Having proceeded so far, it occurred to me that the occasion was favorable for the discharge of another duty which I had been meditating in regard to Rebecca.

"You are what Grandma Keeler calls a believer, are you not, dear?" I said, with the same composedly dictatorial manner: "in distinction from a professor, I mean."

Rebecca gave a little gasp, and turned her head away, for an instant. When she looked back, there were tears of distress in her eyes.

I felt a vague wonder and regret.

"No," she said; "I thought, once—I wanted—I hoped——"

"Why, child!" I hastened to exclaim. "I didn't ask you because I had any reason to doubt that you were one—quite the contrary—but simply for this. It seems to me it would be such a desirable thing for you, situated as you are, here, with so few surroundings of a refining and elevating nature, if you could attach yourself, if it were merely for a feeling of fellowship and sympathy—for of course, you could not attend, often—to some simple Orthodox body of believers—like the Methodist church at West Wallen, for instance. It seems to me, that, in your case, believing simply and unquestionably, as I have no doubt you do, it would be a sort of assurance, a sort of continual rest and support to you. It would be a great relief to me if I felt that you were so guarded. Not that I consider it essential at all; to some people, indeed, of a deeply thoughtful and inquisitive mind, such a course would appear impossible. You have never troubled yourself, Becky," I continued, in a tone of reassuring lightness; "you have never troubled yourself with doubts and speculations on religious subjects?"

"I don't know," Becky replied, the look of perplexity and distress deepening in her eyes.

"Why should you?" I murmured, softly stroking her hair; "He carries the lambs in His bosom." I had been little in the habit of quoting Scripture—the words, coming to my mind, struck me as particularly Beautiful and applicable on this occasion. "And so what I have suggested, would be the easiest and most natural thing in the world for you to do. I suppose it might be necessary for you to have come to some conclusion in regard to the first principles of Theology; but probably you have already satisfied yourself as to these in your own mind."

Rebecca looked little like one who had arrived at the calm plane of philosophical conclusion of any sort.

"I don't know," she gasped.

"Well, take the Trinity, for instance," I continued, in a tone highly suggestive of calm and supreme forbearance with helpless ignorance. "Probably you believe in the Trinity?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Rebecca. "I don't know what it means. Nobody ever told me; nobody ever talked to me about those things before."

"It's simply," I said; "a term implying the existence of three persons in the Godhead. So the Trinitarians are distinguished from the Unitarians who believe that it consists of one. I'm not particularly informed as to the Methodist credentials of faith. You will always hear that they believe that salvation is free to all who will accept of it. Some people believe that man is a free agent, and may accept or refuse the means of grace, and if he refuses, is eternally lost. And then, again, there are the Universalists, who believe that all will be eventually saved. There is the Calvinistic element—those who believe in predestination—that is——"

Becky had laid her head down on the bed, and was quietly sobbing.

"My poor child," I exclaimed, with swift compassion, "don't think anything more about what I have said to you. Let it go. It isn't vital."

"You don't hate me for not knowing anything?" sobbed Becky. "Nobody ever tried to have me understand, before."

"You know enough; quite enough, dear!" I remarked hastily, producing from my trunk a quantity of illustrated magazines. These we looked over together, and when Becky went away, the tears were dried in her eyes, and she was laughing as merrily as ever.

With the severely implied reproach of Madeline's words still in my mind, I took pains to assume toward Luther Larkin a more elder-sisterly air even than before.

It was true, I felt that I had been unjustly stung, having, amid the press of other duties, undertaken the advancement of that bright youth, from motives, I believed, of an ideal and disinterested nature. It was also true, that, after the first enthusiasm with respect to his lessons had passed away, as well as the natural diffidence he had at first felt in my presence, Luther Larkin, though punctual to the hour of recitation, had gradually fallen into a habit of more lively and discursive inquiry than that furnished within the dull range of his text-books. He had a singularly fearless manner of challenging the inexplicable in thought and life, with a light conversational flow of much brilliancy. Moreover, he was a delightful dreamer.

