The bells
were ringing in the valley and on the hills; the sunset-glow in the
heavens, spread in strange waves of light over a background of pale
green sky. Griffin stood in the prow of the boat, looking out upon the
landscape; and as they made their way, the boatmen pushing aside the
blocks of ice, Roland said suddenly,--

"It was just such a day, just such an evening, when Washington crossed
the Delaware."

He said no more. Weidmann divined that Roland was wondering why
Washington had not abolished slavery immediately on the close of the
war; but he turned the subject aside, saying that he thought it one of
the finest traits in the great Washington's character, that he was so
ready to be convinced of an error.

Roland was startled. What might that mean?

Weidmann continued, "I have left you to yourself, Roland; but now I
will tell you the state of your mind. You are involved in doubt and
despair; but you are no strong man unless you rise above them."

The young man's eyes dilated, and Weidmann continued,--

"Two things are to be noted. In the first place, you have ceased to
believe that the world is under the dominion of moral law, you have
lost your faith in that Supreme Being whom we, as well as the Priests,
call God; and, secondly, you believe (and this is worse still),--you
believe that you must take upon yourself the expiation of sins which
you never committed. You dread the inevitable consequences entailed by
every earthly event, and are confused by your fears."

Roland gazed wonderingly at the man who thus calmly and deliberately
spoke out his own inmost thought.

Weidmann continued,--

"On the one hand, you deny the operation of eternal laws; on the other,
you fear it. Now look at these masses of ice in the river. Do you care
to learn something of that immeasurable and all-pervading wisdom which
interrupts the laws of Nature when their strict, logical consequences
would involve the destruction of the world?"

"Oh, if that were so! If I might but learn it!"

"Well, then, stop there. Do you know what changes regularly take place
in bodies as they become warmer or colder?"

"Heat expands, and renders them lighter. Cold contracts, and makes them
heavier."

"Is it the same with water?"

"I think so."

"No, it is not. If ice were heavier than water, it would sink, and the
streams would freeze from the bottom upward. There suddenly we have a
deviation, an exception to the so-called stern and impla