He was interrupted by a mischievous laugh.

“A mutual admiration society,” said Sadie, in her most mocking tone.  “Did you and Dr. Douglass have a private rehearsal?  You interrupted him in a similar rhapsody over your perfections.”

Instead of seeming annoyed, Dr. Van Anden’s face glowed with pleasure.

“Did he explain to you our misunderstanding?” he asked, eagerly.  “That was very noble in him.”

“Of course.  He is the soul of nobility—­a villain yesterday and a saint to-day.  I don’t understand such marvelously rapid changes, Doctor.”

“I know you don’t,” the Doctor answered quietly.  “Although you have exaggerated both terms, yet there is a great and marvelous change, which must be experienced to be understood.  Will you never seek it for yourself, Sadie?”

“I presume I never shall, as I very much doubt the existence of any such phenomenon.”

The Doctor appeared neither shocked nor surprised, but favored her with a cool and quiet reply: 

“Oh, no, you don’t doubt it in the least.  Don’t try to make yourself out that foolish and unreasonable creature—­an unbeliever in what is as clear to a thinking mind as is the sun at noonday.  You and I have no need to enter into an argument concerning this matter.  You have seen some unwise and inconsistent acts in many who are called by the name of Christian.  You imagine that they have staggered your belief in the verity of the thing itself.  Yet it is not so.  You had a dear father who lived and died in the faith, and you no more doubt the fact that he is in heaven to-day, brought there by the power of the Savior in whom he trusted, than you doubt your own existence at this moment.”

Sadie sat silenced and grave; she was very rarely either, perhaps.  Dr. Van Anden was the one person who could have thus subdued her, but in her inmost heart she felt his words to be true; that dear, dear father, whose weary suffering life had been one long evidence to the truth of the religion which he professed—­yes, it was so, she no more doubted that he was at this moment in that blessed heaven toward which his hopes had so constantly tended, than she doubted the shining of that day’s sun—­so he, being dead, yet spoke to her.  Besides, her keen judgment had, of late, settled back upon the belief that Dr. Van Anden lived a life that would bear watching—­a true, earnest, manly life; also, that he was a man not likely to be deceived.  So, sitting back there in the carriage, and appearing to look at nothing, and be interested in nothing, she allowed herself to take in again the firm conviction that whatever most lives were, there was always that father—­safe, safe in the Christian’s heaven—­and there were besides some few, a very few, she thought; but there were some still living, whom she knew, yes, actually knew, were fitting for that same far-away, safe place.  No, Sadie had stood upon the brink, was standing there still, indeed; but reason and the long-buried father still kept her from toppling over into the chasm of settled unbelief.  “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth:  Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.”