"And some one else will be sure to wish as you do. Only there may be a wisdom in waiting. Faithie--I have never told you yet--will you be frightened if I tell you now--that I am not a poor man, as the world counts poverty? My friend, of whom you know, in those terrible days of the commencing pestilence, having only his daughter and myself to care for, made his will; in provision against whatever might befall them there. By that will--through the fearful sorrow that made it effective--I came into possession of a large property. Your little inheritance, Faithie, goes into your own little purse for private expenditures or charities. But for the present, as it seems to me, Glory has ample means for all that it is well for her to undertake. By and by, as she gains in years and in experience, you will have it in your power to enlarge her field of good. 'Miss Henderson's Home' may grow into a wider benefit than even she, herself, foresaw." Faith was not frightened. These were not the riches that could make her tremble with a dread lest earth should too fully satisfy. This was only a promise of new power to work with; a guarantee that God was not leaving her merely to care for and to rest in a good that must needs be all her own. "We shall find plenty to do, Faithie!" Mr. Armstrong repeated; and he held her hand in his with a strong pressure that told how the thought of that work to come, and her sweet and entire association in it, leaped along his pulses with a living joy. Faith caught it; and all fear was gone. She could not shrink from the great blessedness that was laid upon her, any more than Nature could refuse to wear her coronation robes, that trailed their radiance in this path they trod. Life held them in a divine harmony. The October sun, that mantled them with warmth and glory; the Indian summer, that transfigured earth about them; all tints--all redolence--all broad beatitude of globe and sky--were none too much to breathe out and make palpable the glad and holy auspice of the hour. * * * * * Mr. Gartney had gradually relinquished his half-formed thought of San Francisco. Already the unsettled and threatening condition of affairs in the country had begun to make men feel that the time was not one for new schemes or adventurous changes. Somehow, the great wheels, mercantile and political, had slipped out of their old grooves, and went laboring, as it were, roughly and at random, with fierce clattering and jolting, quite off the ordinary track; so that none could say whether they should finally regain it, and roll smoothly forward, as in the prosperous and peaceful days of the past, or should bear suddenly and irretrievably down to some horrible, unknown crash and ruin. Henderson Gartney, however, was too restless a man to wait, with entire passiveness, the possible turn and issue of things.