rt:

"Gracie has surely told him my secret."

She knew little about the ways in the busy minister's household. The
delightful communion of feeling that she had imagined between father and
daughter was almost unknown to them. Very fond and proud of his daughter
was Dr. Dennis; very careful of her health and her associations; very
grateful that she was a Christian, and so, safe.

But so busy and harassed was his life, so endless were the calls on his
time and his patience and his sympathy, that almost without his being
aware of it, his own family were the only members of his church who
never received any pastoral calls.

Consequently a reserve like unto that in too many households had grown
up between himself and his child, utterly unsuspected by the father,
never but half owned by the daughter. He thought of her religious life
with joy and thanksgiving; when she went astray, was careful and tender
in his admonition; yet of the inner workings of her life, of her
reaching after higher and better living, of her growth in grace, or her
days of disappointment and failure and decline he knew no more than the
veriest stranger with whom she never spoke.

For while Grace Dennis loved and reverenced her father more than she did
any other earthly being, she acknowledged to herself that she could not
have told him even of the little conversation between her teacher and
herself. She could, and did, tell him all about the lesson in algebra,
but not a word about the lesson in Christian love.

So on this evening his face expressed no satisfaction in the presence of
the strangers. He was simply disturbed that they had formed a league to
meet here with mischief ahead, as he verily believed.

He arose and read the opening hymn; then looked about him in a disturbed
way. Nobody to lead the singing. This was too often the case. The
quartette choir rarely indeed found their way to the prayer-meeting; and
when the one who was a church-member occasionally came to the weekly
meeting, for reasons best known to herself, apparently the power of song
for which she received so good a Sabbath-day salary had utterly gone
from her, for she never opened her lips.

"I hope," said Dr. Dennis, "that there is some one present who can start
this tune; it is simple. A prayer-meeting without singing loses half its
spiritual force." Still everyone was dumb. "I am sorry that I cannot
sing at all," he said again, after a moment's pause. "If I could, ever
s