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 CHAPTER XVII

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

The door of the Reverend John Harting's study was open. In the softened afternoon light which came from the window above his desk, he sat, giving his morrow's sermon the last polishing touches. But when Janet would have slipped past, he heard her light footstep, and called to her. She stopped at the door.

"Come in, my dear," he said, lifting his spectacles to his forehead, and turning from the outspread pages of manuscript. "Would you mind sitting down a moment? I have something I wish to say to you."

He spoke precisely and formally, and even in ordinary conversation he had a touch of that singsong intonation which all old-time ministers affected. A fringe of white locks, carefully combed, added to the somewhat stern, but almost patriarchal, expression of his angular, deeply lined face. It was the fearless face of a good-hearted man, and yet there was something about it indicative of narrowness and bigotry. Such a