mes have you up, my girl,
to have a chat about old times. But that's not all, Molly. Here's a
letter which you can put in your pocket an' read at your leisure. It
says that the tin mine in which you have shares has become so prosperous
that you could sell at ten or twenty times the price of your original
shares; so,--you see, you are independent of me altogether as to your
livelihood. Now, old girl, what d'ye think of all that?"

The captain threw himself back in his chair, wiped his brow and looked
at his sister with an air of thorough satisfaction.

"I think," returned Miss Millet slowly, "that God has been very good to
us all."

"He has, sister, He has; and yet the beginning of it all did not seem
very promising."

The captain cast a glance at Jeff as he spoke. The youth met the glance
with a candid smile.

"I know what you think, father," he said. "You and I are agreed on that
point now. I admit that what appears to be evil may be made to work for
good."

"True, Jeff," returned the captain; "but I have lived long enough to
see, also, that the opposite holds good--that things which are
questionably good in themselves sometimes work out what appears to be
evil. For instance, I have known a poor, respectable man become
suddenly and unexpectedly rich, and the result was that he went in for
extravagant expenditure and dissipation which ended in his ruin."

"But that," said Miss Millet quickly, "was because he did not accept the
gift as from God to be used in His service, but misused it."

"True, Molly, true; and such will be my fate if I am not kept by the
Holy Spirit from misusing what has been given to _me_."

The Rosebud opened not her lips, only her ears, while this conversation
was going on; but the next day, seated on a stool at Jeff's feet, with
her fair little hands clasped on his knee and looking up in his kind,
manly face, she said--

"I wonder, Jeff, what auntie would say if, instead of working out such
pleasant consequences to us, all these things had ended only in what we
term disaster, and bad luck, and poverty, and death--as happens so often
to many people."

"I wonder, too, my Rosebud," returned Jeff. "Suppose we go and put the
question to her."

Accordingly they went, and found the quiet old lady busy, as usual,
knitting socks for the poor.

"Now, auntie," said Jeff, after stating the question, "if everything had
turned out apparently ill for us--according to what men usually ca