Kitabı oku: «The Haunted Room: A Tale», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XII.
THE STRANGER

Bruce had scarcely quitted the breakfast-room before it was entered by Vibert.

“Quick, Emmie, a cup of your delicious hot coffee! I’ve been out these two hours, and have come in with a hunter’s appetite!” exclaimed the youth, who was looking even handsomer than usual, with his clear complexion brightened by the invigorating effects of the fresh morning air. Vibert applied himself with energy to the work of cutting slices from the cold ham which had been placed on the side-board.

Emmie poured out the warm beverage for her brother, who turned round to bid her add plenty of cream. “Cream is the one country luxury to balance against country cookery,” he laughingly observed. “If that virago-looking Hannah continue to reign in the kitchen, I shall be driven to live upon cream, or be famished!”

Vibert did not appear likely to be famished as he sat at the well-spread table, doing ample justice to his slices of ham. Emmie had finished her own breakfast, but remained to keep her brother company.

“Since you were such an early riser to-day,” she observed, “why were you absent from prayers?”

“Because I can’t stand hearing the prayers read by Bruce!” exclaimed Vibert with some indignation. “It’s a mockery for him to call his own brother a selfish idiot, to treat him as if he were a slave or a dog, and then to kneel down and pray like a saint, asking for meekness and mercy, and all kinds of graces which he never had, and never wishes to have. If that be not downright hypocrisy, I know not what is deserving of the name.”

“Bruce is the very last person in the world who would play the hypocrite,” cried Emmie. “As for the harsh name which he gave you, I believe that in his heart he is sorry for what he said in a moment of ill-humour.”

“Then why does he not own frankly that he is sorry?” cried Vibert. “If Bruce would but confess that he regrets his hasty words, I’d hold out my hand at once and say, ‘Let by-gones be by-gones, old boy; I’m not the fellow to harbour a grudge.’ But Bruce would not own a fault were it to save his life or mine. Pride – that pride that repels advice, resents reproof, and refuses to acknowledge an error (how well the captain described it!) – that is Bruce’s pet sin, and he’ll carry it with him to his grave.”

“God forbid!” faintly murmured Emmie.

“Bruce and I are to begin daily studies at S – next Monday,” continued Vibert, who was making good progress with his breakfast whilst he kept up the conversation. “I know that papa imagines that the way to keep me safe and out of mischief, is to yoke me to one whom he considers the impersonification of sense and sobriety. He’d couple a greyhound with a surly mastiff; but the greyhound, at least, will strain hard against the connecting strap. If Bruce start early, I will start late; if he walk fast, I will walk slowly; I’ll keep as wide apart from him as the tether will let me get; – in plain words, I’ll have as little to do with Bruce as I possibly can.”

“Vibert, dear Vibert, it so grieves me that you should feel thus towards him,” cried Emmie. “Bruce is not without his faults, but he is a noble-minded, unselfish – ”

“Unselfish! I deny it!” exclaimed Vibert, while he kept the morsel which he was just about to convey to his lips suspended on his fork. “Unselfish indeed! when he has taken advantage of being sent on in front to make arrangements to secure the very best room in the house for himself!”

“He never did,” cried Emmie eagerly. “The west room was prepared for me, but I could not endure it, and, as a matter of kindness, Bruce exchanged our respective apartments.”

“Why could you not endure that capital room?” asked Vibert in surprise.

Emmie, who had been wishing, praying that she might be enabled to act the part of a faithful counsellor and friend to her younger brother, felt painfully that she had to step down from her position of vantage, as she owned, with a blush, that she had not liked to sleep next door to the bricked-up room.

Vibert burst out laughing. “So the chivalrous Bruce took the dangerous post!” he exclaimed. “Would I not just like to give him a fright!”

“Don’t, oh! don’t play any foolish practical joke!” exclaimed Emmie.

“I’m afraid that it would not answer,” said Vibert, still laughing. “Bruce is a hard-headed chap, who sifts everything to the bottom. He’d be as likely as not to cleave a ghost’s skull with a poker, and I’ve no fancy to try whether he hits as hard with his hand as he yesterday did with his tongue. But let’s talk no more about Bruce. As soon as I’ve finished my breakfast, you and I shall go into the grounds and have a ramble together. You’ve not yet seen the outside of our mansion, for when we arrived here last night you had not enough light to distinguish Aladdin’s palace from a Hottentot kraal.”

