"No," said Louise firmly, "not that. I heard a lady say once that she was as much afraid of having Satan behind her as she was of having him anywhere else. So am I. Instead, I ask Jesus to send him away. I just say, 'Jesus keep me;' and at the name of Jesus, Satan goes away. He knows he cannot coax Jesus to do any wrong. But, oh dear! How hard he fights for those people who will not have Jesus to help them. He keeps whispering plans in their ears, and coaxing them, they thinking all the time that the plans are their own, and they follow them, expecting to have good times, and never having them; and all the while Satan laughs over their folly. Isn't it strange they will not take the help that Jesus offers?"
"Yes," said Nellie, slowly and gravely, with intense earnestness in voice and manner. "I mean to."
Louise drew her closer, rested her head against the golden one, and began to sing in low, sweet notes:—
"Take the name of Jesus ever
As a shield for every snare;
When temptations round you gather,
Breathe that holy name in prayer."
All conversation, or attempts at conversation, had ceased in the room long before the singing. Some spell about the old, simply-told story of temptation and struggle and victory had seemed to hold all the group as listeners. John's face, as much of it as could be seen under his hat and shading hand, worked strangely. Was the blessed Holy Spirit, whose presence and aid had been invoked, using the story told the child to flash before this young man a revelation of the name of the leader he had been so faithfully following, so steadily serving, all the years of his young life? Did he begin to have a dim realization of the fact that his unsatisfying plans, his shattered hopes, were but the mockery of his false-hearted guide? Whatever he thought he kept it to himself, and rose abruptly in the midst of the singing and went out.
"Come," said Farmer Morgan, breaking the hush following the last line, "it is milking time, and time for a bit of supper, too, I guess. The afternoon has been uncommon short."
He tried to speak as usual, but his voice was a trifle husky. He could argue, but the story told his child had somehow subdued him. Who shall say that the Spirit did not knock loudly, that Sabbath afternoon, at the door of each heart in that room? Who shall say that he did not use Louise Morgan's simple efforts to honour the day in stirring the rust that had gathered about the hinges of those long-bolted doors?
[CHAPTER VIII.]
NEW LIGHT.
THE little, old-fashioned square "stand" was drawn up in front of the stove, which last was opened to let a glow of brightness reach across the room, and beside it were Lewis and Louise Morgan, seated for an evening of good cheer. She had a bit of needle-work, in which she was taking careful stitches; and her husband held in his hand, open to a previously set mark, a handsomely bound copy of Shakespeare. He was one of those rare persons—a good reader of Shakespeare; and, in the old days at home, Louise had delighted to sit, work in hand, and listen to the music of his voice in the rendering.