We had our recitation, for quiet, in one of Grandma's gloomy and mysterious keepin'-rooms. The only object inviting to sedentary posture in this room was Grandpa's huge "chist," which occupied a position "along side" the East window. Those sacred window curtains, of green paper, flowered with crimson roses, were never rolled up; but as the light strayed in at one side, and fell on the Cradlebow's fine head, often I reflected that under certain other conditions of life, meaning conditions more favorable to Luther Larkin, I might have regarded him very tenderly, and invested the strength and beauty of his young manhood with heroic meaning.

As it was, I assumed that I was years beyond him in the gravest respects. And if there was any truth in what Madeline had intimated, possibly I had been at fault for not impressing this fact more deeply on his mind.

"So you are getting sadly behindhand with your lessons, Luther," I said. "I wish you would make a brave effort to catch up. There is no true attainment to be reached without a corresponding degree of effort—of perseverance."

I spoke with a serious and gracious air, as though this sentiment, gleaned from a profound experience, had occurred to me as an idea peculiarly my own.

"Never mind the lessons!" replied my audacious pupil, brightly. "Teacher," he added presently, having fallen into a gently musing attitude; "how shiny those crimples in your hair look, with that streak of sun lighting on 'em!"

"Luther," said I, very gravely: "you ought not to talk to me about my hair. Suppose we give our attention to these books. Now you were getting along so fast, I'm very sorry——"

"Do you think I'm to blame, teacher?" exclaimed Luther, earnestly, "There wasn't a stick of wood to be had in our house this morning! And I've had to be off, all day, chopping, with Scudder—you ought to have seen the black snake we killed this morning. It was six feet long. If you don't believe it, Scudder's got the carcass. It was lying all curled up in the bushes with its head up so—'you watch him, Lute,' says Scudder, 'and I'll run and get the axe!' I couldn't help laughing. The axe was over the other side of the bog, and the snake began to stretch himself out and slide along. I brought my boot-heel down once or twice on his head, about as quick and strong as I could make it. I killed him. It's a good sign to kill a snake, teacher. It's a good sign to dream of killing one; but you come across one so, accidentally, and kill it, and it's sure to bring good luck, Granny says."

"That's more significant than a great many of your signs and symbols," I said. "That means that you will slay the tempter in your path, and be successful in overcoming difficulties. In short, it means that whatever there has been to divert you, you are coming back to the resolve to study and improve yourself; to be all the stronger for having a few chance obstacles to dispose of."

Luther's head began to droop a little. I thought it was time that the melancholy atmosphere of the room should have begun to exercise its usual depressive effect on his spirits.

"You think I don't like the books, teacher," he said. "I do, but there's most always something else to be doing. Father's lame. He can't do any work, and there's the rest to take care of. First, I sat up nights to study, then I got so sleepy I couldn't. But I'd got so in the habit of coming in to talk a little while after you got home from school, teacher, that I—I forgot to forget it. Have I been a great bother to you? You've been real good. I don't want you to think I forget that. And if I'd had a chance at the books early, or to push right along with 'em now, I might make out something in that line."

Luther did not speak complainingly, nor even with hopeless regret. He rose and stretched himself, with solemn satisfaction, to the extent of his goodly proportions.

"But I'm a man now, teacher," he said. "I shall be twenty in June, and life is short. A man hasn't got time for everything. He'd be a fool to waste it crying for what he didn't happen to have. He'd better push along and work for the best. I meant to tell you. I'm going to sea, teacher! I'm going trading. I was down to New Bedford, to see Captain Sparhauk yesterday, for I was out with him once before, and got a good deal of the hang of the business then; and he offered me a place on his ship next time he sails."

Luther stood with flushed face, regarding me with a bright restless look of inquiry in his eyes.

"Are you going away, really, Luther? I'm very sorry!" I said.

"You don't care! what do you care?" he exclaimed almost rudely, with an unnatural touch of hardness in his laugh. "It's the way you talk to all the rest. A fellow might get to thinking too much about it. A fellow might get to caring—if he believed it—I don't."

