"I wonder if G.o.d really cares for us in a temporal way?" she asked herself.

The frightful tales of witchcraft that Jack had been so interested in, recurred to her. Many of the people who had been so fearfully tortured and persecuted as witches were Christians. G.o.d had not interfered in their behalf, she told herself. Why should he trouble himself about her?

She went back to her seat by the fender, and, with her chin resting in her hand, looked drearily into the embers, as if they could answer the question. She heard some one come up on the porch and ring the bell. It was Dr. Trent's quick, imperative summons.

"Jack in bed?" he asked, in his brisk way, as she ushered him into the library. "Well, it makes no difference; you know how to adjust the brace anyway. He will be able to sit up all day with that on."

He gave an appreciative glance around the cheerful room, and spread his hands out towards the fire.

"Ah, that looks comfortable!" he exclaimed, rubbing them together. "I wish I could stay and enjoy it with you. I have just come in from a long drive, and must answer another call away out in the country. You'd be surprised to find how damp and chilly it is out to-night."

"I venture you never stopped at the boarding-house at all," answered Bethany, "and that you have not had a mouthful to eat since noon. I am going to get you something. Yes, I shall," she insisted, in spite of his protestations. Luckily, Jack wanted the kettle hung on the crane to-night, so that he could hear it sing as he used to. "The water is boiling, and you shall have a cup of chocolate in no time."

Before he could answer, she was out of the room, and beyond the reach of his remonstrance. He sank into a big chair, and laying his gray head back on the cushions, wearily closed his eyes. He was almost asleep when Bethany came back.

"The fire made me drowsy," he said, apologetically. "I was quite exhausted by the intense heat of this morning. These sudden changes of temperature are bad for one."

"Why, my child!" he exclaimed, seeing the heavy tray she carried, "you have brought me a regular feast. You ought not to have put yourself to such trouble for an old codger used to boarding-house fare."

"All the more reason why you should have a change once in a while," said Bethany, gayly, as she filled the dainty chocolate-pot.

The sight of the doctor's face as she entered the room had almost brought the tears. It looked so worn and haggard. She had not noticed before how white his hair was growing, or how deeply his face was lined.

He had been such an intimate friend of her father's that she had grown up with the feeling that some strong link of kinship certainly existed between them. She had called him "Uncle Doctor" until she was nearly grown. He had been so thoughtful and kind during all her troubles, and especially in Jack's illness, that she longed to show her appreciation by some of the tender little ministrations of which his life was so sadly bare.

"This is what I call solid comfort," he remarked, as he stretched his feet towards the fire and leisurely sipped his chocolate. "I didn't realize I was so tired until I sat down, or so hungry until I began to eat." Then he added, wistfully, "Or how I miss my own fireside until I feel the cheer of others'."

The doubts that had been making Bethany miserable all evening, and that she had forgotten in her efforts to serve her old friend, came back with renewed force.

"Does G.o.d really care?" she asked herself again. Here was this man, one of the best she had ever known, left to stumble along under the weight of a living sorrow, the things he cared for most, denied him.

"Baxter Trent is one of the world's heroes," she had heard her father say.

There were two things he held dearer than life--the honor of the old family name that had come down to him unspotted through generations, and his little home-loving wife. For fifteen years he had experienced as much of the happiness of home-life as a physician with a large practice can know. Then word came to him from another city that his only brother had killed a man in a drunken brawl, and then taken his own life, leaving nothing but the memory of a wild career and a heavy debt. He had borrowed a large amount from an unsuspecting old aunt, and left her almost penniless.

When Dr. Trent recovered from the first shock of the discovery, he quietly set to work to wipe out the disgraceful record as far as lay in his power, by a.s.suming the debt. He could eradicate at least that much of the stain on the family name. It had taken years to do it. Bethany was not sure that it was yet accomplished, for another trial, worse than the first, had come to weaken his strength and dispel his courage.

The idolized little wife became affected by some nervous malady that resulted in hopeless insanity.

Bethany had a dim recollection of the doctor's daughter, a little brown-eyed child of her own age. She could remember playing hide-and-seek with her one day in an old peony-garden. But she had died years ago. There was only one other child--Lee. He had grown to be a big boy of ten now, but he was too young to feel his mother's loss at the time she was taken away. Bethany knew that she was still living in a private asylum near town, and that the doctor saw her every day, no matter how violent she was. Lee was the one bright spot left in his life. Busy night and day with his patients, he saw very little of the boy. The child had never known any home but a boarding-house, and was as lawless and unrestrained as some little wild animal. But the doctor saw no fault in him. He praised the reports brought home from school of high per cents in his studies, knowing nothing of his open defiance to authority. He kissed the innocent-looking face on the pillow next his own when he came in late at night, never dreaming of the forbidden places it had been during the day.

Everybody said, "Poor Baxter Trent! It's a pity that Lee is such a little terror;" but no one warned him. Perhaps he would not have believed them if they had. The thought of all this moved Bethany to sudden speech.

"Uncle Doctor," she broke out impetuously--she had unconsciously used the old name--as she sat down on a low stool near his knee, "I was piling up my troubles to-night before you came. Not the old ones," she added, quickly, as she saw an expression of sympathy cross his face, "but the new ones that confront me."

