ely concluded she was destined to do. Unfortunately
Beth's fervent faith received a check at a critical time when it was
highly important to have kept it well nourished--that is to say, when
she was being prepared for confirmation. It happened when Miss Crow
was hearing the girls their Scripture lesson one morning, the subject
being the escape of the children of Israel from Egypt, and the
destruction of Pharaoh's hosts in the Red Sea.

"I know a man who says the whole of that account has been garbled,"
Beth remarked in a dreamy way, meaning Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, but
not thinking much of what she was saying.

Miss Crow nearly dropped the Bible, so greatly was she startled and
shocked by the announcement.

"Beth!" she exclaimed, directly the class was over and she could speak
to Beth privately, "how could you be so wicked as to say that anything
in Holy Scripture is a garbled account?"

"I said I knew a man who said so," Beth answered, surprised that so
simple a remark should have created such consternation.

But Miss Crow saw in her attitude a dangerous tendency to scepticism,
and expressed strong condemnation of any one who presumed to do other
than accept Holy Writ in blind unquestioning faith. She talked to Beth
with horror about the ungodly men who cast doubt on the unity of the
Bible, called its geology in question, and even ventured to correct
its chronology by the light of vain modern scientific discoveries; and
Beth shocked her again by the questions she asked, and the intelligent
interest she showed in the subject. She told Miss Crow that Count
Gustav had also said that the Old Testament was bad religion and worse
history, but she did not know that other people had thought so too.
Whereupon Miss Crow went to Miss Clifford and reported Beth's attitude
as something too serious for her to deal with alone, and Miss Clifford
sent for Beth and talked to her long and earnestly. She told her that
it was absurd for a girl of her age to call in question the teaching
of the best and greatest men that ever lived, which somehow reminded
Beth of the many mistakes made by the best and greatest men that ever
lived, of their differences of opinion and undignified squabbles, the
instances of one man discovering and suffering for a truth which the
rest refused to accept, and the constant modification, alteration, and
rejection by one generation of teaching which had been upheld by
another with brutality and bloodshed,--i