Well may the purest and strongest pray to be kept from the evil of the world. It lurks where least suspected, and can plot its wrongs in the chamber of death, and on the threshold of heaven. Annie and her father might at least suppose themselves safe now. Were they so, with God's minister on his way to join truth with untruth—a pure-hearted maiden to a man from whom she would shrink the moment she came to know him? Not on the human side. They were safe only as God kept them. If Annie Walton had found herself married to a swindler, hers would have been a life-long martyrdom. But unconsciously she drew momentarily nearer the edge of the precipice. Time was passing, and their venerable pastor would soon be present. Annie had welcomed him every day previously, as he came to take sweet counsel with her father rather than prepare him for death, but now she had a strange, secret dread of his coming.
Her father suddenly put his hand to his heart.
"Have you pain there?" asked Annie.
"It's gone," he replied, after a moment. "They will soon be all past,
Annie dear. How does Mr. Gregory seem now?" he asked of Miss Eulie.
"Greatly depressed, I'm sorry to say," she answered. "He knows that you are no better, and it seems to distress him very much."
"God bless him for saving my darling's life!" he said, fervently; "and He will bless him. I have a feeling that he will see brighter and better days. I can send him almost a father's love and blessing, for he now seems like a son to me. Say to him that I shall tell his father of his noble deeds. Be a sister to him, Annie. Carry on the good work you have so wisely begun. May the friendship of the parents descend to the children. And you, Charles, my son, will surely feel toward him as a brother, whatever may have been the differences of the past."
Innocent but deeply embarrassing words to both Hunting and Annie.
Again Mr. Walton put his hand to his heart.
Hunting left the room, for it was surely time for Jeff to return. With a gleam of exultant joy he saw him driving toward the house with the white-haired minister at his side. He returned softly to the sick-room.
Mr. Walton had just taken Annie's hands, and after a look of unutterable fondness, said, "Before I give you to another—while you are still my own little girl—let me thank you for having been all and more than a father could ask. How good God was to give me such a comfort in your mother's place!"