few gray hairs straggling sadly about on his smooth crown: and that old
man used often and often to drone out in a cracked voice and in a tune
pitched too low by half an octave the very words which had just been
repeated in Marion's hearing. What of all that? Why, that little gloomy
kitchen was Marion's memory of home; that old, tired man was her father,
and he used to sing those words while his hand wandered tenderly through
the curls of her brown head, and patted softly the white forehead over
which they fell; and all of love that there was in life, all that the
word "tenderness" meant, all that was dear, or sweet or to be
reverenced, was embodied in that one memory to Marion. Now you
understand the flashing eyes. She did not believe it at all; she
believed, or thought she did, that the "broad" and "narrow" roads were
all nonsense; that go where you would, or do what you would, all the
roads led to _death_; and that was the end. But the father who had
quavered through those lines so many times had staked his hopes forever
on that belief, and the assurance of it had clothed his face in a grand
smile as he lay dying--a smile that she liked to think of, that she did
not like to hear ridiculed, and to her excited imagination Dr. Eggleston
seemed to be ridiculing the faith on which the hymn was built. "They
are more thorough hypocrites than I supposed," she said, in scorn, and
hardly in undertone, in answer to Eurie's inquiring look. "I don't
believe the stuff myself, but I always supposed the ministers did. I
gave some of them at least credit for sincerity, but it seems it is
nothing but a fable to be laughed to scorn."

"Why, Marion!" Eurie said, and her look expressed surprise and dismay.
"He is not making fun of religion, you know; he is simply referring to
the inappropriateness of such hymns for children."

"What is so glaringly inappropriate about it if they really believe the