But all things must end, and the case was at last decided in favor of Mr. Gray's client. As Rachel congratulated him on his victory, he said, with a look that brought the color to her face: "How long must I stay in Doubting Castle, Rachel?" "Why, dear me," she answered, saucily, "I did not think a promising young lawyer, as father calls you, ever got into such a dismal place!" Then Susy came in, and the young man bade her good-by, but he whispered promise of speedy return to Rachel, and as he travelled homeward those wonderful eyes of hers seemed to haunt him. "Who would have thought," he said to himself, "she could have become such a woman? No wonder I could not find a girl to suit me when she has been my ideal." You see, he was trying to persuade himself he had thought of her ever since that term of school; and it may be, unknown to himself, those eyes had held him. At any rate, he says they did; and when, time after time, they drew him back to Stillman's, he at last made Rachel believe it, and with the little key of promise she delivered him from Doubting Castle. Let us take one more look, two years later, at the Stillman homestead. There is a family gathering, and all the girls are present--Martha and Margaret, with their sturdy boys and rosy girls; Rachel, with her baby; and Susy, a gay young aunt, flits to and fro, playing with and teasing the little ones. Elizabeth, with unwonted brightness in her eyes, looks on, enjoying the merriment. "Doesn't it seem odd," whispers Margaret, "that Lizzie's minister should come back after all these years." "Yes," answers Rachel, in the same low tone. "I am so glad. She seems so happy." The husbands are all present in the evening, and the old house is full of light and gayety. Rachel slips upstairs to put baby to bed; and as she sits in the room where so many miserable hours of her childhood were spent, her tears fall, thinking of herself and the dear, patient mother, who had suffered and died; and the old bitterness rises in her heart. Baby stirs and she hushes him, then lays him gently in the old cradle, and goes downstairs. Some impulse prompts her to enter the sitting-room instead of the parlor, where she thinks the family are all gathered. As she opens the door she sees her father sitting, as of old, by the table on which the lamp is burning, and she half turns to go out; but something in his attitude touches her. He is not reading, for the newspaper lies untouched--he is looking at something in his hand. She notices how gray his hair is, and how age is tracing lines on his face. "Are you feeling sick, father?" she asks. "Oh, no," he says. "Look here, Rachel;" and he hands her a faded daguerreotype of her mother taken when she was a fair young bride. "I was thinking about her." "How much like Susy," she said, with tears falling on the lovely face.