Produced by Katherine Ward, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) PLAYING WITH FIRE BY AMELIA E. BARR AUTHOR OF "ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE," "THE BOW OF ORANGE RIBBON," ETC. "<i>Truth is like water; the moment it stands it stagnates; creeds are merely stagnant truth._" ILLUSTRATED BY HOWARD HEATH WILLIAM BRIGGS TORONTO 1914 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America WITH SINCERE RESPECT AND EVERY GOOD WISH I INSCRIBE THIS NOVEL TO WILLIAM JOHN MATHESON, ESQ. OF HUNTINGTON, LONG ISLAND [Illustration: "'Good-bye, Richard!' she cried. 'Good-bye, dearest of all!'"] CONTENTS I. THE MINISTER'S FAMILY II. LORD RICHARD CRAMER III. DONALD PLEASES HIS FATHER IV. THE GREAT TEMPTATION V. THE MINISTER IN LOVE VI. DONALD TAKES HIS OWN WAY VII. MARION DECIDES VIII. MACRAE LEARNS A HARD LESSON IX. WHEN WILL THE NIGHT BE PAST? X. A DREAM XI. LOVE IS THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW XII. AFTERWARD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "'Good-bye, Richard!' she cried. 'Good-bye, dearest of all!'" "There came again to her that singular sense of a past familiarity" "She smiled and laid her jeweled white hand confidingly on his" "The descent seemed steep and dark" PLAYING WITH FIRE CHAPTER I THE MINISTER'S FAMILY An high priest clothed with doctrine and with truth.--ESDRAS I: 5:40. Glasgow is the city of Human Power. It is not a beautiful city, but the gray granite of which it is built gives it a natural nobility. There is nothing romantic about its situation, and its streets are too often steeped in wet, gray mist, or wrapped in yellowish vapor. But there are no loungers in them. The crowd is a busy, hard-working crowd, whose civic motto is Enterprise and Perseverance. They made the river that made the city, and then established on its banks those immense shipbuilding yards, whose fleets take the river to the ocean, and the ocean to every known port of the world.