take after her mother. _There_ the virtue is not conspicuous,
and the vice is one enormous fact. When I think of the growth of that
poisonous hereditary taint, which may come with time--when I think of
passions let loose and temptations lying in ambush--I see the smooth
surface of the Minister's domestic life with dangers lurking under it
which make me shake in my shoes. God! what a life I should lead, if I
happened to be in his place, some years hence. Suppose I said or did
something (in the just exercise of my parental authority) which offended
my adopted daughter. What figure would rise from the dead in my memory,
when the girl bounced out of the room in a rage? The image of her mother
would be the image I should see. I should remember what her mother did
when _she_ was provoked; I should lock my bedroom door, in my own house,
at night. I should come down to breakfast with suspicions in my cup of
tea, if I discovered that my adopted daughter had poured it out. Oh,
yes; it's quite true that I might be doing the girl a cruel injustice
all the time; but how am I to be sure of that? I am only sure that her
mother was hanged for one of the most merciless murders committed in our
time. Pass the match-box. My pipe's out, and my confession of faith has
come to an end."

It was useless to dispute with a man who possessed his command of
language. At the same time, there was a bright side to the poor
Minister's prospects which the Doctor had failed to see. It was barely
possible that I might succeed in putting my positive friend in the
wrong. I tried the experiment, at any rate.

"You seem to have forgotten," I reminded him, "that the child will have
every advantage that education can offer to her, and will be accustomed
from her earliest years to restraining and purifying influences, in a
clergyman's household."

Now that he was enjoying the fumes of tobacco, the Doctor was as placid
and sweet-tempered as a man could be.

"Quite true," he said.

"Do you doubt the influence of religion?" I asked sternly.

He answered, sweetly: "Not at all"

"Or the influence of kindness?"

"Oh, dear, no!"

"Or the force of example?"

"I wouldn't deny it for the world."

I had not expected this extraordinary docility. The Doctor had got the
upper hand of me again--a state of things that I might have found it
hard to endure, but for a call of duty which put an end to our sitting.
One of the female warders appeared with a message fr