wick. You are under some mistake. I know nothing about medicine."

"I did n't suppose you did," said the doctor with a smile. "But are you not what they call a Christian Scientist ? "

"I? I hate what they call Christian Science. It seems to me a lot of nonsense that nobody can comprehend. I suppose it's an honest delusion on the part of some people and a mixture of mistake and imposture on the part

of others."

"You have made a pretty good diagnosis, if you are not a physician," said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a remark that skilfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery. "But, Miss Callender,- I beg your pardon for saying it, people call you a faith-doctor." "Yes; I know," said Phillida, compressing her lips.

"Did you not treat this Schulenberg girl as a faith-healer?"

"I prayed for her as a friend," said Phillida, "and encouraged her to believe that she might be healed if she could exercise faith. She did get much better."

"I know, I know," said the doctor in an offhand way; "a well-known result of strong belief in cases of nerve disease. But, pardon me, you have had other cases that I have heard of. Now don't you think that the practice of faith-healing for-for-compensation makes you a practitioner ?"

"For compensation ?" said Phillida, with a slight gesture of impatience. "Who told you that I took money?

It was the doctor's turn to be confounded. "I declare, I don't know. Don't you take pay, though ?"

"Not a cent have I ever taken directly or indirectly." Phillida's already overstrained sensitiveness on this subject now broke forth into something like anger. "I would not accept money for such a service for the world," she said. "In making such an unwarranted presumption you have done me great wrong. I am a Sunday-school teacher and mission worker. Such services are not usually paid for, and such an assumption on your part is unjustifiable. If you had only informed yourself better, Dr. Beswick-'

"I am very sorry," broke in the doctor. "I did n't mean to be offensive. I-"

"Indeed, Miss Callender," said Mrs. Beswick, speaking in a pleasant, full voice and with an accent that marked her as not a New Yorker, "he did n't mean to be disrespectful. The doctor is a gentleman; he could n't be disrespectful to a lady intentionally. He did n't know anything but just what folks say, and

they speak of you as the faith-doctor and the woman doctor, you see. You must forgive the mistake."

This pleading of a wife in defense of her husband touched a chord in Phillida and excited an emotion she could not define. There was that in her own heart which answered to this conjugal championship. She could have envied Mrs. Beswick her poverty with her right to defend the man she loved. She felt an increasing interest in the quiet, broad-faced, wholesomelooking woman, and she answered:

"I know, Mrs. Beswick, your husband is not so much to blame. I spoke too hastily. I am a little too sensitive on that point. I don't pretend to like to be talked about and called a faith-doctor."

There was an awkward pause, which the doctor broke by saying presently in a subdued voice:

"In regard to your perfectly proper question, Miss Callender, I will say that the Schulenberg young woman has acute pulmonary tuberculosis."

"Which means?" queried Phillida, contracting her brows.

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"What people call galloping consumption," said the doctor. Now, I can't help saying, Miss Callender," the doctor's habitual selfcontentment regained sway in his voice and manner,-"that this particular sort of consumption is one of the things that neither medicine nor faith was ever known to heal since the world was made. This young woman's lungs are full of miliary tubercles-little round bodies the size of a millet seed. The tissues are partly destroyed already. You might as well try to make an amputated leg grow on again by medicine or by prayer as to try to reconstruct her lungs by similar means. She has got to die, and I left her only some soothing medicine, and told her mother there was no use of making a doctor's bill."

There was a straightforward rectitude in Dr. Beswick that inclined Phillida to forgive his bluntness of utterance and lack of manner. Here at least was no managing of a patient to get money, after the manner hinted at by Miss Bowyer. The distinction between diseases that might and those that might not be cured or mitigated by a faith-process, which Phillida detected in the doctor's words, quickened again the doubts which had begun to assail her regarding the soundness of the belief on which she had been acting, and awakened a desire to hear more. She wanted to ask him about it, but sensitiveness regarding her private affairs made her shrink. In another moment she had reflected that it would be better to hear what was to be said on this subject from a stranger than from one who knew her. The natural honesty

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and courage of her nature impelled her to submit further to Dr. Beswick's rather blunt knife. "You seem to think that some diseases are curable by faith and some not, Dr. Beswick," she said.