The brother and sister soon sauntered out on the terrace on the east side of the house, which was bathed in glowing sunshine. The air was so mild that Emmie had merely thrown a light blue scarf over her head and shoulders as a protection from the breeze; winter wraps would have been oppressive, and she enjoyed the luxury of being able to go out without donning bonnet or gloves. The terrace overlooked the lawn and the garden: the latter had once been fine, and had still a prim grace of its own.

“I rather like this old family mansion,” cried Vibert, glancing up at the building, which had been constructed of dark red brick, with handsome facings of stone. “There is something stately about it, as if it had seen better days, and remembered them still. Myst Court looks something like William and Mary’s part of Hampton Court Palace.”

“Oh, a mere miniature of that grand old building,” said Emmie.

“I can just fancy the kind of people who walked on this terrace when first it was laid out,” continued Vibert. “There were gentlemen in huge, full-bottomed wigs, long coats, embroidered waistcoats and ruffles of old point-lace, with rapiers hanging at their sides. There were ladies like those whom Sir Godfrey Kneller painted, stiff and stately, each smelling a rose which she held in her hand; ladies in hoops, who looked as if they could never dance anything more lively than a minuet de la cour. We seem too modern, Emmie, to match our mansion. Let’s return to the olden times, forget that Queen Anne is dead, and fancy her yet with the sharp-tongued Duchess Sarah playing the game of romantic friendship. Let’s imagine ourselves as we would have appeared some hundred and fifty years ago. I’m a young Tory gallant (of course, I’m a Jacobite at heart, and drink to ‘the king over the water’); Bruce is a decided Whig, – I’m not sure that he is not a Dutchman, and has come over from Holland in the train of the Prince of Orange.”

Emmie laughed at Vibert’s playful fancies, and wondered how her handsome young brother would have looked in a full-bottomed wig.

“Whig and Tory must unite,” she observed, “to get that garden into order. The walks are overrun with shepherd’s purse and chickweed, and the beds seem to grow little but nettles.”

“But these beds were clearly laid out at the time when Dutch taste prevailed,” said Vibert; “it reminds one of the poet’s description, —

 
‘Grove nods at grove, each alley has its brother,
One half the garden just reflects the other.’”
 

“Rather a mournful reflection now,” observed Emmie with a smile.

“But easily changed to a bright one!” cried Vibert; “we’ll set plenty of hands to work, and get everything right before spring. These old straggling bushes must come up; we’ll have new plants from a nursery-garden, and fill those beds with geraniums, fuchsias, and calceolaria. An orangery, as at Hampton Court, shall be at one end of the house; and we must fix on a site for a conservatory, in which some huge vine shall spread out its branches, heavy with delicious bunches of grapes.”

“My dear boy, you speak as if papa had the purse of Fortunatus,” said Emmie. “You know that he will have all kinds of expense in getting the property into tolerable order, – draining, and that sort of thing. The garden must wait for new plants, and we for conservatory and orangery, till more important matters are settled. Think of the cottages out of repair – ”

“Hang the cottages!” cried Vibert. “Leave them alone, and they’ll tumble down of their own accord. Why should we trouble ourselves about them?”

“We must care for the tenants that live in them,” observed Emmie.

“They’ve never done anything for us, why should we do anything for them?” said Vibert. “I don’t believe that half of them ever think of paying their rents. If I were master here,” continued Vibert, “I’d make a law that no dirty, ragged creature should come within a mile of the house. If these folk are miserable, I’m sorry for it; but that’s no reason why I should be miserable too. Charity begins at home, and the first thing to be done at Myst Court is to put house and garden into tip-top order, – buy new carpets and a good billiard-table, set up a fountain yonder on the lawn (we’ll consider about statues and vases), and then invite Alice and a merry party of young people down to the place. We’d drive out ghosts to the sound of fiddle and dancing, and depend upon it, you dear little coward, we should never again hear a word about Myst Court being haunted.”

“Ah, Vibert, we must remember our uncle’s warnings,” said Emmie, gently laying her hand on her brother’s arm.

“Beware of selfishness!– eh? well, I’ll think about that when I see you conquer mistrust. But to be gay is my nature, as it is yours to be timid, and Bruce’s to be proud. One cannot alter nature.”

“Can it not be improved?” asked Emmie. “Look at your garden, – it has been left for years to nature, so bears but a crop of weeds.”

“Oh, if you are going to moralize, I’ll be off!” cried Vibert. “I have not tried my new gun yet, and I expect capital sport. I warrant you that I will bring home a brace of pheasants to mend our fare!”

