didn't know it would come this year, but I knew it might come any year.
Richling, we deserved it!"

Richling had never seen his friend in so forbidding an aspect. He had
come to him boyishly elated with the fancied excellence and goodness and
beauty of the task he had assumed, and a perfect confidence that his
noble benefactor would look upon him with pride and upon the scheme with
generous favor. When he had offered to present the paper to Dr. Sevier
he had not understood the little rector's marked alacrity in accepting
his service. Now it was plain enough. He was well-nigh dumfounded. The
responses that came from him came mechanically, and in the manner of one
who wards off unmerited buffetings from one whose unkindness may not be
resented.

"You can't think that only those died who were to blame?" he asked,
helplessly; and the Doctor's answer came back instantly:--

"Ho, no! look at the hundreds of little graves! No, sir. If only those
who were t