At last Bruce, who had repeatedly glanced at his watch, saw that it was time to call up the servants for prayers. They came in answer to the summons of the bell which he rang--the three new members of the household looking awkward and shy, being evidently unaccustomed to be present at family worship. Bruce read the prayers, as was his custom whenever his father was absent from home. But there was a coldness, on that night, even in the family devotions, of which no one was more sensible than was he who had to conduct them. It was not because the room felt dreary and cold, nor because a death-bed scene had so lately occurred in the house, that a chilling damp fell over even the observance of a religious duty: Bruce, Vibert, and their sister had all on that day been overcome by their several besetting sins, and those sins were haunting them still. Pride, selfishness, and mistrust cast deeper shadows on the pathway of life than those merely external circumstances which we connect with ideas of gloom. The spirit of Bruce was out of tune, and the noblest words of prayer were, as it were, turned into discord by the imperfection of the human instrument that gave them sound. The leaven of hypocrisy marred petitions in which the heart had no share. Bruce had to ask for the grace of meekness, whilst he was inwardly scorning a sister for weakness and a brother for folly. Had he been struggling to subdue the pride of his heart, such a prayer would have been a cry for help from above; but Bruce was attempting no such struggle. He was not seeking to imitate One who was meek and lowly; the sinner on his knees was preferring a prayer for a grace which he did not care to possess. If a remembrance of his uncle's warning against pride had passed through Bruce's mind on that evening, it had roused anger rather than contrition. "What is Captain Arrows, that he should probe the hearts of others; let him look to his own!" Thus the high-principled young man, who was so ready to act or to suffer for what he deemed the cause of truth; he whose character was in human sight almost without a blemish, was in a state in which, according to Scripture, all his faith, knowledge, and zeal could profit him nothing. Death, if death had met him now, would not have found Bruce with his face turned heavenwards, though he had long since, with sincerity of purpose, entered on the pilgrim's narrow path. He stood condemned by the solemn words of inspiration, _If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His_. Emmie noticed with pain, after family prayers were over, that her brothers went to their respective apartments without so much as bidding each other good-night. CHAPTER XI. EVENING AND MORNING.