"What makes you think I shouldn't care if you were going away?" I continued, with the dispassionately gentle and reproving tone I considered it wisest to assume on the occasion. "I should care, I should be very sorry. Come and sit down here, please, and tell me all about it, when you are going, and where, and what you are going for?"

Luther came slowly back to the light. He seemed verily to have grown older and handsomer in a moment. I experienced a deeper feeling of regret than ever before, that the circumstances of his life could not have been conducive to heroism.

"The captain couldn't tell me just when he should sail," said he; "and I'm going to get money. I know a good deal of the Spanish and Portugal, I learned to talk them before—and I shall go to a great many places, I may not come back when the ship does. Say, what strange eyes you've got, teacher; now they're brown—and now, they're black, and now, they're a sort of—a—purplish gray."

"Oh, my dear boy," I exclaimed, with a sudden accession of wisdom, sighing deeply; "you ought not to talk to me about the color of my eyes." At the same time to deepen the effect of this condescending tenderness, I pushed back lightly from his forehead a stray lock of hair that was hanging there.

"Don't do that!" the boy cried with startling impetuosity. "Don't call me that again! I mean, teacher," he went on in a gentler tone, though none the less excitedly;—"if you should know somebody, that had set his heart on something, very much, and didn't want anything else if he couldn't have that, and if he should know that he hadn't any right to ask for it now, but go off and work for it real hard, and, maybe come back lucky in a few years, with a right to ask for it then;—do you think, teacher, that there'd be any chance of his finding—of his getting what he wanted most? If you were in anybody's place, now, teacher, would you give him a word of encouragement to try?"

"I think that the person you speak of would be much more likely to succeed in a practical undertaking, without any hallucination of that sort before his eyes—and if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and people change, oh, so much!"

In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen. He looked over to the woods, behind which the water lay, and the fire and impatience had all gone out of his manner. His gentleness touched me deeply, yet I was determined not to feel his hurt, nor—"if only the circumstances of his life had been different"—what might have been mine also!

"Hark! It's high tide. It's making quite a fuss over there," he said. "I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher. Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die—" there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone—"I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there. You look one way and there's the river, oftenest still—and the other way, you hear the old Bay scooting along the sand. I like it, being used to hearing it go always. Granny says it makes a difference then, where you lie, about the resting easy. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as though I should rest easier there."

"A dissertation on the graveyard," I began in a tone of affected lightness, and then paused, convicted of untruth by the solemn light in the Cradlebow's strange, grand eyes.



CHAPTER VII.

LUTE CRADLEBOW KISSES THE TEACHER.

Wallencamp had its peculiar seasons. After the season of hulled corn, came the reign of baked beans. It was during this latter dispensation that my courage failed considerably.

Madeline used to remark, throwing a rare musical halo about her words: "These beans are better than they look. Ain't they, teacher?"

And I was wont to reply conscientiously enough, though with a sweetly wearied glance at the familiar dish; "Certainly, they do taste better than they look."

Occasionally we had what Harvey Dole called, "squash on the shell," an ingenious term for the last of the winter pumpkins boiled in halves, and served au naturel.

Grandpa, too, pined and put away his food. He used to look across the table at me, with a feeble appeal for sympathy in his expression. Oftentimes he sighed deeply, and related anecdotes redolent of "red salmon" and "deer flesh," "strawberries as big as teacups" and "peaches as big as pint bowls," in places where he had sailed.

Once, he ventured to remark, apologetically, referring to the beans and pumpkins, that "bein' sich a mild winter, somehow he didn't hanker arter sech bracin' food, and he guessed he'd go over to Ware'am, and git some pork."

"Wall, thar' now, pa!" said Grandma; "seems to me we'd ought ter consider all the fruits o' God's bounty as good and relishin' in their season."

"I call that punkin out of season," said Grandpa, recklessly. "Strikes me so."

"I was talkin' about fruits. I wasn't talkin' about punkins," said Grandma, with derisive conclusiveness.

