o, you won't--anyhow at
present. Take that child up-stairs, Hannah," he commanded, "and put her
to bed. She ran all the way to Old Chester to get me," he explained to
Henry Roberts.

Before he left the house that night he sat for a few minutes at
Philippa's bedside. "My dear little girl," he said, in his kind,
sensible voice, "the best thing to do is to forget it. It was a
foolish thing to do--that charm business; but happily no harm is done.
Now say nothing about it, and never do it again."

Philippa turned her shuddering face away. "Do it again? OH!"

As William King went home he apologized to Jinny for that cut across
her flanks by hanging the reins on the overhead hook, and letting her
plod along at her own pleasure. He was saying to himself that he hoped
he had done right to tell the child to hold her tongue. "It was just
tomfoolery," he argued; "there was no sin about it, so confession
wouldn't do her any good; on the contrary, it would hurt a girl's
self-respect to have a man know she had tried to catch him. But what a
donkey he was not to see.... Oh yes; I'm sure I'm right," said William
King. "I wonder how Dr. Lavendar would look at it?"

Philippa, at any rate, was satisfied with his advice. Perhaps the
story of what she had done might have broken from her pale lips had her
father asked any questions; but Henry Roberts had retreated into
troubled silence. There had been one wonderful moment when he thought
that at last his faith was to be justified and by the unbeliever
himself! and he had cried out, with a passion deferred for more than
thirty years: "The VOICE!" But behold, the voice, babbling and
meaningless, was nothing but sickness. No one could guess what the
shock of that disappointment was. He was not able even to speak of it.
So Philippa was asked no awkward questions, and her self-knowledge
burned deep into her heart.

In the next few days, while the minister was slowly recovering in the
great four-poster in Henry Roberts's guest-room, she listened to
Hannah's speculations as to the cause of his attack, and expressed no
opinion. She was dumb when John Fenn tried to tell her how grateful he
was to her for that terrible run through the darkness for his sake.

"You should not be grateful," she said, at last, in a whisper.

But he was grateful; and, furthermore, he was very happy in those days
of slow recovery. The fact was that that night, when he had been so
near death, he had heard Phi