Mr. Trevor came down to Wiltshire by an early train, and was gladly welcomed at Myst Court. His presence greatly added to the harmony of the family circle; for his sons seldom exchanged bitter words when their father’s eye was upon them. Emmie’s spirits rose. When the family were gathered together at the luncheon-table, the young lady playfully rallied Vibert on his “capital sport,” for she had seen him return with an empty bag from his shooting.

Vibert laughed good-humouredly at his own want of success. “I thought that pheasants and partridges would be plentiful as blackberries in the brushwood,” said he; “but I lighted on no bird more aristocratic than a crow. I think that there must be poachers abroad, or perhaps four-footed poachers, in the shape of those starved, disreputable-looking cats which come prowling about the place.”

“I suppose some of those left by my aunt as a legacy to her maid,” observed Mr. Trevor.

“The legatee does not value the keepsakes,” said Vibert, “to judge by the looks of the cats that crossed my path to-day, sneaking back to their old quarters as if in search for scraps.”

“Does Mrs. Jessel live far from here?” inquired Emmie.

“About a mile from Myst Court by the road, but not half that distance by the path through the wood,” answered Bruce. “The house left to her by Mrs. Myers is a two-storied, shallow building, standing very near the high-road, and looking like a Cockney villa that had somehow strayed into the country, and could not find its way back.”

“So the cats have the good taste to prefer the antique beauties of Myst Court embowered in woods,” said Vibert; “and their new mistress has no objection to their living here at free quarters. I fired at one of the miserable creatures, out of pure benevolence, but unhappily missed my mark.”

“Your shooting is on a par with your driving,” remarked Bruce satirically; “but Emmie’s pony came off worse than the cat.”

“That was not my fault!” exclaimed Vibert. “I managed the pony famously, in the dark too, and over a road expressly contrived to break the springs of a carriage. I was turning a sharp corner with consummate skill, when Emmie took it into her head to scream and catch hold of my arm. Of course, chaise and all went into the ditch, and how long they might have stayed there I know not, had not those two men come to our help.”

“Do you know who they were?” asked Mr. Trevor, who had already heard something of the yesterday’s adventure from Emmie.

“The one is called Harper, a strange, weird-looking old man, with long grizzled hair, and croaking voice,” replied Vibert. “I don’t care if I never set eyes on him again, – but he lives just outside our gate. The other was a very different sort of person, evidently quite a gentleman.”

“Did you think so?” said Emmie, in a tone suggestive of a doubt on the subject.

“Why, he is a colonel,” cried Vibert; “you heard him say so himself, – a colonel belonging to the American army.”

“It is easy enough for a man to call himself an American colonel,” said Bruce.

“I don’t think it fair to disbelieve a gentleman’s account of himself until one has cause to doubt his truthfulness,” remarked Vibert. “Certainly,” he added, glancing at Emmie, “Colonel Standish did tell us rather wonderful stories. You remember that one of the murdered Red Indian’s ghost keeping watch over buried treasure?”

“It was a horrible story,” said Emmie.

“And so graphically told!” exclaimed Vibert. “I’ll let you hear the tale, papa; but I shall tell it to great disadvantage. A ghost story must lose all its thrilling effect when heard at a luncheon-table. Fancy being interrupted at the crisis by a request for ‘a little more mutton!’”

After the tale had been told, and the meal concluded, Vibert went out again with his gun, to seek better success in the woods which surrounded Myst Court. The youth was wont to enter eagerly into any new kind of amusement, but three days were usually sufficient to make him tired of any pursuit.

Mr. Trevor, Emmie, and Bruce went into the drawing-room together, to talk over future plans. They had scarcely seated themselves by the table, on which Bruce had placed some papers of estimates, when the old-fashioned knocker on the front door gave a loud announcement that a visitor had come to the house.

“Who can have found us out already?” said Mr. Trevor. “We are scarcely prepared yet to receive calls from strangers.”

Joe flung open the drawing-room door, and announced Colonel Standish.