"Wall," said Grandpa, very much aroused, "if you call them tarnal white beans the fruits of God, I don't!"

"Don't you consider that God made beans, pa?"

"No, I don't!"

"Who, then—" continued Grandma, in an awful tone—"do you consider made beans, pa?"

Grandpa's eyes, as he glared at the dish, were large and round, and significant of unspeakable things.

"Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma hastened to say; "my ears have heard enough!"

As for Grandma, neither her appetite, nor her spirits, flagged. In spite of her confirmed habit of tantalizing Grandpa—and this was from no malevolence of motive, but simply as the conscientious fulfilment of a sacred religious and domestic duty—she was the most delightful soul I ever knew.

At supper, it was a habit for her to sit at the table long after we had finished our meal, and to continue eating and talking in her slow, automatic, sublimely philosophical manner, until not a vestige of anything eatable remained, and then as she rose, she would remark, simply, with a glance at the denuded board:—

"It beats all, how near you guessed the vittles to-night, daughter!"

Then Grandma resorted to an occasional pastime, harmless and playful enough in itself, yet intended as a special means of discipline for Grandpa, and certainly, a source of great torment and anxiety to that poor old man.

Between the hours of eight and nine P.M., Grandma would deftly glide out of the family circle, and be seen no more that night. At bedtime, Grandpa would begin the search, while Madeline and I ungenerously retired.

In the privacy of my own chamber, I could hear the old Captain tramping desolately about the Ark, calling, "Ma! ma!" Could hear the outside door swung open, and imagine Grandpa's wild face peering into the darkness, while still he called; "Ma! ma! where be ye? It's half after ten!"

Then, from the foot of the stairs would arise his distressed, appealing cry; "Come, ma, where be ye? It's half after ten!" Silence everywhere. With a mighty groan, Grandpa would come shuffling up the steep stairs, and what was most remarkable, Grandma was invariably found secluded amid the rubbish in the old garret. Then the whisperings that arose between those two would have pierced through denser substances by far than the little red door which separated me from the scene.

"How'd I know, ma, but what you'd gone out and broke yer leg, or somethin'? Come, ma—" with exasperated persuasiveness—"what do ye want to pester me this way for?"

"Why, pa," arose the calm, mellifluous accents of Grandma Keeler, "so't you might know how you'd feel if I should be took away!"

Next, the little staircase would resound with loud creaks and groans, as this reunited couple cautiously—and I have no doubt that they believed the whole affair had been conducted with the utmost secrecy—made their way down in their stocking feet.

Grandma—Heaven bless her, always devoted, though original—never saw a human ill that she did not long to alleviate. So, as Grandpa and I daily refused our food, she affirmed, as her opinion, that the one need of our deranged systems was a clarifier! And she forthwith prepared a mixture of onions and molasses, with various bitter roots, which latter she, upon her knees, had wrested from the frosty bosom of the earth in an arena immediately adjoining the Ark. Thus I beheld her one wintry day, and wondered greatly what she was at. When I came home from school at night, through a strangely permeated atmosphere, I beheld the clarifier simmering on the stove.

Grandpa already stood shivering over the fire. He smiled when I came in, but it was a faint and deathly smile—the smile of one who has returned, per force, to weak, defenceless infancy.

Grandma pressed me kindly to partake. I preferred to keep what ills I had, rather than fly to others that I knew not of. So I gently and firmly declined. But for several days in succession, Grandpa was made the victim of this ghastly remedy.

His sufferings went beyond the power of mad expostulation to express, and came nigh to produce upon his features the aspect of a saintly resignation.

Never shall I forget his appearance during this clarifying period—his occasional faint and fleeting attempts at wit—his usually hopeless and world-weary air. The wonder to me was that he did not then enter upon a celestial state of existence, being eminently fitted to go, as far as the attenuation of his mortal frame was concerned. It was at this time that I wrote home that I had never had such an appetite before in my life as now in Wallencamp (which, in one sense, I felt to be perfectly true); that the food was of a most remarkable variety (which I also felt to be true); but that it was rather difficult to procure oranges and the like. Whereupon, I received from home a large box, containing all manner of pleasant fruits, and thus poor old Grandpa Keeler and I were enabled to take a new lease of life.

