and pray to God who
is in yon star just twinkling through the gray, and in my heart and in
yours, my child."

I will not give the words of the minister's prayer. The words are not
the prayer. Mr. Drake's words were commonplace, with much of the
conventionality and platitude of prayer-meetings. He had always objected
to the formality of the Prayer-book, but the words of his own prayers
without book were far more formal; the prayer itself was in the heart,
not on the lips, and was far better than the words. But poor Dorothy
heard only the words, and they did not help her. They seemed rather to
freeze than revive her faith, making her feel as if she never could
believe in the God of her father. She was too unhappy to reason well, or
she might have seen that she was not bound to measure God by the way her
father talked to him--that the form of the prayer had to do with her
father, not immediately with God--that God might be altogether adorable,
notwithstanding the prayers of all heathens and of all saints.

Their talk turned again upon the Old House of Glaston.

"If it be true, as I have heard ever since I came," said Mr. Drake,
"that Lord de Barre means to pull down the house and plow up the garden,
and if he be so short of money as they say, he might perhaps take a few
thousands for it. The Lythe bounds the estate, and there makes a great
loop, so that a portion might be cut off by a straight line from one arm
of the curve to the other, which would be quite outside the park. I will
set some inquiry on foot. I have wished for a long time to leave the
river, only we had a lease. The Old House is nothing like so low as the
one we are in now. Besides, as I propose, we should have space to build,
if we found it desirable, on the level of the park."

When they reached the gate on their return, a second dwarfish figure, a
man, pigeon-chested, short-necked, and asthmatic--a strange, gnome-like
figure, came from the lodge to open it. Every body in Glaston knew
Polwarth the gatekeeper.

"How is the asthma to-night, Mr. Polwarth?" said the pastor. He had not
yet got rid of the tone in which in his young days he had been
accustomed to address the poor of his flock--a tone half familiar, half
condescending. To big ships barnacles will stick--and may add weeks to
the length of a voyage too.

"Not very bad, thank you, Mr. Drake. But, bad or not, it is always a
friendly devil," answered the little man.

"I am ast---- a little sur