aying aloud and fervently for the sanctification of a
Fatherly correction to him whose life, from all accounts, had held no
flagrant germ of error? And what especial sanctification was there,
beyond shutting one's teeth and taking it quite pluckily and as it
came?

Above the open book, Scott Brenton's eyes, wide open and very lustrous,
were looking past the bounding walls before him, seeing the brave smile
that Reed Opdyke had sent after him by way of parting. Brenton's voice,
meanwhile, always flexible and resonant, was throbbing with thoughts
which had no possible relation with the words now falling from his
tongue,--

"Fulfil the desires--as may be most expedient for them."

He recalled his mind to the words he uttered, recalled it with a jerk.
Was it expedient for Reed Opdyke to be overthrown and laid aside more
or less indefinitely, just as he was about touching the fulness of
professional success? Who ordained what was expedient, anyway?
Providence?

And then, in the hush that followed after the benediction, there came
into Brenton's ears the echo of Reed's voice, gay and indomitable
rather by force of will than from conviction.

"No," he had said to Brenton, midway in their conversation of the day
before. "No; it's not a chastisement of Providence. I have too much
respect for Providence to lay off on it the result of some infernal
fool's careless use of explosives. Providence, as a rule, doesn't go
out gunning with black powder. Its ways are more ineffable than that."

And yet, if not Providence, or its equivalent, Scott Brenton asked
himself above his clasped hands, then what?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was a month or two before he asked that question of Doctor Eustace
Keltridge; but, in the end, it was bound to come. Whatever a man in
Brenton's position might think inside himself, professionally he must
talk of Providence, and of divine dispensations, and of all the rest of
his ecclesiastical stock in trade. Far harder than the talking, though,
was the assenting to others when they talked, for then he had no choice
of modifying phrases; he must take it as it came. Of course, it never
would have done for the rector of St. Peter's Parish to deny the
Fatherly finger of correction as the motive power of Reed Opdyke's
chastisement. None the less, the increasing number of hours he
contrived to spend in Opdyke's room gave a decreasing heartiness to his
assent. Even if he was a preacher, Scott Brenton was