inspired, and high hopes were entertained of the work which they somewhat prematurely concluded she was destined to do. Unfortunately Beth's fervent faith received a check at a critical time when it was highly important to have kept it well nourished--that is to say, when she was being prepared for confirmation. It happened when Miss Crow was hearing the girls their Scripture lesson one morning, the subject being the escape of the children of Israel from Egypt, and the destruction of Pharaoh's hosts in the Red Sea. "I know a man who says the whole of that account has been garbled," Beth remarked in a dreamy way, meaning Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, but not thinking much of what she was saying. Miss Crow nearly dropped the Bible, so greatly was she startled and shocked by the announcement. "Beth!" she exclaimed, directly the class was over and she could speak to Beth privately, "how could you be so wicked as to say that anything in Holy Scripture is a garbled account?" "I said I knew a man who said so," Beth answered, surprised that so simple a remark should have created such consternation. But Miss Crow saw in her attitude a dangerous tendency to scepticism, and expressed strong condemnation of any one who presumed to do other than accept Holy Writ in blind unquestioning faith. She talked to Beth with horror about the ungodly men who cast doubt on the unity of the Bible, called its geology in question, and even ventured to correct its chronology by the light of vain modern scientific discoveries; and Beth shocked her again by the questions she asked, and the intelligent interest she showed in the subject. She told Miss Crow that Count Gustav had also said that the Old Testament was bad religion and worse history, but she did not know that other people had thought so too. Whereupon Miss Crow went to Miss Clifford and reported Beth's attitude as something too serious for her to deal with alone, and Miss Clifford sent for Beth and talked to her long and earnestly. She told her that it was absurd for a girl of her age to call in question the teaching of the best and greatest men that ever lived, which somehow reminded Beth of the many mistakes made by the best and greatest men that ever lived, of their differences of opinion and undignified squabbles, the instances of one man discovering and suffering for a truth which the rest refused to accept, and the constant modification, alteration, and rejection by one generation of teaching which had been upheld by another with brutality and bloodshed,--instances of all of which were notorious enough even to be known at a girls' school. Beth said very little, however; but she determined to read the Bible through from beginning to end, and see for herself if she could detect any grounds for the mischief-making doubts and controversies she had been hearing about. She began in full faith, but was brought up short at the very outset by the discrepancy between the first and second chapters of