had no need of any light; a dull red glow-a pulsating red glow, waxing and waning in fitful flushes-shone through the brown blind of the solitary window. In former years every house-window in Kirk o' Shields, as in most other Scotch towns, had its blind thus drawn down all day long on the Sabbath, as a matter of ordinary decorum; but this observance has now almost entirely disappeared; only here and there a respecter of other daysa minister, or elder, or church officer, or the like-tenaciously clings to the old custom. And of course the Rev. Ebenezer Blair was among these. He belonged to the famous family of the Blairs of Moss-end, who had borne their testimony in troublous times, and had achieved great honor in these parts; and in all things, even in the smallest, Ebenezer Blair was content to walk in the footsteps of his forefathers, whatever might be the changing fashion of his neighbors or friends.

Alison easily found the volume that she sought; but before returning to the room below, she went to the window, and put the blind aside a few inches, and looked out. Those red flames of the iron-works, now flashing up into the darkness of the night, and sending a swift crimson glow along the chimneys and slates of the opposite houses, had always had for her a singular fascination. Perhaps it was that they formed the one beautiful thing, the one beautiful piece of color, visible in the murky atmosphere that hung over Kirk o' Shields from week's end to week's end. In the daytime the flames were of an orange hue-lambent tiger-lilies she thought they were, shining afar amid that melancholy waste of gray; but at night they changed to crimson, and she could imagine them to be the fires of great altars, fed from unknown depths, and leaping with their sudden, resplendent staghorns of light into the black skies overhead. Silent and beautiful they were; not fierce in any way; the quick rose-flush that lit up the slates and the chimneys seemed a friendly thing; the night was made less lonely. Was this a farewell look, then? To-morrow she would be leaving those giant, silent, beautiful altar-flames far behind.

At random-for what few books were in the room were all of a religious cast-she had taken a volume from the top of a chest of drawers, and it was not until she returned to her place in the parlor below that she discovered what she had done. She had unwittingly brought with her the book of all the books in

the house that she most dreaded-to wit, Paley's "Evidences of Christianity." There was a Free Library in Kirk o' Shields; Alison Blair had the curiosity naturally accompanying a mind at once acute and intrepid; little did her friends and acquaintances, still less her own immediate relatives, imagine how familiar she was with, and how eagerly she followed, the new speculations, problems, theories of these later times. Darwin, Huxley, Spencer were to her more than mere names and echoes of names. But even to her all this modern intellectual movement was in a manner a distant thing; it seemed to be happening in some other planet; it had no relation to the actual facts of her own life. She could read an article on the Mosaic account of creation without seriously feeling that the authority of Scripture was being impugned. It was something that interested her in a vague kind of way, this discussion going on in that distant realm; in nowise did it seem to affect the assured and abiding faith in revelation that she held in common with the people among whom she dwelt. To them this certain faith was all-in-all; it was their one possession- -a heavenly as well as an earthly possession; holding fast by that, the poorest of them were richer than princes or kings; death had no sting for them, hell no terrors; an everlasting crown was before them; washed in the blood of the Lamb, and made white as snow, they would pass into the joy of their Lord. In works (as they were never tired of insisting to each other) there was no virtue; works were carnal, and a snare to the soul; in faith alone was saving grace; and how, Alison might have asked herself, could these poor people around her, whose austere piety had something pathetic in it, even when they had got assurance," as the phrase was-how could they or this priceless belief of theirs be affected by what scientific men, and literary men, and statesmen, and others, were writing in magazines and reviews in the far-away city of London?

And then there came a time—a chance phrase in an article had struck an unexpected chord-when her heart seemed to stand still for a moment. Was the Christian religion, then, but a passing phenomenon-similar to other phenomena that had appeared in the world before and since—and with no higher sanction than its own lofty morality and purity of aim? The question was a startling one, but it did not terrify her. She had been brought up in an atmosphere of conviction. She had been accustomed to

regard these writings and speculations as something quite apart from the present facts and conditions of life. Still, just by way of curiosity, perhaps, or to comfort herself by making assurance doubly sure, she thought she would make a patient study of Paley's Evidences, which she had not read since she was a child of twelve.

