Elsie was not so sure that she could do nothing. She thought it highly probable, indeed, that she could do much. But how was she to do it, how signify to Frank that if he disturbed her father, he had nothing to hope from her? Besides, had he anything to hope from her in any circumstances? This was very uncertain to Elsie. She was willing to believe in her own power, and that she could, if she pleased, keep him from rousing up this question; but how to do it, to condescend to allow that her father would be affected by it one way or another? And even in case Frank yielded, as she held it certain he would, to an expression of her will on the subject, was she sure that she was ready to recompense him in the only way which he would desire? While she was thinking, Mrs. Buchanan, who was moving about the room putting by her work, and arranging everything for the night, suddenly sent forth an unintentional dart, which broke down all Elsie’s resolutions. “At the same time,” Mrs. Buchanan said, pursuing the tenor of the argument, as she had been, no doubt, carrying it on within herself, “I have always felt that I would like to do young Frank a good turn. Elsie, if it’s true they tell me, be you kind to poor Frank. That will make up to him for anything the rest of your family may have done against him. Fain, fain, would I pay him back his siller; but be you kind to him, Elsie, if the other is not to be.” CHAPTER XVII. THE POSITION OF ELSIE. Mrs. Buchanan was a woman of great sense, yet perhaps she never made use of a more effective argument than that with which she concluded the conversation of that evening. Elsie went up to her room full of thought. It had always been impressed upon her from her earliest consciousness that her father’s peace and comfort, his preservation from all unnecessary cares, from all noises and disturbing influence of every kind was one of the chiefest and most important duties of the family. It had been made the rule of her own childish conduct from the very beginning. “Oh, Miss Elsie, whatever you do, dinna make a noise, and disturb your papaw,” had been the entreaty of the nursery-maid as long as she could remember. And when she was old enough to understand a reason, her mother had explained to her how papa was occupied all day long in the service of God, and for the instruction of common folk not so learned or so wise as himself. “And I think it a great privilege to mind the house and mind the doors, so that none of these small things may trouble him,” her mother had said, “and you should be a proud lassie to think that you can be helpful in it, and do your part to keep everything quiet for the minister, that he may study the word of the Lord in peace.” In our days, it is possible that Elsie might have been inspired by the spirit of revolt, and considered her own comfort of as much importance as her father’s; but such a notion never entered her mind, and the preservation of perfect peace in that mysterious, yet so