"Ring for night prayers then in five minutes, will you?" said Mr. Brewer. And Father Daniels, saying "Yes," walked on through the hall, and up the great stair-case to his own room and the chapel, which, were side by side. In five minutes the chapel bell was rung by the priest. Mrs. Brewer looked toward her daughter. "Mary must do as she likes;" said Mr. Brewer, in his open honest way driving his wife before him out of the room. There stood Horace Erskine. It was as if all in a moment the time for the great choice had come. They were at the door--the girl stood still. They were gone, they were crossing the hall; she could hear Mr. Brewer's shoes on the carpet--not too late for her to follow. Her light step will catch theirs--they may go a little further still before the very last moment comes. Her mother or Horace? How dearly she loved her mother, how her child's heart went after her, all trust and love--and Horace, _did_ she love him?--love him well enough to stay _there--there_ and _then_, at a moment that would weigh so very heavily in the scale of good and evil, right or wrong? If he had not been there she might have stayed, if she stayed now that he was there, should she not stay with him--more, leave her mother and stay with him? Thought is quick. She stood by the table; she looked toward the door, she listened--Horace held out his hand--"With me, Mary--with _me_!" And she was gone. Gone even while he spoke, across the hall, up the stairs and at that chapel door just as this last of the servants, without knowing, closed it on her. Then Mary went to her own room just at the head of the great stair-case, and opened the doors softly, and knelt down, keeping it open, letting the stair-case lamp stray into the darkness just enough to show her where she was. There she knelt till the night prayers were over, and when Mr. Brewer passed her door, she came out, a little glad to show them that she had not been staying down stairs with Horace. He smiled, and put his hand inside her arm and stopped her from going down. "My dear child," he said, "I have had the great blessing of my life given to me in the conversion of your mother. If God's great grace, for the sake of his own blessed mother, should fall on you, you will not quench it, my darling. Meanwhile, I shall never have a better time than _this_ time to say, that I feel more than ever a father to you. That if you will go on treating me with the childlike candor and trust that I have loved to see in you, you will make me happier than you can ever guess at, dear child." And then he kissed her, and Minnie eased her heart by a few sobs and tears, and her head rested on his shoulder, and she thanked him for his love. Then Father Daniels came out of the chapel, and advanced to where they stood. Mary had long known the holy man. He saw how it was in an instant. "Welcome home, Mary; you see I come soon. And now--when I am saying mass to-morrow,