She gave a mournful little smile.

"'Coming events cast their shadow before,' you know, and these shadows look so dark and threatening. I see no possible way but to sell this home. You have had so much to bear yourself that it seems mean to worry you with my troubles; but I don't know what to do, and I don't know what's the matter with me--"

She stopped abruptly, and choked back a sob. He laid his hand softly on her shining hair.

"Tell me all about it, child," he said, in a soothing tone. Then he added, lightly, "I can't make a diagnosis of the case until I know all the symptoms."

When he had heard her little outburst of worry and distrust, he said, slowly:

"You have done all in your power to prepare yourself for a position as stenographer. You have done all you could to secure such a position, and have been unsuccessful. But you still have a roof over your head, you still have enough on hands to keep you two months longer without selling the house or even renting it--an arrangement that has not seemed to occur to you." He smiled down into her disconsolate face. "It strikes me that a certain little la.s.s I know has been praying, 'Give us this day our to-morrow's bread.' O Bethany, child, can you never learn to trust?"

"But isn't it right for me to be anxious about providing some way to keep the house?" she cried. "Isn't it right to plan and pray for the future? You can't realize how it would hurt me to give up this place."

"I think I can," he answered, gently. "You forget I have been called on to make just such a sacrifice. You can do it, too, if it is what the All-wise Father sees is best for you. Folks may not think me much of a Christian. They rarely see me in Church--my profession does not allow it. I am not demonstrative. It is hard for me to speak of these sacred things, unless it is when I see some poor soul about to slip into eternity; but I thank the good Father I know how to trust. No matter how he has hurt me, I have been able to hang on to his promises, and say, 'All right, Lord. The case is entirely in your hands. Amputate, if it is necessary; cut to the very heart, if you will. You know what is best.'"

He pushed the long tray of dishes farther on the table, and, rising suddenly, walked over to the book-shelves nearest the chimney. After several moments' close scrutiny, he took out a well-worn book.

"Ah, I thought it was here," he remarked. "I want to read you a pa.s.sage that caught my eyes in here once. I remember showing it to your father."

He turned the pages rapidly till he found the place. Then seating himself by the lamp again, he began to read:

"It came to my mind a week or two ago, so full an' sweet an' precious that I can hardly think of anything else. It was during them cold, northeast winds; these winds had made my cough very bad, an' I was shook all to bits, and felt very ill. My wife was sitting by my side, an'

once, when I had a sharp fit of it, she put down her work, an' looked at me till her eyes filled with tears, an' she says, 'Frankie, Frankie, whatever will become of us when you be gone?' She was making a warm little petticoat for the little maid; so, after a minute or two, I took hold of it, an' says, 'What are 'ee making, my dear?' She held it up without a word; her heart was too full to speak. 'For the little maid?'

I says. 'An' a nice, warm thing, too. How comfortable it will keep her!

Does she know about it yet?'

"'Know about it? Why, of course not,' said the wife, wondering. 'What should she know about it for?'

"I waited another minute, an' then I said: 'What a wonderful mother you must be, wifie, to think about the little maid like that!'

"'Wonderful, Frankie? Why, it would be more like wonderful if I forgot that the cold weather was a-coming, and that the little maid would be a-wanting something warm.'

"So, then, you see, I had got her, my friends, and Frankie smiled. 'O wife,' says I, 'do you think that you be going to take care o' the little maid like that an' your Father in heaven be a-going to forget you altogether? Come now (bless him!), isn't he as much to be trusted as you are! An' do you think that he'd see the winter coming up sharp and cold, an' not have something waiting for you, an' just what you want, too?

An' I know, dear wifie, that you wouldn't like to hear the little maid go a-fretting, and saying: "There the cold winter be a-coming, an'

whatever shall I do if my mother should forget me?" Why, you'd be hurt an' grieved that she should doubt you like that. She knows that you care for her, an' what more does she need to know? That's enough to keep her from fretting about anything. "Your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." That be put down in his book for you, wifie, and on purpose for you; an' you grieve an' hurt him when you go to fretting about the future, an' doubting his love.'"

Dr. Trent closed the book, and looked into his listener's thoughtful eyes.

"There, Bethany," he said, "is the lesson I have learned. Nothing is withheld that we really need. Sometimes I have thought that I was tried beyond my power of endurance, but when His hand has fallen the heaviest, His infinite fatherliness has seemed most near; and often, when I least expected it, some great blessing has surprised me. I have learned, after a long time, that when we put ourselves unreservedly in His hands, he is far kinder to us than we would be to ourselves.

'Always hath the daylight broken, Always hath he comfort spoken, Better hath he been for years Than my fears.'

I can say from the bottom of my heart, Bethany, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him."

The tears had gathered in Bethany's eyes as she listened. Now she hastily brushed them aside. The face that she turned toward her old friend reminded him of a snowdrop that had caught a gleam of sunshine in the midst of an April shower.

"You have brushed away my last doubt and foreboding, Uncle Doctor!" she exclaimed. "Really, I have been entertaining an angel unawares."

The old clock in the hall sounded the half-hour chime, and he rose to go.

"You have beguiled me into staying much longer than I intended," he answered. "What will my poor patients in the country think of such a long delay?"

"Tell them you have been opening blind eyes," she said, gravely.