Emmie’s glimpses of the stranger on the preceding evening had been by such uncertain light, and she had been so unfitted by nervous fear to exercise her powers of observation, that she would scarcely have recognized her new acquaintance had not his name been announced. Colonel Standish was a tall and rather good-looking man, apparently about thirty years of age, with large bushy black whiskers, connected with each other by a well-trimmed beard, which, like a dark ruff, surrounded the chin. He was dressed in the height of modern fashion, with no small amount of jewellery displayed in brilliant studs, coins and other ornaments dangling from a handsome gold chain, and rings sparkling on more than one finger of his large gloveless hand. The colonel had a martial step, and an air of assurance which might be mistaken for that of ease. He advanced at once towards Miss Trevor, shook hands with her, and in a tone of gallantry inquired whether she had perfectly recovered from the effects of her late adventure. Emmie only replied by an inclination of her head, and at once introduced Colonel Standish to her father and brother. The stranger shook them both by the hand, with a familiar heartiness to which neither of the English gentlemen felt inclined to respond. Mr. Trevor, however, with grave courtesy, expressed his obligations to the colonel for the help which he had afforded on the preceding night.

“I am only too happy to rush to the rescue whenever so fair a lady is in peril,” cried the colonel, turning and bowing to Emmie. “As for your son, – I don’t think that it was this son – ”

“Certainly not,” interrupted Bruce.

“I must congratulate his father on the uncommon spirit and pluck shown by the young gentleman whom I met last night, under circumstances calculated to try the mettle of the boldest.”

Emmie and Bruce exchanged glances; the faintest approach to a smile rose on the lips of each on hearing such exaggerated praise.

“As for this fair lady, she played the heroine,” continued the colonel, again turning gallantly towards Emmie, whose smile was exchanged for a blush.

“Who is this vulgar flatterer?” thought Mr. Trevor and Bruce. Emmie took an early opportunity of gliding out of the room, to which she did not return till the colonel’s visit was ended.

Standish was sufficiently a man of the world to see that he had overacted his part, and had not made a favourable impression. Mr. Trevor and his son became more and more coldly civil. The visitor took the chief share of the conversation, gave his anecdotes, and cracked his jokes. The Englishmen thought his jokes coarse, and his anecdotes of questionable authenticity. Conversation slackened, and in about half an hour the colonel rose to take his departure.

“I put up at the White Hart at S – ,” said he, as he threw down on the table a card for Vibert. “I find the accommodation fair, very fair, but my stay in the town is uncertain. I hope that we shall soon meet again,” and the colonel shook the hand of Mr. Trevor, but a good deal less cordially than he had done on his first introduction to the father of Emmie.

“We do not echo his hope,” observed Bruce, as soon as the visitor had tramped out of the house.

“Who can this low-bred talkative fellow be?” said Mr. Trevor. “It is not difficult for an impostor to pass himself off as a colonel, when those who would have proofs of his being so must seek for them at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“I doubt this man’s being American at all,” observed Bruce. “I did not detect in his speech the peculiar Yankee accent, though it was interlarded with Yankee phrases.”

“I shall not encourage this colonel’s coming about the house,” said Mr. Trevor, walking up to the window. “Why, there’s Vibert accompanying him down the drive!”

“And they look hand and glove,” added Bruce. “How they are laughing and talking together!”

“Vibert is young and unsuspicious,” observed Mr. Trevor, as he turned from the window; “his generous, frank disposition lays him peculiarly open to deception. We must make some inquiries at S – regarding this Colonel Standish. Your tutor, Mr. Blair, may know something of the man, and the character which he bears.”

“I will not forget to gain what information I can,” said Bruce Trevor.

CHAPTER XIII.
WORK

On the following Sunday afternoon Emmie was sitting alone by the drawing-room window, with a devotional book in her hand, but her eyes resting on the fading glories of the woodland landscape, and her thoughts on her childhood’s home, when she was joined by her brother Bruce.

“I am glad to find you alone,” said Bruce, as he took a seat by his sister’s side; “I want to consult you, I need your help.”

Such words from the lips of the speaker were gratifying to Emmie; Bruce was ever more ready to give help than to ask it. Emmie closed her book, put it down, and was at once all attention.

“I have been making a little chart of the estate,” said Bruce, unrolling a paper which he placed before his sister.

“What are those square marks on it?” inquired Emmie, looking with interest at the neatly executed chart.

“These are cottages, – some larger, some smaller,” was the reply. “Those buildings marked in red are public-houses; those in green are farms. You observe that there is not a church or a school in the place; there is not one nearer than S – .”

“More’s the pity!” said Emmie.

“If you count, you will find that there are eighty-seven tenements of various kinds, and the dwellers in them are, of course, all tenants of our father. Give five individuals to each family, and you have four hundred and thirty-five souls on this estate, without a resident clergyman.”

