spondent, and the
mere strangeness kept her from going down to the very deepest depths.
She had the feeling that at least one of them must try to keep up. Yet,
do what she would, that evening was one of the saddest and dreariest she
had ever spent. All the excitement of contest was over, and a sort of
dead weight of gloom seemed to oppress them. Raeburn was absolutely
silent. From the first Erica had never heard him complain, but his
anger, and afterward his intense depression, spoke volumes. Even Tom,
her friend and play fellow, seemed changed this evening, grown somehow
from a boy to a man; for there was a sternness about him which she had
never seen before, and which made the days of their childhood seem far
away. And yet it was not so very long ago that she and Tom had been the
most light-hearted and careless beings in the world, and had imagined
the chief interest of life to consist in tending dormice, and tame rats,
and silk worms! She wondered whether they could ever feel free again,
whether they could ever enjoy their long Saturday afternoon rambles, or
whether this weight of care would always be upon them.

With a very heavy heart she prepared her lessons for the next day,
finding it hard to take much interest in Magna Charta and legal
enactments in the time of King John, when the legal enactments of today
were so much more mind-engrossing. Tom was sitting opposite to her,
writing letters for Raeburn. Once, notwithstanding his grave looks, she
hazarded a question. "Tom," she said, shutting up her 'History of the
English People,' "Tom, what do you think will happen?"

Tom looked across at her with angry yet sorrowful eyes.

"I think," he said, sternly, "that the chieftain will try to do the work
of ten men at once, and will pay off these debts or die in the attempt."

The "chieftain" was a favorite name among the Raeburnites for their
leader, and there was a great deal of the clan feeling among them. The
majority of them were earnest, hard-working, thoughtful men, and their
society was both powerful and well-organized, while their personal
devotion to Raeburn lent a vigor and vitality to the whole body which
might otherwise have been lacking. Perhaps comparatively few would
have been enthusiastic for the cause of atheism had not that cause been
represented by a high-souled, self-denying man whom they loved with all
their hearts.

The dreary evening ended at length, Erica helped her mother to bed, and
then w