"It's the Lord's to deal with us as His own inscrutable wisdom dictates," he murmured with pious resignation.

"We are all poorer, ma'am, that he has died--just as we were richer while he lived!" The rich cadence of the judge's speech fell sonorously on the silence, and that look of horror which had never quite left Betty's eyes since they saw Charley Norton fall, rose out of their clear depths again.

The judge, instantly stricken with a sense of the inadequacy of his words, doubled on his spiritual tracks.

"In a round-about way, ma'am, we're bound to believe in the omnipresence of Providence--we must think it--though a body might be disposed to hold that west Tennessee had got out of the line of divine supervision recently.

Let me lead you to a chair, ma'am!" Hannibal had slipped to Betty's side and placed his hand in hers.