Little Dolly cried from a strange childish fear, because of the trouble in her father's voice. The pleading tones affected her, she knew not why. The boys felt a martial determination to stand by their father and a longing to fight for him. All felt as if something deep and dreadful must have happened, and after prayers Dolly climbed into her father's lap, and put both arms around his neck, and said: "Papa, there sha'n't anything hurt you. I'll defend you." She was somewhat abashed by the cheerful laugh which followed, but the Doctor kissed her and said: "So you shall, dear; be sure and not let anything catch me," and then he tossed her up in his arms gleefully, and she felt as if the trouble, whatever it was, could not be quite hopeless. But Dolly marveled in her own soul as she went to bed. She heard the boys without stint reviling the Democrats as the authors of all mischief; and yet Bessie Lewis's father was a Democrat, and he seemed a nice, cheery, good-natured man, who now and then gave her sticks of candy, and there was his mother, dear old Madame Lewis, who gave her the Christmas cookey. How could it be that such good people were Democrats? Poor Dolly hopelessly sighed over the mystery, but dared not ask questions. But the Rev. Mr. Coan rejoiced in the result of the election. Not that he was by any means friendly to the ideas of the Jacobinical party by whose help it had been carried; but because, as he said, it opened a future for the church--for he too had his idea of "The Church." Meanwhile the true church, invisible to human eyes--one in spirit, though separated by creeds--was praying and looking upward, in the heart of Puritan and Ritualist, in the heart of old Madame Lewis, of the new Church, and of old Mrs. Higgins, whose soul was with the old meeting-house; of all everywhere who with humble purpose and divine aspiration were praying: "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done." That kingdom was coming even then--for its coming is in safer hands than those on either side--and there came a time, years after, when Parson Cushing, looking back on that election and its consequences, could say with another distinguished Connecticut clergyman: "I suffered more than tongue can tell for the best thing that ever happened to old Connecticut." CHAPTER X. DOLLY'S PERPLEXITIES. Dolly went to bed that night, her little soul surging and boiling with conjecture. All day scraps of talk about the election had reached her ears; her nerves had been set vibrating by the tones of her father's prayer, some words of which yet rung in her ear--tones of passionate pleading whose purport she could scarcely comprehend. What was this dreadful thing that had happened or was going to happen? She heard her brother Will emphatically laying off the state of the case to Nabby in the kitchen, and declaring that "the Democrats were going to upset the whole State, for father said so."