ill? Let me see the letter, where is he? With Doctor Brudenel? Can't you speak, girl?" 

"Harry is here, in New York, in prison?" 

The words fell shivering from her lips; she raised herself, watching her father's face the while, for she thought he was going to fall. He shook like a great tree in a storm, and then retreated to the door of his room and stood with his back against it. He could not speak, and Agnes was afraid.Father," she said in a low, passionate voice of entreaty, "we have the boy to save. Do not lose yourself. You have _your Father_ to lean upon."

"I know! I feel! Go and make me a cup of coffee. I will be ready when you call me."

Then he went back into his room and shut the door, and Agnes, with a sick, heavy heart, prepared the necessary meal. For though danger, sorrow and death press on every side, the body must have sustenance; and every-day meals, that look so tragically common and out of place must go on as usual. But it was a little respite and she was grateful, because in it her father would talk the trouble over with God before she had to explain it to him. The interval was a short one, but during it John Bradley found Him who is "a very present help in every hour of need." He came down to his coffee in full possession of himself and ready for the fight before him. But he had also realized the disobedience which had brought on this sorrow, and the deception which had sanctioned the boy in his disobedience. Therefore Agnes was afraid when she saw his severe eyes, and shrank from them as from a blow, and large tears filled her own and rolled down her white cheeks unchecked.

"Agnes," he said, "tell me the whole truth. I must know everything, or you may add your brother's murder to the other wrongdoing. When did he come back to America?"

"Six months after you sent him to England. He said he could not, durst not, stay there. He thought that God might have some work that needed _just him_ to do it. I think Harry found that work."

"Why did you not tell me at the time?"

"I was in Boston, at school, when Harry first came to me, and we talked together then about telling you. But at that time both of us supposed you to be a King's man, and the party feeling was then riotously cruel. Harry had been three months with Washington, and his peculiar fitness for the New York Secret Service had been found out. Still, Washington took no unfair advantage of his youth and 

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