the influence of light and heat. The living medium through which they
were uttered seemed slowly to melt away, and as in a dissolving view,
the sublime teacher, the humble Galilean stood before them, and they
heard his voice! The last words died away; the reader took his seat
without uttering a single comment. Not a person moved.

Each heart in that silent room was thrilled with emotions which were
common to all. But there was one which had a burden all its own.

The demure Quaker maiden who had looked love out of her dove-like eyes
three years ago when Pepeeta appeared for the first time among these
quiet folk, was in her old familiar seat. Her life had never been the
same since that hour, for the man whom she loved with all the deep
intensity of which a heart so young, so pure, so true was capable, had
been suddenly stolen from her by a stranger. Her thwarted love had never
found expression, and she had borne her pain and loss as became the
child of a religion of silence, patience and fortitude. But the wound
had never healed, and now she was compelled to be a sad and hopeless
spectator of another scene which sealed her fate and made her future
hopeless. Her bonnet hid the sad face from view, as her heart hid its
secret.

The turn which had been given to the emotions of these quiet people by
the reading of the parable had been so sudden and so powerful that
perhaps not a single person in the room doubted that David and Pepeeta
would at once rise and enter into that holy contract for which the way
seemed to have been so easily opened by the tender story of the father's
love for the prodigal son.

But it was the unexpected which happened. The soul of David Corson had
passed through one of those genuine and permanent revolutions which
sometimes take place in the nature of man. He had completed the cycle of
revolt and anarchy to which he had been condemned by his inheritance
from a wild and profligate father. Whether that fever had run its
natural course or whether as David himself believed, he had been rescued
by an act of divine intervention, it is certain that the change was as
actual as that which takes place when a grub becomes a butterfly. It was
equally certain that from this time onward it was the mental and
spiritual characteristics of his mother which manifested themselves in
his spiritual evolution.

He became his true self--a saint, an ascetic, a mystic, a potential
martyr.

When he rose to his feet a