ry concerning Smith, mother; your judgment
of him, whether true or false, is based on angry sentiment and wilful
ignorance."

The preacher sighed. "This Smith is deceiving the people."

"His book," said Ephraim, "is a history of the North American Indians
from the time of the flood until some epoch prior to Columbus. It would
be as difficult to prove that it was not true as to prove that Smith is
not honest in his delusion. We can only fall back upon what Butler would
call 'a strong presumption.'"

Mrs. Croom, consciously or not, made a little sharp rap on the table,
and there was a movement of suppressed misery like a quiver in her
slender upright form. Her voice was low and tremulous. "If you'd got
religion, Ephraim, you wouldn't speak in that light manner of one who
has the awful wickedness of adding to the words of the Book."

Ephraim continued to enlighten the preacher in a stronger tone. "Whether
the man is mad or false, almost all the immoralities that you will hear
reported about him are, as far as I can make out, not true. He doesn't
teach that it's unnecessary to obey the ten commandments, or beat his
wife, nor is he drunken. He's got the sense to see that all that sort of
thing wouldn't make a big man of him. It's merely a revised form of
Christianity, with a few silly additions, that he claims to be the
prophet of."

Mrs. Croom began to weep bitterly.

The elder Croom asked a pertinent question. "Why do you wilfully
distress your mother, Ephraim?"

"Because, sir, I love my mother too well to sit silent and let her
think that injustice can glorify God."

It was a family jar.

Finney was a man of about forty years of age; his eyes under
over-reaching brows were bright and penetrating; his face was shaven,
but his mouth had an expression of peculiar strength and gentleness. He
looked keenly at the son of the house, who was held to be irreligious.
And then he looked upon Susannah, whose beauty and frivolity had not
escaped his keen observation. He lived always in the consciousness of an
invisible presence; when he felt the arms of Heaven around him, wooing
him to prayer, he dared not disobey.

He arose now, setting his chair back against the wall with preoccupied
precision. "The spirit of prayer is upon me," he said; and in a moment
he added, "Let us pray."

Susannah was eating, and with relish. She laid down her bit of pumpkin
pie and stared astonished. Then, being a girl of good sense and good
f