"Thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men--In Thy wisdom Thou hast seen fit to visit him with trouble--" Wisdom! Thy wisdom. Brenton's mind lingered on the words, even after his tongue had passed on to the closing phrases of the prayer. Thy wisdom? Yes. But what especial wisdom, what ineffable and divine purpose lay behind the swift blow which had knocked into prostrate helplessness a man such as Reed Opdyke? Was it quite honest and above-board for him himself, Scott Brenton, to kneel there in the chancel, praying aloud and fervently for the sanctification of a Fatherly correction to him whose life, from all accounts, had held no flagrant germ of error? And what especial sanctification was there, beyond shutting one's teeth and taking it quite pluckily and as it came? Above the open book, Scott Brenton's eyes, wide open and very lustrous, were looking past the bounding walls before him, seeing the brave smile that Reed Opdyke had sent after him by way of parting. Brenton's voice, meanwhile, always flexible and resonant, was throbbing with thoughts which had no possible relation with the words now falling from his tongue,-- "Fulfil the desires--as may be most expedient for them." He recalled his mind to the words he uttered, recalled it with a jerk. Was it expedient for Reed Opdyke to be overthrown and laid aside more or less indefinitely, just as he was about touching the fulness of professional success? Who ordained what was expedient, anyway? Providence? And then, in the hush that followed after the benediction, there came into Brenton's ears the echo of Reed's voice, gay and indomitable rather by force of will than from conviction. "No," he had said to Brenton, midway in their conversation of the day before. "No; it's not a chastisement of Providence. I have too much respect for Providence to lay off on it the result of some infernal fool's careless use of explosives. Providence, as a rule, doesn't go out gunning with black powder. Its ways are more ineffable than that." And yet, if not Providence, or its equivalent, Scott Brenton asked himself above his clasped hands, then what? CHAPTER FOURTEEN