As these lines were being written, Miss Littleton came into the office with a notice for the Missionary Society. She has been teaching school in town for thirty years and is not so cheerful as she was once. For a long time the board has considered dismissing her; but it continues to change her around from building to building and from room to room, and to keep her out of sheer pity; and she knows it. There is tragedy enough in her story to fill a book. Yet she looks as humdrum as you please, and smiles so gaily as she puts down her notice, that one thinks perhaps she is trying to dispel the impression that she is cross and impatient with children. On the other side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and when he sees a man, Silas thinks only of the evil that man has done. Silas knows all men's weaknesses, forgets their strength, and looking down from the window hates his fellow-creatures for the wrong they have done him, or the wickedness that he knows of them. He has never given our reporters a kindly item of news since he was turned down, but if there is a discreditable story on any citizen going around we hear it first from Silas, and if we do not print it he says we have taken hush money. If we have to print it, he says we are stirring up strife. Seeing him over there, looking down on the town which to him is accursed, we have often thought how weary God must be looking at the world and knowing so much better than Silas the weakness and iniquity of men. Sometimes we have wondered if sin is really as important as Silas thinks it is, for with Silas sin is a blot that effaces a man's soul. But maybe God sees sin only as a blemish that men may overcome. Perhaps God is not so discouraged with us as Silas is. But life is a puzzle at most. [Illustration: Counting the liars and scoundrels and double-dealers and villains who pass]