The cook retreated to the kitchen, there to announce that Grace Clear was the biggest blockhead for a Yankee that ever she heard of. Everybody that was not an Irishman or negro was a Yankee to . the cook. Grace Clear picked herself up with alacrity, and immediately returned to her watch. In noticing the girl, one would infer that she was impelled to; the watch by some urgent reason, so absorbed was she in the occupation. A second half-hour passed, and still no arrival. The dinner was spoiling in the Kroy kitchen, and the master of the mansion was spoiling his temper, pacing up and down the platform, and the Kroy horses were pawing impatiently at the stones of the street, making them cry out with the sound thereof. Still no train, and, what was yet more annoying, the wires of the telegraph line were down, and no news.

CHAPTER XVI.

Ox the same afternoon on which Christopher Kroy exercised himself in waiting at the New York station of the New, Haven road, Morton Cloud was likewise in waiting for the incoming train, but not from the same point, he had stationed himself at Forty-second Street. A few hours earlier a young girl was standing, in a telegraph office in New Haven. She held a message in her hand, but the place was so besieged by a small crowd, every member of which seemed to have the most urgent need to use the telegraph at once, that she was well-nigh in despair of being able to get speech with an operator. "Miss Kroy, let me aid you, if I can," said the very voice that gave her so much comfort on her entrance into the precincts of "Old Yale."

"Thank you. If you will I shall be so glad! The train is so late, not at Hartford yet, that mamma thinks we had bet

ter remain until morning, and I am so anxious to get a message off. Papa dislikes to wait more than anybody that ever I knew. Poor John was quite exhausted by the time we got him back to the house, after his drive to the station." Morton Cloud made his way through the little throng, and presently returned to tell Zilpha that the wires were down, and no messages could be sent. She stood a minute in thought, and then said, "It must go. They must manage some way to send it, if it has to go to Boston first."

Zilpha had made the exclamation, more as a relief to her anxiety than as an event which might be realized. She missed Morton Cloud from her side, and a few minutes later he returned to pour his thanks out in her hearing, as if the suggestion she had made were of the utmost importance to him. "I never thought," said Zilpha, "that a message might go in some such round-about way. I only felt that it must go, if possible."

"Ten thousand thanks, Miss Kroy; I am glad the train is detained. I am even glad that you are disappointed. Heaven must have sent you here to aid me in my great need, for neither one of those stupid operators would have thought, nor should I, of sending a telegram to Bangor to get it to New York. The messages will be there before the train will be due."

"Thanks to you, many of them," said Zilpha. The young girl and the college boy. walked up Chapel Street together. Zilpha was quite unconscious of the flutter and airy toss of her floating hair. Morton Cloud was utterly blind to the fact of the increased precision and manliness of his air and tread, as his feet kept pace with hers. The way seemed all too short to Zilpha, as she contrasted it that day with the November night wherein, · penniless as a pauper, she had beat her passage against wind and sleet up College Hill. As they went by Trinity Church a group of laughing girls emerged from the vestibule. They had been busy "tying greens," making ready for the coming of Christ in that year. Thoughtless chil

dren on that day they were; and yet they were preparing for an event the most wonderful that the sun ever looked upon. So we tread, laughing and thoughtless, adown life's pathway, and yet we are pressing forward hour by hour, act by act, day by day, to an event of like magnitude, even the second coming of the Master, who shall come to see the garden we have kept. Let us gather up the briers and thorns, and plant in it all manner of beautiful things, that so it shall be worthy to be admitted into the New Eden.

"Will you come in and look at the church?" asked Morton, as they came to it. "The New Haveners take pride in this church as a specimen of what they call, I believe, the true Gothic, and Christmas greens have a way of showing it off well."

Zilpha hesitated. "I ought to go op and help mamma," she said, "or, at least, to learn if John is better."

"Then will you return?" he questioned. She promised.

It was nearly dark when Zilpha was ready. Through the windows of the church gleamed light as they went in.. The place was brilliant with gas; it had been the fancy of the decorators to witness the effect of their work, and the organ was jubilant with fine sounds of coming anthem and choral. Zilpha did not speak. Her face was radiant. It seemed transformed by the place, the lights, the music. She trembled with exquisite delight. She feared to move or speak, lest the spell be gone from her. Suddenly the people were gone, the lights were dim, and only the old organ was pouring into the empty place volumes of sound that verily set the fibres of wood athrob with music. And still Zilpha Kroy stood there, forgetful of time, place, and her escort. Then her voice escaped into expression and arose in the fullest, sweetest notes, borne aloft as it were like the illuminated edge on the rolling masses of cloud-music that filled the air like incense. Too much astonished to give a sign, stood young Cloud, his eyes fixed on her face, that seemed to him to shine

out of the gloom in which she stood. A tremor ran through the arms of the organist. The boy who was "blowing" the organ screamed, "What's that?"

