I don't reckon 'twould be hard for him to quit."

Every one of those seven boys had given up the use of tobacco to please their teacher, Miss Manning.

Other pictures were forthcoming. There were landscapes and seascapes, flowers and animals, children and wood nymphs, dancing in extraordinary attitudes. The boys wondered that so many pictures could be made. They wondered and looked and grew weary with the unusual sight, and wished to go home and get rested, and did not in the least know which they liked. They were bewildered. Where was Miss Manning? She would tell them which to choose, for their part of the choice was a very important part to them, and in their own minds they were the principal part of the committee.

Miss Manning left the great picture by and by and came over to where the others sat, looking with them at picture after picture, hearing prices and painters discussed, and the merits of this and that work of art by Mrs. Ketchum and Mr. Talcut, whose sole idea of art was expressed in the price thereof, and who knew no more about the true worth of pictures than he knew about the moon. Then she left the others and wandered back to the quiet end of the room where stood that wonderful picture. There the boys one by one drifted back to her and sat or stood about her quietly, feeling the spell of the picture themselves, understanding in part, at least, her mood and why she did not feel like talking. They waited respectfully with uncovered heads, half bowed, looking, feeling instinctively the sacredness of the theme of the picture. Four of them were professed Christians, and the other three were just beginning to understand what a privilege it was to follow Christ.

Untaught and uncouth as they were, they took the faces for likenesses, and Christ's life and work on earth became at once to them a living thing that they could see and understand. They looked at John and longed to be like him, so near to the Master and to receive that look of love. They knew Peter and thought they recognized several other disciples, for the Sunday school lessons had become as vivid for them as mere words can paint the life of Christ. They seemed themselves to stand within the heavy arch of stone over that table, so long ago, and to be sitting at the table—his disciples, some of them unworthy, but still there. They had been helped to this by what Miss Manning had said the first Sunday she took the class, when the lesson had been of Jesus and of some talks he had had with his disciples. She had told them that as there were just twelve of them in the class she could not help sometimes thinking of them as if they were the twelve disciples, especially as one of them was named John and another Andrew, and she wanted them to try to feel that these lessons were for them; that Jesus was sitting there in their class each Sabbath speaking these words to them and calling them to him.

The rest of the committee were coming toward them, calling to Miss Manning in merry, appealing voices. She looked up to answer, and the boys who stood near her saw that her eyes were full of tears. More than one of them turned to hide and brush away an answering tear that seemed to come from somewhere in his throat and choke him.

"Come, Margaret," called Mrs. Ketchum, "come and tell us which you choose. We've narrowed it down to three, and are pretty well decided which one of the three we like best."

Margaret Manning arose reluctantly and followed them, the boys looking on and wondering. She looked at each of the three. One was the aforementioned nymph's dance, another was a beautiful woman's head, and the third was a flock of children romping with a cart and a dog and some roses. Margaret turned from them disappointed, and looked back toward the other picture.

"I don't like any of them, Mrs. Ketchum, but the first one. Oh, I do think that is the one. Please come and look at it again."

"Why, my dear," fluttered Mrs. Ketchum, disturbed, "I thought we settled it that that picture was too, too—not quite appropriate for a den, you know."

But her words were lost, for the others had gone forward under the skylight to where the grand picture stood, and were once more under the spell of those wonderful eyes of the pictured Master.

"It is a real nice picture," spoke up Mrs. Brown. She was fond of Margaret Manning, though she did not know much about art. She had been elected from the women's Bible class, and had been rather overpowered by Mrs.