"Then," said the minister's wife, rising suddenly and speaking with a mock seriousness that her husband fully understood, "I don't see why you called me up here to decide what you had evidently settled before you called me. Do you consider that fair treatment, sir? It will serve you right if those biscuits I put in the oven when you called me are fallen as completely as Babylon. And I will make you eat half a dozen of them, sir, to punish you. We cannot afford to waste anything these times." "What," cried Philip, slyly, "not on $2,000 a year! But I'll eat the biscuits. They can't possibly be any worse than those we had a week after we were married--the ones we bought from the bakery, you remember," Philip added, hastily. "You saved yourself just in time, then," replied the minister's wife. She came close up to the desk and in a different tone, said, "Philip, you know I believe in you, don't you?" "Yes," said Philip simply; "I am sure you do. I am impulsive and impractical, but heart and soul, and body and mind, I simply want to do the will of God. Is it not so?" "I know it is," she said, "and if you go to Milton it will be because you want to do His will more than to please yourself." "Yes. Then shall I answer the letter to-night?" "Yes, if you have decided, with my help, of course." "Of course, you foolish creature, you know I could not settle it without you. And as for the biscuits--" "As for the biscuits," said the minister's wife, "they will be settled without me, too, if I don't go down and see to them." She hurried downstairs and Philip Strong, with a smile and a sigh, took up his pen and wrote replies to the two calls he had received, refusing the call to Elmdale and accepting the one to Milton. And so the strange story of a great-hearted man really began. When he had finished writing these two letters, he wrote another, which throws so much light on his character and his purpose in going to Milton, that we will insert that in this story, as being necessary to its full understanding. This is the letter:--