"Go on! go on!" ejaculated the organist, knowing full well every really fine voice in the community, and that this one was not of them. He went on to the end, Zilpha accompanying every note with enthusiasm of soul. The finale came. Silence restored Zilpha to consciousness of what she had been doing. "What will he think? What do you think?" she whispered. "Let us run."

They went just in time to escape the organist, who was hurrying down to learn who had accompanied him. Zilpha felt that she was followed every step of the distance to the hotel. She was very glad to get once more into the shelter of their own apartments. The organist for Trinity Church in New Haven never knew whose voice so irradiated his playing that night before Christmas.

Dr. went that evening to say farewell a second time. He was truly sorry to part from his patient. To Zilpha he wore the very face of a saint. She held him in her heart as precious beyond all physicians, as the very helper of her brother's life; and when he said at parting, "Miss Zilpha, don't forget me, or I shall think that you have not quite forgiven me for covering you up with that table-spread:" and added thereto, "Remember, now, if ever you need a friend, you will think of and come to me for that friend," and she had responded quite solemnly, "I will," a momentary silence had fallen on the little party, the offer and the pledge had in it so much of solemnity.

Morton Cloud also called the same evening to say his parting words. "Goodby, old boy; you'll be down in a day or two, and sure to come and see us?" said John Kroy, still too weak to make his grasp of hand as hearty as his words.

"No," replied Cloud, "I do not think I shall go home for the holidays."

"Not go home! Why, what can keep you from going?" asked John, not looking up, and therefore not witnessing the

efforts of mine which I have ever received has given me so much pleasure as this movement of yours in electing me your Rector; an honor as spontaneously and generously bestowed by you as it was unlooked for, I may say undreamt of, by me.

Many years ago, when I was first studying the history of the Reformation in Scotland, I read a story of a slave in a French galley who was one morning bending wearily over his oar. The day was breaking, and, rising out of the gray waters, a line of cliffs was visible, and the white houses of a town and a church tower. The rower was a man unused to such service, worn with toil and watching, and likely, it was thought, to die. A companion touched him, pointed to the shore, and asked him if he knew it.

"Yes," he answered, "I know it well. I see the steeple of that place where God opened my mouth in public to His glory; and I know, how weak soever I now appear, I shall not depart out of this life till my tongue glorify His name in the same place."

Gentlemen, that town was St. Andrew's, that galley slave was John Knox; and we know that he came back and did "glorify God" in this place and others to some purpose.

Well, if anybody had told me, when I was reading about this, that I also should one day come to St. Andrew's and be called on to address the University, I should have listened with more absolute incredulity than Knox's comrade listened to that prophecy. Yet, inconceivable as it would then have seemed, the unlikely has become fact. I am addressing the successors of that remote generation of students whom Knox, at the end of his life "called around him," in the yard of this very College," and exhorted them," as James Melville tells us, "to know God and stand by the good cause, and use their time well." It will be happy for me if I, too, can read a few words to you out of the same lesson-book; for to make us know our duty and do it, to make us upright in act and true in thought and word, is the aim of all instruction which deserves

the name, the epitome of all purposes for which education exists. Duty changes, truth expands, one age cannot teach another either the details of its obligations or the matter of its knowledge, but the principle of obligation is everlasting. The consciousness of duty, whatever its origin, is to the moral nature of man what life is in the seed-cells of all organized creatures the condition of its coherence, the elementary force in virtue of which it grows.

Every one admits this in words. Rather, it has become a cant nowadays to make a parade of noble intentions. The application is the difficulty. When we pass beyond the verbal propositions our guides fail us, and we are left in practice to grope our way or guess it as we can. So far as our special occupations go, there is no uncertainty. Are we traders, mechanics, lawyers, doctors?— we know our work. Our duty is to do it as honestly and as well as we can. When we pass to our larger interests, to those which concern us as men-to what Knox meant "by knowing God and standing by the good cause "-I suppose there has been rarely a time in the history of the world when intelligent people have held more opposite opinions. The Scots to whom Knox was speaking understood him well enough. They had their Bibles as the rule of their lives. They had broken down the tyranny of a contemptible superstition. They were grow ing up into yeomen, farmers, artisans, traders, scholars, or ministers, each with the business of his life clearly marked out before him. Their duty was to walk uprightly by the light of the Ten Commandments, and to fight with soul and body against the high-born scoundreldom and spiritual sorcery which were combining to make them again into slaves. I will read you a description of the leaders of the great party in Scotland against whom the Protestants and Knox were contending. I am not going to quote any fierce old Calvinist who will be set down as a bigot and a liar. My witness is M. Fontenay, brother of the secretary of Mary Stuart, who was resi