ld friendship to
influence him any longer. You have heard his threat, and he will,
without fail, carry it out. I will bear submissively whatever comes;
but I am not able, my dear child, to protect you. If you refuse him
for your husband, he will disclose my guilt, and I, a criminal, can do
nothing for you, but must quietly bow before the inevitable."

He was silent, and dared not look at Carmen, for he feared to read what
might be written on her countenance. She sat perfectly still, absorbed
in her own thoughts, her hand shading her eyes, and her breath heaving
quickly. The blood seemed frozen with horror in her veins at what she
had heard; her brave heart quailed before the dreadful future, which
she knew not how to meet. And yet one thought stood prominently forth
from the rest: she must prove her love for her father at any cost. He
needed it sorely now, and she had only a short hour ago declared she
would love him the better for his fault, and thus help him to bear his
misery. He had sinned for the sake of her mother, who surely would
have forgiven him and loved him, whatever other people might have felt.
The daughter, must not set herself up to condemn her father. God would
judge him mercifully, according to the depth of his repentance and
suffering. Of this she felt perfectly assured; so, raising her head
and turning her face to her father, she threw her arms about the old
man's neck.

"Be comforted, dear father, and trust in God!" she said lovingly. "You
have atoned so deeply and long that your sin is surely forgiven, and I
am sure we will find some way out of this dreadful trouble."

She was silent a moment, sunk in deep thought. "I must inherit my dear
mother's aversion to Brother Jonathan, for I have felt it as long as I
can remember, and it would be quite impossible to give myself to him.
I hate him as I do the Evil One. I could believe anything, however
bad, about him; and yet what he does is good, always good, and he has
shown himself a friend to you. Let us consider if there may not be
some way out of this dreadful dilemma."

The old man leaned, sobbing, against the girl whom he, as a father,
should have been able to succor, and whose poor brains were now racked
with caring for both herself and him.

* * * * * *

The fury of the storm had spent itself, but the rain still poured in
torrents, when, towards five o'clock in the afternoon, two companies of
soldiers,