“And what can bring so many people around us?” asked Emmie.

“I believe the dye-works,” answered her brother. “They give employment to most of the men who are not farm-labourers, and, as far as I have ascertained, to some of the women also.”

“Then the people are not very poor,” observed Emmie, with a look of relief; for she had been alarmed at the idea of more than four hundred beggars being quartered on her father’s estate.

“The men in work ought not to be very poor,” said Bruce; “but then there are sure to be widows, sick folk, and some too old for work. Besides this, improvidence, ignorance, and vice always bring misery in their train, and, from all that I have heard or seen, the people here are little better than heathens. The children run about like wild creatures; there is no one to teach them their duty to God or to man.”

“I hope that papa may in time set up a school,” said Emmie. – Compulsory education was a thing not yet introduced into England.

“I hope that he may; but he cannot do so at present,” observed Bruce. “I was talking with him on the subject on our way from church this morning. Our father’s expenses in educating Vibert and myself are heavy, and if either or both of us go to college they will be heavier still. Yet for these wretched tenants something should be done, and at once.”

“Papa intends gradually to repair or rebuild some of the cottages.”

“I am speaking of the people who inhabit the cottages,” interrupted Bruce; “the dirty, ignorant, swearing, lying creatures who are dropping off, year by year, from misery on this side of the grave to worse misery beyond it.”

Emmie looked distressed and perplexed. “What can be done for them?” she inquired.

“We must, in the first place, know them better, and so find out how to help them,” said Bruce. “You are aware that I have little time to spare from my studies, which it is my duty to prosecute vigorously. I can give but my Sunday evenings, and my father is quite willing that on them I should hold a night-school for boys in our barn.”

Emmie looked with smiling admiration on her young brother, about to undertake with characteristic resolution what she regarded as a Herculean task. But no trace of a smile lingered on her lips as Bruce calmly went on, —

“I can thus do something for the boys, but the care of the women and the girls naturally falls upon you.”

“Upon me!” cried Emmie, looking aghast.

“Visiting the poor,” continued Bruce, “is not a kind of business which our father can undertake; he has been accustomed to office-work all his life, and, as he told me to-day, he cannot begin at his age an occupation which is to him so utterly new.”

“It would be utterly new to me, and I dare not attempt cottage-visiting!” cried Emmie, whose benevolent efforts had hitherto been confined to subscribing to charities or missions, and working delicate trifles to be sold at fancy bazaars.

“You are young, dear,” observed Bruce Trevor.

“And that is just the reason why I should not be sent amongst all those dreadful people!” cried Emmie. “I might meet with rudeness, or drunkenness, or infectious cases. I cannot think how you could ever wish me to undertake such a work! Wait till I am forty or fifty years old before you ask me to visit these poor.”

“And in the meantime,” said Bruce, “children are growing up ignorant of the very first truths of religion; wretched women, who know no joy in this world, see no prospect of peace in another; the sick lack medicine, the hungry, food; the widow has no one to comfort her, and the dying – die without hope!”

Emmie clasped her hands, and looked pleadingly into the face of her brother. “Oh! what do you ask me to do?” she exclaimed; “do you want me to visit all these cottages, and the public-houses as well!”

“Not all the cottages, and most certainly not the public-houses,” answered Bruce with a smile. “See,” he continued, pointing to different parts of his chart, “I have marked with an E those dwellings which I thought that a lady might visit.”

“There are a fearful number of E’s,” said poor Emmie, very gravely surveying the paper.

“Nay, if you took but two cottages each day (that would be scarce half-an-hour’s work), in a month you would have visited all that I have marked for you,” said the methodical Bruce; “and in each you would have left some little book or striking tract, if you had found that the inmates could read.”

“I should be afraid to ask them if they could read or not,” cried Emmie. Bruce went on without heeding the interruption.

“You would keep a book, and mark down each day where you had called, with a slight notice of the state of each cottage, the name of its tenant, the number of the children, and such other particulars as would be of the utmost value to our father when he affords relief in money. It would be better, perhaps, for you to make it a rule not to give money yourself.”

“That is just the only thing that I could do!” exclaimed Emmie; “I dare not intrude into cottage homes without the excuse of coming to give charity to those who want.”

“The visits of a lady would not be deemed an intrusion,” said Bruce. He had some practical knowledge on the subject, having been for years at a private school where the ladies of the master’s family constantly visited the poor. “Your gentle courtesy will make you welcome wherever you go. Nor need you go alone, you can always take Susan with you.”

