ved implicitly in
spirits and visions. "Labor this very night."

It must be said for Susanna that she had never ceased laboring in her
own way for many days. The truth was that she felt herself turning from
marriage. She had lived now so long in the society of men and women who
regarded it as an institution not compatible with the highest spiritual
development that unconsciously her point of view had changed; changed
all the more because she had been so unhappy with the man she had
chosen. Curiously enough, and unfortunately enough for Susanna
Hathaway's peace of mind, the greater aversion she felt towards the
burden of the old life, towards the irksomeness of guiding a weaker
soul, towards the claims of husband on wife, the stronger those claims
appeared. If they had never been assumed!--Ah, but they had; there was
the rub! One sight of little Sue sleeping tranquilly beside her; one
memory of rebellious, faulty Jack; one vision of John, either as needing
or missing her, the rightful woman, or falling deeper in the wiles of
the wrong one for very helplessness;--any of these changed Susanna the
would-be saint, in an instant, into Susanna the wife and mother.

"_Speak to me for Thy Compassion's sake_," she prayed from the little
book of Confessions that her mother had given her. "_I will follow after
Thy Voice!_"

"Would you betray your trust?" asked conscience.

"No, not intentionally."

"Would you desert your post?"

"Never, willingly."

"You have divided the family; taken a little quail bird out of the
home-nest and left sorrow behind you. Would God justify you in that?"

For the first time Susanna's "No" rang clearly enough for her to hear it
plainly; for the first time it was followed by no vague misgivings, no
bewilderment, no unrest or indecision. "_I turn hither and hither; Thy
purposes are hid from me, but I commend my soul to Thee_!"

Then a sentence from the dear old book came into her memory: "_And thy
dead things shall revive, and thy weak things shall be made whole_."

She listened, laying hold of every word, till the nervous clenching
of her hands subsided, her face relaxed into peace. Then she lay down
beside Sue, creeping close to her for the warmth and comfort and healing
of her innocent touch, and, closing her eyes serenely, knew no more till
the morning broke, the Sabbath morning of Confession Day.

X. Brother and Sister

If Susanna's path had grown more difficult, more filled w