present, but he resolved to come again and
explain to the mother that her daughter needed some restraining power
other than her own impulse, and that without religious guidance she was
pretty certain to drift into frivolous and vulgar if not positively bad
ways. The father was a free-thinker; but Father Damon thought he had
some hold on the mother, who was of the Lutheran communion, but had
followed her husband so far as to become indifferent to anything but
their daily struggle for life. Yet she had a mother's instinct about the
danger to her daughter, and had been pleased to have her go to Father
Damon's chapel.

And, besides, he could not bring himself in that presence to seem to
rebuke Ruth Leigh. Was she not practically doing what his Lord did
--going about healing the sick, sympathizing with the poor and the
discouraged, taking upon herself the burden of the disconsolate,
literally, without thought of self, sharing, as it were, the misery and
sin of this awful city? And today, for the first time, he seemed to have
seen the woman in her--or was it the saint? and he recalled that
wonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually beautiful
as she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in her arms.
It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and planted a
new pang there that she had no belief in a future life.

It did not occur to him that the sudden joy in her face might have been
evoked by seeing him, for it was a long time since she had seen him. Nor
did he think that the pang at his heart had another cause than religious
anxiety. Ah, priest and worldly saint, how subtle and enduring are the
primal instincts of human nature!

"Yes," he said, as they walked away, in reply to her inquiry as to his
absence, "I have been in retreat a couple of weeks."

"I suppose," she said, softly, "you needed the rest; though," and she
looked at him professionally, "if you will allow me to say it, it seems
to me that you have not rested enough."

"I needed strength"--and it was the priest that spoke--"in meditation
and prayer to draw upon resources not my own."

"And in fasting, too, I dare say," she added, with a little smile.

"And why not?" he asked.

"Pardon me," she said; "I don't pretend to know what you need. I need to
eat, though Heaven knows it's hard enough to keep up an appetite down
here. But it is physical endurance you need for the work here. Do you
think fasting streng