"I have not had as much experience as you think," he said, with only a remnant of his irritation. She had exorcised the demon,--she could now leave him, and a sudden cry hastened her tarrying feet. "Goodness, there is that baby again. If he has croup I'll have to send out and borrow alum. I haven't a bit in the house." Her thoughts, however, were not altogether on the baby, as her little feet pattered over the painted wooden floor of the hall. "Thank God, that fit came on him when he was alone. It is strange that he gets so dissatisfied. I wish I could always be with him, but that's impossible-- Now, baby, what's the matter with you?" and she bent over a red-faced child sitting up and coughing in a crib. Mr. Huntington closed and locked the door after she left the room. His next proceeding was to dig a hole in a flower-pot on the window and empty the rest of the gruel in it. Then he took from a shelf a small box and, drawing a key from his pocket, threw back the lid. Inside were several photographs, all of women. He turned them out to find a pencil sketch at the bottom. A young girl sat in the centre of a clearing among prairie grass, her hands crossed, her face turned up to the sky. At a little distance stood a man watching her. The girl was the young wife next door, the man was himself,--Bernal Huntington, former worldling, now a humble minister of the gospel. "Little Derrice," he murmured, and he put the sketch back in the box and replaced it on the shelf. As he did so, his eyes fell on a framed crucifixion on the wall. His expression altered again, and ejaculating, "God be merciful to me, a sinner!" he fell on his knees and sank into a paroxysm of prayer. CHAPTER V. A PASTORAL VISIT. Justin Mercer's former monotonous life was at an end. With a faint red spot on either cheek, and with much internal diversion, he sat at the breakfast-table the next morning watching his wife. At first she would eat nothing. Her disdainful glance played over the porridge dish, the slices of cold meat, and the cold bread and cheese that were all the table contained, and she successively refused every one of them. Then, just as he was deliberating what to do, Captain White came to the rescue. "I'll toast you a slice of bread, miss," and, suiting the action to the word, he sprang at the loaf like a benevolent tiger, and hastily cutting a slice rushed to the fire with it, suspended on one of Mrs. Prymmer's best silver forks. That lady surveyed him in speechless indignation while he nicely browned the bread, buttered it, and handed it to the girl who, thanking him by a smile, sat eating it with her gaze riveted on him. He, with eyes twinkling phosphorescently, demurely finished his porridge, and held out his saucer for more, that was reprovingly bestowed on him by Mrs. Prymmer.