Not, however, because prayer was the expression of his soul; family prayer was merely a dignified and proper observance.

Mr.Denner would not; have omitted it any more than he would have neglected Sunday morning service; but he was scarcely more aware of the words than Willie or Mary were.

It was the reading which gave Mr.
Denner so much pleasure.
Perhaps the cases he had never pleaded, the dramatic force which he secretly longed to exert, expended themselves in the sonorous chapters of Isaiah or in the wail of Jeremiah.

Indeed, the thought had more than once occurred to Mr.Denner that the rector, who read the service with cheerful haste, might improve in his own delivery, could he listen to the eloquence under which Mary and little Willie sat every evening.
To-night it was the victory of Jephtha.

The reading proceeded as usual: Mary slumbered tranquilly at her end of the room; Willie counted the number of panes of glass in the window opposite him, and wondered what he should do if suddenly a white face should peer in at him out of the darkness; Mr.Denner had reached the vow that whatsoever should first meet Jephtha,--when, with his hand extended, his eyebrows drawn together, and his whole attitude expressing the anxiety and fear of the conqueror, he stopped abruptly.