strait, and his whole soul was bent on getting out of it. He did not want to face it, to make the best of it, to calculate that Willie might, by that time, be able to help, or even that Mr. Morrison was a considerate man, and the heir a minor, and that he would be allowed time, which was his wife’s simple conception of the situation. He wanted to get out of it. His spirit shrank from the bondage that would be involved in getting that money together, in the scraping and sparing for years, the burden it would be on his shoulders. A thirst, a fury had seized him to get rid of it, to shake it off. And even the fact that the Bible opened at that passage had its effect on his disturbed mind. He would have reproved you seriously for trying any _sortes_ with the Bible, but in his trouble he did this, as well as so many other things of which he disapproved. He knew very well also that he had opened at that passage very often during the past week, and that it was simple enough that it should open in the same place now. Yet, with instinctive superstition he took the book, holding it in his two hands to open as it would, and his heart gave a jump when he found this strike his eyes: “Sit down quickly, and take thy bill, and write fourscore.” These were the words, like a command out of heaven. What if that was not the inner meaning, the sense of the parable? Yet, these were the words, and the Bible opened upon them, and they were the first words that caught his eye. Suppose that this temptation had come to another man, how clearly would its fallacy have been exposed, what daylight would have been thrown upon the text by the minister? He would have almost laughed at, even while he condemned and pitied, the futile state of mind which could be so led astray. And he knew all that, but it had no effect upon the workings of his own distracted mind at that dreadful moment. He went over it again and again, reading it over aloud as he had done on the first occasion when it had flashed upon his troubled soul, and seemed to give him an occult and personal message. And thus he remained all the rest of the afternoon, with his knees close to the bars of the grate, and his white, thin hands blanched with cold. Surely he had caught a chill, as so many people do in the cold and depression of a funeral. He rather caught at that idea. It might kill, which would be no great harm; or, at least, if he had caught a bad cold, it would, at least, postpone the interview he dreaded--the interview in which he would sit down and take his bill and write fifty--or perhaps fourscore. “I think I have caught a chill,” he said, in more cheerful tones, when he went down-stairs to supper.