end.  She sometimes lot these thread of his discourse, but argued also as if to convince herself that she could rightly distinguish between Truth and Illusion, but never discussed religious topics with father.  Like all the Morgesons, he was Orthodox, accepting what had been provided by others for his spiritual accommodation.  He thought it well that existing Institutions should not be disturbed.  “Something worse might be established instead.”  His turn of mind, in short, was not Evangelical.

“Are the Hindoos in earnest, mother?” and I thrust the picture before her.  She warned me off.

“Do you think, Mr. Park, that Cassandra can understand the law of transgression?”

An acute perception that it was in my power to escape a moral penalty, by willful ignorance, was revealed to me, that I could continue the privilege of sinning with impunity.  His answer was complicated, and he quoted several passages from the Scriptures.  Presently he began to sing, and I grew lonesome; the life within me seemed a black cave.

    “Our nature’s totally depraved—­
      The heart a sink of sin;
    Without a change we can’t be saved,
      Ye must be born again.”

Temperance opened the door.  “Is Veronica going to bed to-night?” she asked.

CHAPTER V.

The next September we moved.  Our new house was large and handsome.  On the south side there was nothing between it and the sea, except a few feet of sand.  No tree or shrub intercepted the view.  To the eastward a promontory of rocks jutted into the sea, serving as a pier against the wash of the tide, and adding a picturesqueness to the curve of the beach.  On the north side flourished an orchard, which was planted by Grandfather Locke.  Looking over the tree-tops from the upper north windows, one would have had no suspicion of being in the neighborhood of the sea.  From these windows, in winter, we saw the nimbus of the Northern Light.  The darkness of our sky, the stillness of the night, mysteriously reflected the perpetual condition of its own solitary world.  In summer ragged white clouds rose above the horizon, as if they had been torn from the sky of an underworld, to sail up the blue heaven, languish away, or turn livid with thunder, and roll off seaward.  Between the orchard and the house a lawn sloped easterly to the border of a brook, which straggled behind the outhouses into a meadow, and finally lost itself among the rocks on the shore.  Up by the lawn a willow hung over it, and its outer bank was fringed by the tangled wild-grape, sweet-briar, and alder bushes.  The premises, except on the seaside, were enclosed by a high wall of rough granite.  No houses were near us, on either side of the shore; up the north road they were scattered at intervals.

Mother said I must be considered a young lady, and should have my own room.  Veronica was to have one opposite, divided from it by a wide passage.  This passage extended beyond the angle of the stairway, and was cut off by a glass door.  A wall ran across the lower end of the passage; half the house was beyond its other side, so that when the door was fastened, Veronica and myself were in a cul-de-sac.