“Why not let Susan go by herself?” said Emmie, grasping eagerly at an idea which afforded a hope of escape from work which she disliked and dreaded.

“Susan has been trained for a lady’s-maid, and not for a Bible-woman,” said Bruce; “she is not fitted to act as your substitute, useful as she may prove as your helper. Nor would Susan be as readily welcomed amongst our tenants as would be a real lady, their landlord’s only daughter. Your position and education, Emmie, give you advantages which Susan would not possess; they are talents intrusted to you, which it would be a sin to bury.”

Emmie heaved a disconsolate sigh.

“Let me put the subject in a clearer light,” pursued Bruce. “What would you call the conduct of one of your servants who should, without your leave, ask another person to do the work which she herself had been engaged to perform?”

“I should call it indolence,” replied Emmie. Her brother added the word “presumption.”

“And if a soldier on the eve of a battle should hire a substitute to fight in his stead,” continued Bruce, “what would such an act appear to his comrades and captain?”

“Cowardice,” answered Emmie.

“There have been instances,” said Bruce, “of pilgrimages and penances, imposed on the wealthy, being performed by proxy! A poor man endured, for the sake of money, what the rich man believed to be the penalty of his own sins. What were such penances or pilgrimages, Emmie?”

“A mockery,” was the faltered reply.

“And if in man’s sight there are duties which we cannot make over to others without presumption, cowardice, and rendering the performance of them a solemn mockery, think you that the Divine Master looks with favour on services done by proxy? He intends the rich to come in contact with their poorer brethren. He claims from us not merely the money which we can easily give, but the words of our lips, the strength of our limbs, the thoughts of our brains, the time which is far more precious than gold. The work which your Master gives you to do, the special work, no substitute can perform.”

“Oh! I wish with all my heart and soul that we had never left Summer Villa, never come to Myst Hall!” exclaimed Emmie.

Bruce was a little disappointed that such an exclamation should be the only reply to his serious words. “You would surely not desire to pass through life putting aside every cross but the fanciful ornament which it is the fashion to wear!” he remarked with slight severity in his manner. “You have given yourself, body and soul, to a heavenly Master, – is it for Him or for you to choose your work? Is it a very hard command if He say to you now, ‘Work for one half-hour each day in My vineyard’?”

“I would rather work for six hours with my fingers quietly in my own room,” murmured Emmie.

“That is, you would select your own favourite kind of work, take merely what is pleasant and easy, and what suits your natural temper,” said Bruce. “There is nothing to thwart your will or try your temper in making pretty trifles, cultivating your accomplishments, or managing a small household such as ours.”

“There you are mistaken, Bruce,” observed Emmie, raising her head, which had drooped as she had uttered her former sentence. “It does try my courage to speak to our new servant Hannah, that masculine, loud-voiced, ill-tempered woman. I did but say to her this morning, in as gentle a way as I could, that I have a book of recipes, and that perhaps she could get some hints from it, as one of the gentlemen is rather particular as to cookery, and Hannah looked ready to fly at my face. I shall never venture to find fault with her again.”

“Emmie, Emmie, is this miserable timidity to meet you at every turn?” exclaimed Bruce. “Have you no spirit, no strength of will to wrestle it down, to rise above it?”

“I cannot help being timid,” sighed Emmie.

“Vibert might as well say that he cannot help being selfish,” said Bruce. “If you know that you have a besetting fault, it is not that you should sit down with folded hands and let it bind you, without so much as a struggle to shake yourself free.”

Bruce spoke with some warmth, for he spoke from his heart. It is so easy to point out what is the plain duty of others; it is so difficult frankly to acknowledge our own. The young man justly accused Emmie of neglecting the special work appointed for her by her Great Master, and of shrinking from fighting the good fight of faith. Himself resolute and courageous, with great power of self-control and self-denial, Bruce could make little allowance for failings which were not his own. But had Bruce no special work to do from which the natural man recoiled? had he no battle to fight against a besetting sin? Bruce’s appointed work lay close to him, though he did not choose to perceive it, and was virtually repeating Cain’s question, Am I my brother’s keeper? Bruce suffered pride to control his actions, and mar the work of grace in his soul. It would have been as arduous a work for him to “wrestle it down, to rise above it,” as it would have been to his timid sister to go forth and minister to the poor in the hovels surrounding Myst Court.