good of others--loved her, I doubt not, for refusing to worship the
Conventional Deity thus presented to her mind. Even as He has pitied
many a mother that rebelled against the Governor of the Universe,
because she was told the Governor of the Universe, in a petty seeking
for his own glory, had taken away her "idols."

But Julia looked up at the depths between the stars, and felt how great
God must be, and her rebellion against Him seemed a war at fearful odds.
And then the sense of God's omnipresence, of His being there alone with
her, so startled her and awakened such a feeling of her fearful
loneliness, orphanage, antagonism to God, that she could bear it no
longer, and at two o'clock she went down again; but Mrs. Brown looked
over at Mrs. Orcutt in a way that said: "Told you so! Guilty conscience!
Can't sleep!" And so Julia thought God, even as she conceived Him,
better company than men, or rather than women, for--well, I won't make
the ungallant remark; each sex has its besetting faults.

Julia took back with her a candle, thinking that this awful God would
not seem so close if she had a light. There lay on her bureau a
Testament, one of those old editions of the American Bible Society,
printed on indifferent paper, and bound in a red muslin that was given
to fading, the like whereof in book-making has never been seen since.
She felt angry with God, who, she was sure, was persecuting her, as
Cynthy Ann had said, out of jealousy of her love for August, and she was
determined that she would not look into that red-cloth Testament, which
seemed to her full of condemnation. But there was a fascination about it
she could not resist. The discordant hysterical laughter of her mother,
which reached her ears from below, harrowed her sorely, and her grief
and despair at her own situation were so great that she was at last fain
to read the only book in the room in order that she might occupy her
mind. There is a strange superstition among certain pietists which loads
them to pray for a text to guide them, and then take any chance passage
as a divine direction. I do not mean to say that Julia had any
supernatural leading in her reading. The New Testament is so full of
comfort that one could hardly manage to miss it. She read the seventh
chapter of Luke: how the Lord healed the centurion's servant that was
"dear unto him," and noted that He did not rebuke the man for loving his
slave; how the Lord took pity on that poor widow wh