Alas! this book did terrify her-for a time. Doubts that she had never dreamed of before-for her childish reading had been entirely perfunctory-were now presented to her mind; and they seemed to have a far more startling significance than the elaborate arguments which were meant to resolve them. Why, on the very first page she read these strange words: "Suppose, nevertheless, almost the whole race, either by the imperfection of their faculties, the misfortune of their situation, or by the loss of some prior revelation, to want this knowledge, and not to be likely, without the aid of a new revelation, to attain it. . . ." Was, then, the history of God's dealings with mankind so much a matter of conjecture was that portion of it included in the Christian revelation so small and temporary and fragmentary a thing-that one had to guess at some previous revelation rather than believe that countless generations of the sons of men had lived and died in ignorance and gone to their doom? This was but the beginning; her imagination, with a rapidity she could not control, would persist in asking further and further questions, and the only answer was a shuddering dread. For she was quite alone. There was no one to whom she could go for guidance and help. Between her father and herself there was doubtless a measure, perhaps a considerable measure, of affection: he on his part regarding her with the natural instinct of protection and care; she on her part moved to deep admiration by his stern integrity of character. But that affection took no visible sign. An expression of it would have been regarded as more than a weakness, as something culpable, as putting the creature before the Creator: for was not all the love and gratitude of the human heart due to the Divine Father? And as between the Minister and his children there was no expression of affection, so there was no confidence. When Alison, in her first bewilderment and alarm, thought of her going to her father with these doubts and perplexities, she could see his eyes afire with astonishment and anger. No pity there, but wrath: what devil had entered into her?———

why had she not striven and wrestled to cast him out forthwith? Was the Evil Spirit still vexing her? To her knees, then! in her own chamber with prayer and fasting and supplication-till she could come to say she was restored and in her right mind.

There was Agnes, it is true; and between the two girls there was a devoted affection—though betraying itself in deeds more than in words-and a close confidence as well. But how was she to darken that fair young mind with her own morbid, and probably foolish, imaginings? Not even in her loneliest hours, when her soul in its agony seemed crying aloud for a single word of sympathy, could she go to her sister. Her sister?—who knew that their mother, dead these many years, sometimes came to see them in the mid hours of the night, in the little room where they slept together. Again and again (so the younger girl averred, with eyes grown mystical and strange) she had seen the pale figure, gentle and smiling, who stood by the side of the bed and regarded her two children. Nay, she had heard her.

"I don't know how it is, Ailie," she would say, as the two sisters sate before the fire by themselves of a winter evening, "but I seem to hear her when she comes into the room. I cannot make out what the noise is, or whether it is a noise, but it is something I hear and know. It wakes me; and when I open my eyes I find her standing at the foot of the bed, and sometimes at the side, and quite near. And I'm not in the least afraid, she looks so kind; just the old way, Ailie, you remember, when she would meet us coming home from school? And some night I am going to say to her, 'Mother, will ye no waken Ailie too? for she hardly believes you come to see her.'"

"Hush, hush, Aggie !" the elder sister would say; "you should not speak of such things, for they pass understanding; and I doubt whether father would not be angry if he were to hear."

"Some night you will see for yourself," the younger sister would say, and then fall into silence and reverie.

However, the paroxysm of alarm and uncertainty caused by Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" was not of long duration. Alison put the book aside and would not open it again. These doubts were all too terrible; she shrank back from the appalling loneliness in which she found herself. Nay, she strove to convince herself that she had been properly punished for wandering away from the fold and following her own poor reason.

Who

was she to set up her individual judgment against the authority of the preachers and teachers in Israel? Paley himself was but a human being like any other; surely it was a perilous thing, in a matter of such supreme moment, to follow a fallible guide! Womanlike, she clung to the majority; and the majority-not to say the entire community-of those around her were possessed by a faith which, however sombre it might be, was at least unwavering and questionless. Paley's "Evidences" lay on the top of the chest of drawers in her room, and remained there untouched.

But it was not for long that on this evening she had to practise the harmless hypocrisy of holding the book open before her, while she would not allow herself to read a single disquieting word.

"Alison," said the Minister, presently, as he transferred the big Bible from his knees to the table, and drew in his chair, "ye may call in the weemen now."

Agnes went and got "the books ;" and directly afterwards the two women-servants of the household, summoned by Alison, came into the room. The younger of these was a stout, red-haired, freckled, black-eyed wench, whose apathetic manner seemed to suggest that she would be glad enough when this ordeal was

over.

"Dod, but our Minister dings a'!" this buxom lass was used to say in confidence to her gossips. "He doesna gie the Lord a minute's peace. It's ask-asking and beg-begging frae morning till nicht. I'm sure I hope it'll no be like my brither Jock at hame. When he gangs fishing on the Lernock-so the lads say— he keeps whuppin' and whuppin'-the water is never at rest for a second and deil a sea-trout or a grilse does he e'er bring hame wi' him. Look at the Sawbath, Kirsty, woman, that they ca' a day o' rest. A day o' rest! There's faimily worship at nine, when a body has scarcely got their breakfast swallowed; then the Minister he's off to the Young Men's Christian Associationthat's at ten o'clock in the hall. Then there's the kirk itsel' at half-past eleeven; and the folk have hardly time to come out and look about them when it's in again at twa o'clock for anither couple o' hours. Then there's the Minister's Bible class at six, and family worship again at nine. Dod, I never saw the like! Weel, I suppose the Minister kens best. Sometimes the wean