le going on which
she had no means of gauging.

"What if he has?" she asked gently. "Would you care so very much?"

"Care!" exclaimed David, and his expression startled her.
"Care!--whether our Messiah has come, and we have not known him, and
have injured him and rejected him?"

"But that is just what Isaiah said would be."

"Don't!" said David. "I can't bear it! If that is true, there will be
such a cry as Zechariah said, and I will begin it. But I don't believe
it, Matilda; it cannot be. I will not believe it."

He threw down his book and walked up and down the room with folded arms
and a brow black as night. Hardly a boy's action, but neither was it a
boy's feeling which possessed him just then. Matilda looked on, very
sorry, very much awed, and entirely at a loss to know what to say. She
consulted her Bible again and found a passage which she wished to shew
him; but she had to wait for the chance. David walked up and down, up
and down, restlessly.

"I can't make it out!" he exclaimed. "It confuses me. If _that_ were
true, then all our whole nation have been wrong, all these years; and
we have lost everything; the promise made to Abraham and all."

"But Jesus will fulfil all the promises," said Matilda gently.

"To those who disowned him?" David asked almost fiercely.

"I think he will," said Matilda. "Why the first Christians were some of
those very Jews."

"How can that be?" said David standing still and looking at her.

Matilda found the second chapter of Acts and handed it to him. She
thought her own words were best to be few. David looked unwillingly at
her book, but however took it, sat down, and under the light of the gas
burner began to read. Matilda could not help furtively watching him,
and it almost frightened her; the changes in the boy's face were so
quick and strong. He read like one reading for his life; he never knew
that Matilda was watching him; his eyes seemed to pierce the book like
steel lances; and through his parted lips the breath came and went
hurriedly. Matilda thought he never would get through the chapter, he
was so long over it.

"May I keep this a day or two?" he said at last. Matilda joyfully
assented.

"I wish I had some one to talk with about this," he said; "somebody who
could answer me, or who could _not_ answer me."

"Your uncles?" Matilda suggested.

"They would only silence me."

"I wish you could see Mr. Richmond."

"Who's he?"

"He's a friend of mine, an