his feet. He stood before his child like one whose hypocrisy had been
proclaimed from the housetop.

"Are you vexed with me, father?" said Dorothy sadly.

"No, my child," answered the minister, in a voice of unnatural
composure. "But you stand before me there like, the very thought started
out of my soul, alive and visible, to question its own origin."

"Ah, father!" cried Dorothy, "let us question our origin."

The minister never even heard the words.

"That very doubt, embodied there in my child, has, I now know, been
haunting me, dogging me behind, ever since I began to teach others," he
said, as if talking in his sleep. "Now it looks me in the face. Am I
myself to be a castaway?--Dorothy, I am _not_ sure of God--not as I am
sure of you, my darling."

He stood silent. His ear expected a low-voiced, sorrowful reply. He
started at the tone of gladness in which Dorothy cried--

"Then, father, there is henceforth no cloud between us, for we are in
the same cloud together! It does not divide us, it only brings us closer
to each other. Help me, father: I am trying hard to find God. At the
same time, I confess I would rather not find Him, than find Him such as
I have sometimes heard you represent Him."

"It may well be," returned her father--the _ex-cathedral_, the
professional tone had vanished utterly for the time, and he spoke with