Ruth laughed again, and shook her head. But she took her list and went away. She had no more that she wanted to say just then; but she felt that she had food for thought. "I may try it," she said, as she went out, holding up her list, "but I feel that I shall blunder, and do more harm than good." Dr. Dennis looked after her with a face on which there was no smile. "There goes one," he said to himself, "who thinks she is willing to be led, but, on the contrary, she wants to lead. She is saved, but not subdued. I wonder what means the great Master will have to use to lead her to rest in his hands, knowing no way but his?" [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV AN UNARMED SOLDIER. MANY things intervened to keep Ruth Erskine from having much to do with that list which her pastor had given her. She read it over indeed, and realized that she was not familiar with a single name. "What an idea it will be for me to go blundering through the city, hunting up people whom I shall not know when I find." This she said as she read it over; then she laid it aside, and made ready to go out to dinner with her father, to meet two judges and their wives and daughters who were stopping in town. During that day she thought many times of the sentences that had been read to her out of that plain-looking, much-worn Bible on Dr. Dennis' study-table. The only effect they had on her was to make her smile at the thought of the impossibility of anything like a religious conversation in such society as that! "How they would stare," she said to herself, "if I should ask them about a prayer-meeting! I have half a mind to try it. If father were not within hearing I would, just to see what these finished young ladies would say." But she did not try it; and the evening passed, as so many evenings had, without an attempt on her part to carry out any of the thoughts which troubled her. She looked forward to one bit of work which she expected to fall to her share, at least she liked to call it work. That card-party to which she had been invited; she would be expected to attend in company with Mr. Wayne; she meant to decline, and her father would be surprised and a trifle annoyed, for it was at a place where, not liking the people well enough himself to be social, he desired his daughter to atone for his deficiency. But she would steadily refuse. She did not shrink from this effort as Flossy did; on the contrary, she half enjoyed the thought of being a calm and composed martyr. But, quite to her discomfort, the martyrdom was not permitted; at least it took a different form. Mr. Wayne was obliged to be out of town, and sent profuse regrets, assuming that, of course, it would be a sore disappointment to her.