I came to say. I feel strangely weak myself, to-day, and must be going now."
"You should not have come," reproached the minister, as he helped Mori, the Japanese, to wheel her to the door; "and yet I am so glad you did come, for you have made me feel like some chivalrous champion of eternal right jousting in the lists against an impious Lucifer."
For this the Angel gave him back a smile over the top of her chair, and the minister watched her out of sight, reflecting that in the few days since this strain upon them all began she had failed perceptibly, and recalling that never before had he heard her allude to her weakness or make her physical condition the excuse for anything she did or did not do.
Within a quarter of an hour, so soon almost that it seemed as if he had been waiting for his wife to depart, Elder Burbeck was announced as the second caller at Doctor Hampstead's door.
For the five years of his eldership before the advent of Hampstead, Elder Burbeck had a record in the official board of never permitting any subject to be passed upon without a word from him, nor ever having allowed any question to be considered settled until it was settled according to the dictates of the thing he supposed to be his conscience.
At their first momentary clash on the day when Hampstead, the book agent, had broken open the church which Burbeck had nailed up, the older man thought he sensed in the younger the presence of a spiritual endowment greater than his own. To this the ruling Elder had bowed within himself. Externally, his manner was not changed, nor his leadership affected. To the congregation his submission to the final judgment of the minister was accounted as a virtue. Instead of weaken-