"Certainly," said Beswick, tipping his chair back and drumming on the table softly with his fingers. "We use faith-cure and mind-cure in certain diseases of the nerves. Nothing could have been better for that Schulenberg girl than for you to make her believe she could walk. I should have tried that dodge myself, but in a different way, if I had been called."

"Don't speak in that way, dear," interposed Mrs. Beswick, softly, seeing that Phillida was pained.

"Why, what's the matter with that way?" said the doctor, good-naturedly.

"Well, Miss Callender will think you are not honest if you talk about trying a dodge. Besides, I'm sure Miss Callender is n't the kind of person that would say what she did n't believe. It was no dodge with her."

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No; of course not," said the doctor. "I did n't mean that."

"You do not admit any divine agency in the matter, doctor?" asked Phillida.

"How can we? The starting-point of that poor girl's galloping consumption, according to the highest medical opinion of our time, is a little organism called a bacillus. These bacilli are so small that ten thousand of them laid in a row lengthwise would only measure an inch. They multiply with great rapidity, and as yet we cannot destroy them without destroying the patient. You might just as well go to praying that the weeds should be exterminated in your garden, or try to clear the Schulenberg tenement of croton bugs by faith, as to try to heal that young woman in that way. Did you ever look into the throat of a diphtheria patient ?" No," said Phillida.

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"Well, you can plainly see little white patches of false membrane there. By examining this membrane we have come to know the very species that does the mischief—the micrococcus diphtheriticus."

The conversation was naturally a little disagreeable to Phillida, who now rose to depart without making reply. She went over and shook hands with Mrs. Beswick, partly from an instinctive kindness, judging from her speech that she was a stranger in New York. Besides she felt strongly drawn to this simple and loyalhearted woman.

"If you'd like to come to the mission, Mrs. Beswick," she said, "I 'd take pleasure in introducing you. You'd find good friends among the people there and good work to do. The mission people are not all faith-healers like me.” "Oh, now, I'd like them better if they were

like you, Miss Callender. I think I'd like to go. I could n't do much; I have to do my own work; the doctor's practice is growing, but he has n't been here long, you know. But I think I might go "-this with a look of inquiry at her husband.

"Why not?" said Dr. Beswick. He could not help seeing that the association of his wife with the mission might serve to extend his practice, and that even Mrs. Beswick must grow tired after a while of conversations with him alone, sugared though they were.

When Phillida had gone the doctor's wife said to her husband that she never had seen a nicer lady than that Miss Callender. "I just love her," she declared, "if she does believe in faith-healing."

"Ah, well, what I said to her will have its effect," he replied, with suppressed exultation. "You said just the right thing, my love. You 'most always do. But I was afraid you would hurt her feelings a little. She does n't seem very happy."

XXIX.

MILLARD AND RUDOLPH.

RUDOLPH, Coming home from work early on the next Saturday afternoon, saw Millard approaching from the other direction. With that appetite for sympathy which the first dash of sorrow is pretty sure to bring, the young man felt an impulse to accost the person who had thought enough of his sister's sufferings to give her a wheel-chair.

"Mr. Millard!"

"Oh, yes; you are Wilhelmina Schulenberg's brother," scrutinizing the young man. "And how is your sister now?"

Rudolph shook his head gloomily. "She cannot live many days already; she will be dying purty soon."

"What? Sick again? Then Miss Callender's cure did not last."

"Ah, yes; her back it is all right. But you see maybe praying is not strong for such sickness as she has now. It is quick consumption." "Poor child!" said Millard.

"She has been very unlucky," said Rudolph. "We are all very unlucky. My father he died when I was little, and my mother she had to work hard, and I soon had also to work. And then Wilhelmina she got sick, and it gave mother trouble."

"Has Miss Callender seen your sister?" "Yes; she did not tell you already?" queried Rudolph.

"I have not seen her for a long time," said Millard.

"Oh!" exclaimed Rudolph, and went no farther.

“Did she — did she not try to make your sister well?"

"Yes; but believing is all good enough for the back, but it is no good when you 're real sick insides. You see it is consumption."

