Here was an inspiration! Mary woke with a start.

"Is it a stroke ?" she exclaimed.

But Willie, with one frightened look at the window and the long table, slipped from his chair to kneel, thinking the reading was over.

The sound of his little copper-toed boots upon the floor aroused Mr.Denner; he frowned portentously.

"_So Jephtha passed over unto the children of Ammon_," he read on, "_to fight against them, and the Lord delivered them into his hands_." When prayers were ended, however, and he was sitting in his library alone, he said with a subdued glee, "That is the way to do it,--the one I see first!" And Mr.Denner went to bed with a quiet mind, and the peace which follows the decision of a momentous question..