"O, what are all my sufferings here If, Lord, thou count me meet With that enraptured host to appear And worship at thy feet! Give joy or grief, give ease or pain, Take life or friends away, But let me find them all again In that eternal day." Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had ceased to sing. He was painfully endeavoring to imagine how he would be received at home and at Captain Lumsden's. At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter twilight, trying to keep her heart from fainting entirely. The story of Morton's losses at cards had quickly reached the settlement--with the easy addition that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor, and had carried off the horse and gun which another had won from him in gambling. This last, the mother steadily refused to believe. It could not be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses of his youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal brother, Lewis. For Morton was such a boy as Lewis had never been, and the thought of his deserting his home and falling finally into bad practices, had brought to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to heart-break. Job Goodwin had abandoned all work and taken to his congenial employment of sighing and croaking in the chimney-corner, building innumerable Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair. Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend. "I am sure, Mrs. Goodwin," she said, "Morton will yet be saved; I have been enabled to pray for him with faith." In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not help thinking that it was very inconsistent for an Arminian to believe that God would convert a man in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he pleased. Willing, however, to lay the blame of her misfortune on anybody but Morton, she said, half peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had never come to the settlement. Morton had been in a hopeful state of mind, and they had driven him to wickedness. Otherwise he would doubtless have been a Christian by this time. And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought--but did not say--that it was most absurd for Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having driven Morton away from salvation, since, according to her Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he were elected. It is so easy to be inconsistent when we try to reason about God's relation to his creatures; and so easy to see absurdity in any creed but our own! The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable now to endure the darkness, lit her candle. Then there was a knock at the door. Ever since Sunday the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had turned pale at every sound of footsteps without. Now she called out, "Come in!" in a broken voice, and Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed his school.