ied to his own.

The guests stared bewildered.

"He'll be gone to the ladies," said their host. "He's an odd
creature. Mrs. Sclater understands him better than I do. He's more
at home with her."

Therewith he proceeded to tell them his history, and whence the
interest he had in him, not bringing down his narrative beyond the
afternoon of the preceding day.

The next morning, Mrs. Sclater had a talk with him concerning his
whim of waiting at table, telling him he must not do so again; it
was not the custom for gentlemen to do the things that servants were
paid to do; it was not fair to the servants, and so on--happening to
end with an utterance of mild wonder at his fancy for such a
peculiarity. This exclamation Gibbie took for a question, or at
least the expression of a desire to understand the reason of the
thing. He went to a side-table, and having stood there a moment or
two, returned with a New Testament, in which he pointed out the
words, "But I am among you as he that serveth." Giving her just
time to read them, he took the book again, and in addition presented
the words, "The disciple is not above his master, but every one that
is perfect shall be as his master."

Mrs. Sclater was as much put out as if he had been guilty of another
and worse indiscretion. The idea of anybody ordering his common
doings, not to say his oddities, by principles drawn from a source
far too sacred to be practically regarded, was too preposterous to
have ever become even a notion to her. Henceforth, however, it was
a mote to trouble her mind's eye, a mote she did not get rid of
until it began to turn to a glimmer of light. I need hardly add
that Gibbie waited at her dinner-table no more.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE SINNER.

No man can order his life, for it comes flowing over him from
behind. But if it lay before us, and we could watch its current
approaching from a long distance, what could we do with it before it
had reached the now? In like wise a man thinks foolishly who
imagines he could have done this and that with his own character and
development, if he had but known this and that in time. Were he as
good as he thinks himself wise he could but at best have produced a
fine cameo in very low relief: with a work in the round, which he is
meant to be, he could have done nothing. The one secret of life and
development, is not to devise and plan, but to fall in with the
forces at work--to do every moment's duty