"Yes; I see," said Millard. A rush of feeling came over him. He remembered Mina Schulenberg as she sat that day about a year ago -the day of his engagement- near the bust of Beethoven in the park. She had been the beginning and in some sense she had been the ending of his engagement. Millard walked away from Rudolph in a preoccupied way. Suddenly he turned and called after him:

"I say Schulenberg!"

The young man faced about and came back. Millard said to him in a low voice and with feeling: "Will you let me know if your sister dies? Come straight to me. Don't say any thing about it, but maybe I can show myself a friend in some way. Here's my address at home, and between nine and three I'm at the Bank of Manhadoes."

Rudolph said yes, and tried to thank him, but Millard strode away, his mind reverting to the poor girl whose now fast-withering life seemed to have some occult relation to his own, and thinking, too, of Phillida's unfaltering ministrations. What mistakes and delusions could not be forgiven to one so unwearyingly good? Why did he not share her reproach with her, and leave her to learn by time and hard experience? Such thoughts stung him sorely. And this death, under her very hand, of the Schulenberg girl must be a sore trial. Would she learn from failure? Or would she resolutely pursue her course?

Millard was not a man to lament the inevitable. Once he and Phillida had broken, he had set out to be what he had been before. But who shall cause the shadow to go backward upon the dial of Ahaz? When was a human being ever the same after a capital passion that he had been before? Millard had endeavored to dissipate his thoughts in society and at places of amusement, only to discover that he could not revolve again in the orbit from which he had been diverted by the attraction of Phillida. Business, in so far as it engrossed his thoughts, had produced a temporary forgetfulness, and of business he now had a great deal. Farnsworth, who had contrived to give everybody connected with the Bank of Manhadoes more uneasiness than one could reasonably expect from a man whose vitality was so seriously impaired, died about this time, just when those who knew him best had concluded that he was to be exempted from the common lot. He died greatly regretted by all who had known him, and particularly by those who had been associated with him in the conduct of the bank from

its foundation. So ran the words of the obituary resolutions drafted by Masters, adopted by the Board of Directors of the bank, printed in all the newspapers, and engrossed for the benefit of his widow and his posterity. Posterity indeed gets more out of such resolutions than contemporaries, for posterity is able to accept them in a more literal sense. Hilbrough's ascendency in the bank, and his appreciation of Millard, in spite of the latter's symmetrical way of parting his hair, the stylish cut he gave his beard, and the equipoise with which he bore his slender cane, procured the latter's promotion to the vacant cashiership without visible opposition. Meadows would have liked to oppose, but he found powerful motives to the contrary; for Meadows himself was more and more disliked by members of the board, and his remaining there depended now on the goodwill of Hilbrough. He therefore affected to be the chief advocate, and indeed the original proposer, of Millard for the place.

The advancement carried with it an increase of dignity, influence, and salary, which was rather gratifying to a man at Millard's time of life. It would have proved a great addition to his happiness if he could only have gone to Phillida and received her congratulations and based a settlement of his domestic affairs upon his new circumstances. He did plan to take a larger apartment next year and to live in a little better style, perhaps also to keep horses; but the prospect was not interesting.

While he sat one evening debating such things the electric bell of his apartment was rung by the conductor of the freight-elevator, who came to say that there was a German man in the basement inquiring for Mr. Millard. His name was Schulenberg. Rudolph had come in by the main entrance, but the clerk, seeing that he was a workingman, had spoken to him with that princely severity which in a democratic country few but hotel and house clerks know how to affect, and had sent him packing down-stairs, out of sight, where he could have no chance to lower the respectability of a house in which dwelt scores of people whose names were printed in the Social Register, they subscribing for the same at a good round price.

Rudolph had lost his way two or three times before he could find the entrance to the lift, but at the convenience of the elevator-man he was hoisted to Millard's floor. When he presented himself he looked frightened at being ushered into a place accessible only by means of so much ceremony and by ways so roundabout.

"Mr. Millard, my sister has just died. You told me to tell you already," he said, standing there and grasping his cap firmly as though it was the only old friend he had to help him out of the labyrinth.

