“Daughter of Justice, wronged Nemesis,
     Thou of the awful eyes,
     Whose silent sentence judgeth mortal life,—­
       Thou with the curb of steel,
       Which proudest jaws must feel,
     Stayest the snort and champ of human strife.

     Under thy wheel unresting, trackless, all
     Our joys and griefs befall;
     In thy full sight our secret things go on;
       Step after step, thy wrath
       Follows the caitiff’s path,
     And in his triumph breaks his vile neck bone. 
     To all alike, thou meetest out their due,
     Cubit for cubit, inch for inch,—­stern, true.”

At the word “true” he paused a moment, and touched with his finger an old black volume on one of the book-shelves. “‘Stern, true,’ whether Euripides says ‘cubit for cubit,’ or Moses ‘an eye for an eye,’ or Solomon that ‘he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.’  Stern, true; for surely that which a man sows he shall also reap.”

After a while he went up-stairs and talked with Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte.  They were much depressed and very anxious, and had what Charlotte defined “a homeless feeling.”  “But you must be biddable, Charlotte,” said the rector; “you must remain here until Stephen returns.  Ducie had business that could not wait, and who but Stephen should drive her?  When he comes back, we will all look to it.  You shall not be very long out of your own home; and, in the mean time, how welcome you are here!”

“It seems such a weary time, sir; so many months that we have been in trouble.”

“It was all night long, once, with some tired, fearful ones ’toiling in rowing;’ but in the fourth watch came Christ and help to them.  It is nigh hand—­the ’fourth watch’—­with you; so be cheerful.”

Yet it was the evening of the sixth day before Ducie and Stephen returned.  It was still raining heavily, and Ducie only waited a moment or two at the rectory gate.  Charlotte was amazed to see the old clergyman hasten through the plashing shower to speak to her.  “Surely Ducie’s business must have a great deal of interest to the rector, mother:  he has gone out to speak to her, and such weather too.”

“Ducie was always a favorite with him.  I hope, now that her affairs have been attended to, ours may receive some care.”

Charlotte answered only by a look of sympathy.  It had seemed to her a little hard that their urgent need must wait upon Ducie’s business; that Stephen should altogether leave them in their extremity; that her anxious inquiries and suggestions, her plans and efforts about their new home, should have been so coldly received, and so positively put aside until Ducie and Stephen came back.  And she had a pang of jealousy when she saw the rector, usually so careful of his health, hasten with slippered feet and uncovered head, through the wet, chilling atmosphere, to speak to them.

He came back with a radiant face, however, and Charlotte could hear him moving about his study; now rolling out a grand march of musical Greek syllables from Homer or Euripides, anon breaking into some familiar verse of Christian song.  And, when tea was served, he went up-stairs for the ladies, and escorted them to the table with a manner so beaming and so happily predictive that Charlotte could not but catch some of its hopeful spirit.