"Excellent advice! Take care that he follows it," cried they, tauntingly, as my father shut-to the door. I was burning with rage; Madeleine was in tears; the children, with scared looks, were gathered round my mother. My father, with gentle force, drew me into the little circle, and made me sit down beside him. "My children," said he, "we have been warned that evil times are coming, and this may be the beginning. If it prove otherwise, we shall have the more reason to praise the Lord; but if it please Him to try and to prove us, let us not be found unprepared. Our strength lies in prayer, in not giving offence, and in not being easily offended." "We gave no offence, father," said I. "But you were too easily offended. If any one had cause of complaint, it was I; but I do not take it up." My mother was meanwhile bathing his cut cheek and applying a plaster. "Sure, it would make any son's blood boil, to see his father hit!" cried I; and I saw that Madeleine sympathized with me. "Why, then, let his blood cool again," said my father, jocularly. "Tush, many a school-boy gets a worse hurt than this, and makes no moan. There! your mother has made all right, and I feel no smart. Let us say no more about it." I thought he strikingly acted on our Lord's axiom of "If thine enemy smite thee on the one cheek, offer him the other," but could not just then enter into it. I longed to give those rascals a good beating. "Now, then, I'll set the tune again," said I, affecting composure. But, "No, no," said the girls simultaneously; and "No, no," said my dear mother. "Don't you see," she continued, "I have all this broken glass to pick up? If you will do me a real kindness, you will step round to the glazier, the first thing in the morning, and get him to mend the window before breakfast." "I'll go at once," said I; but "No, no," was again the word. My father laid his hand firmly on my right arm, and Madeleine hers on my left. Though her touch was as light as a snow-flake, I would not have shaken it off for the world. "The streets are unquiet to-night," said my father, "and I mean no one to go forth till the girls return home, when we will see them safely to their door; going out the back way." So we spent the next hour in a sober, subdued manner. Madeleine shyly let me steal her hand and hold it some minutes, as though she knew it would calm me. And so it did; there was much sweetness in that hour, after all. At length it was time to see them home; my mother kissed and blessed them as if they were going further than into the next street. We went out the back way, my father taking Gabrielle and I Madeleine, and we met with no evil by the way. Being rather high-wrought, I would willingly have faced a little danger for Madeleine's sake.