"Just now. I came straight away." "Who is with your mother?

Philip's power, except perhaps the opportunity to spend his last available dollars on a rare book. He had of late been seeking a chance

Millard mused a minute, his vagrant thoughts running far away from Rudolph. Then recovering himself he said:

"Have you money enough for the funeral?" "I haf fifteen dollars, already, that I haf been puttin' in the Germania Spar Bank for such trouble. I had more as that, but we haf had bad luck. My uncle he will maybe lend me some more."

"What do you work at ?"

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Mostly odd jobs. I had a place in a lumber-yard, but the man he failed up already. I am hopin' that I shall get something more steady soon."

"It will be pretty hard for you to go in debt."

"Yes," with a rueful shrug. "But we 're unlucky. Poor folks 'mos' always is unlucky already."

"Well, now, you let me pay these expenses. Here's my card. Tell the undertaker to send his bill to me. He can come to the bank and inquire if he should think it not all right. But don't tell anybody about it."

"I thank you very much, very, very much, Mr. Millard; it will make my mother feel a leetle better. And I will pay you wheneffer I haf the good luck to get some money."

"Don't worry about that. Don't pay me till I ask you for it. Was Miss Callender with you when your sister died?"

"Yes. Óh, yes; she is better as anybody I effer see."

Millard said no more, and Rudolph thanked him again, put on his cap, and went out to try his luck at finding the door to the freight-elevator for a descent from this lofty height to the dark caves of the basement-vaulted caves with mazes of iron pipes of all sizes overhead, the narrow passages beset by busy porters bearing parcels and trunks, and by polyglot servants in dress-coats and white aprons running hither and thither with trays balanced on their finger-tips and mostly quite above replying to the questions of a bewildered intruder clad in trousers of well-worn brown denim.

XXX.

PHILLIDA AND PHILIP.

MRS. GOUVERNEUR concluded not to try her clever hand on Millard and Phillida again. Pessimistic Philip could no longer reproach her for having blasted his hopes, for he had a new chance if he chose to improve it. But to im

John Smith's "Generall Historie of Virginia," provided that he could find a copy with 1624 on the title-page. The 1626 was rare and almost, if not exactly, word for word the same as the 1624; but it would not do. For there were already several twenty-sixes in this country, and there was no fun in possessing a book that two or three other people could boast of having. When not busy with his books Philip was mostly crouched in an armchair in his library, or for a change crouched in an armchair at the Terrapin Club-in either case smoking and, as his mother believed, making profound reflections which might one day come to something. For how could a bright-minded man like Philip fail to bring forth something of value, seeing he bought expensive books and gave so much of his time to meditation?

That Phillida should be specially asked to dine at her aunt's was rather inevitable under the circumstances, and Mrs. Gouverneur saw to it that she came when Philip was at home and when there was no other company. This arrangement pleased Phillida; Uncle Gouverneur was dull enough, but Cousin Philip was always interesting in talk, and a good fellow, if he did spend his life in collecting books mostly of no particular value to anybody but a curiosity-hunter, and in poking good-natured fun at other people's cherished beliefs.

The meal was well-nigh finished when Philip said to his cousin who confronted him - there

were only four at the table:

"Phillida, I saw Mrs. Maginnis day before yesterday at Mrs. Benthuysen's. She is still sounding your praises as a faith-healer, but she confided to me that a pious girl and a minister's daughter ought not to be proud. She suggested that you did n't get that from your father. Her pride comes from the mother's side, they tell me,' she said. How 's that, Mr. Gouverneur ?' and she laughed at what she regarded a capital drive at me."

Phillida was not pleased at the mention of Mrs. Maginnis. Since the death of Wilhelmina, two weeks before, her mind had been disturbed as to the substantial value of faith-cures. Dr. Beswick's rationalism on the subject rose to trouble her. Happily she had not been sent for to visit any new cases, the death of Wilhelmina, her first notable example, having a little spoiled the charm of her success, as Dr. Beswick had foreseen. Doubt had made her cowardly, and there lurked in her mind a hope that she might no more be called upon to exercise her gift in the direction of faith-healing, and that she might