On a Sunday afternoon these two, Ralph and Rhoda, had strayed out into the old orchard at the back of the house. The summer world was just then in all its glory. The meadows looked as if a flowery robe had been shaken out over them; the orchard grass was full of tall, shiny buttercups and large field-daisies, resplendent in their snowy frills. A turquoise sky smiled down through the leaf-laden boughs above their heads; bees were murmuring all around them.

“Mr. Channell,” asked Rhoda, suddenly, “you know Nelly’s father, don’t you?”

He stooped and gathered one of the large daisies. For a moment there was no reply. The bees filled up the pause while she waited for his answer.

[85]

“Yes,” he said at last, “I know him well.”

“Is he really penitent?” she inquired, doubtfully. “Does he think that what he has done has blotted out the past? It’s easy to whitewash a dirty wall, but the stains are underneath the whitewash still.”

“There is a vast difference between the stain which is only whitewashed over, and that which Christ’s blood has blotted out,” replied Mr. Channell. “I don’t believe that Robert Clarris can ever forget the past, or think that he has atoned for it. But he knows that the Lord has put away his sin.”

“How does he know it?” Rhoda demanded.

“Until he had committed that great crime,” Ralph went on, [86]“he knew nothing at all of the love of Christ. He had been a moral man, satisfied with his morality. Then came secret sorrows—then much worldly perplexity, followed by a strong temptation—and he fell. And when he lay grovelling in the dust, the Lord’s voice travelled to him along the ground. While he had walked erect, he had never heard it.”

“Wasn’t Mr. Elton over-merciful to him?” asked Rhoda. “I have often thought so.”

A sudden light seemed to kindle in Ralph’s eyes.

“There are many,” he said, “who pray Sunday after Sunday that the Lord will raise up them that fall, and yet do all they can to keep the fallen ones down. Mr. Elton was not one of those. He thought that if half the blows that were spent upon sinners were bestowed upon Satan, the Evil One would indeed be beaten down under our feet. God bless him! He saved a sinner from the consequences of one dark hour!”

Again there was a pause. This time it was broken by little Nelly, who came bounding in between them. Ralph bent down and clasped the child closely in his arms.

“Oh, my darling,” he said, as he held her, [87]“may the Lord make you one of His handmaidens! May He send you forth to raise up them that fall, and to bind up the broken in heart!”

Perhaps it was not the first time that Nelly had heard this prayer. It did not surprise her as it did Rhoda. Miss Farren watched Ralph’s ............