I found that it was considered indispensable to the proper discharge of my duties in Wallencamp that I should make frequent calls on the parents of my flock, throughout the entire community. If I failed in any measure in this respect, they reproached me with being "unsociable," and said; "Seems to me you ain't very neighborly, teacher."

I had called myself a student of human nature. It seemed to me, now, that in those dingy Wallencamp houses, I stood for the first time, awed and delighted before the real article. Sometimes the men sent out great volumes of smoke from their pipes, in the low rooms, that were not delightful; but as far as they knew, they exerted themselves to the utmost, men and women both, to make their homes pleasant and attractive to me.

Godfrey Cradlebow's place was as small and poor as any. There was one room that served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, with a corresponding medley of furniture. A very finely chased gold watch hung against the loose brown boards of the wall—a reminder of Godfrey Cradlebow's youth. But what distinguished this house from all the others, was the profusion of books it contained. There were books on the tables, books under the tables, books piled up in the corner of the room.

Godfrey Cradlebow himself was confined in-doors much of the time with the rheumatism. He made nets for the fishermen. I used to like to watch his fingers moving deftly while he talked.

Things having gone wrong with him, and he having suffered much acute physical pain, besides—(that was evident from the manner in which his stalwart frame had been bent with his disease) he had "taken to drink," not excessively, but he seemed to be, most of the time, in a lightly inebriated condition. He was a strange and fluent talker, often ecstatic.

"It is commonly believed, Miss Hungerford," he said to me, once; "that we start on the summit of life, that we descend into the valley, that the sun is westering; but as for me, I seem to look far below there on the mists and dew of earlier years. I walk among the hills. The horizon widens. The air grows thin. I see the solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, and a hundred times, and I trust I shall taste the sweets of conversion many times more before I die. I do not believe the soul to be a barren tract, so far removed from the ocean of God's love, that it may be washed by the waves only once in a lifetime, and that, in case of some terrible flood. But I rejoice daily in the sweet and natural return of the tide. How the shores wait for it! Strewn with weeds and wreck, scorched by the sun, chilled by the night, how it listens for the sound of its coming! until it rushes in—ah! roar after roar—all-covering, all-hiding, all-embracing!"

Godfrey Cradlebow shook his head rapturously, tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the while he went on rapidly with his netting.

He had the natural tact and grace of a gentleman, and was especially courteous to his wife. This brought down upon him the derision of the Wallencampers, whose conjugal relations were seldom more delicately implied than by a reference—"my woman thar'!" or "my man over thar'!" with an accompanying jerk of the thumb.

Lydia, Godfrey Cradlebow's wife, was tall and slight, with dark hair and eyes—a perfect face, though worn and sad. She invariably wore over her cotton gown, on occasions when she went out, a very fine, very thin old-fashioned mantilla, bordered with a deep black fringe. This pathetic remnant of gentility, borne rudely about by the Wallencamp winds, with Lydia's refined face and melancholy dark eyes, gave her a very interesting and picturesque appearance; though I never thought she wore the mantilla during the winter for effect. She was shy, though exceedingly gentle in her manners. At first, I had thought that she avoided me. But one time, when making the round of my parochial calls, I stopped at the Cradlebows', and Mr. Cradlebow discoursing fluently on the Phenomenon, recommended a severe method of discipline as best adapted to his case, I replied, laughingly, that he had better be cautious about making any suggestions of that sort, for Simeon and I were getting to be great friends; the mother, on whose heart I had had no design, took my hand at the door, when I went away, in a clinging, almost an affectionate way.

"You are good to my boys, teacher," she said; "and I thank you for it. They make you a great deal of trouble."

"Oh, no," I answered lightly, returning with a sense of pleasure the pressure of her hand, and it was not until afterwards, walking slowly down the lane that I sighed gently, thinking of that troublesome boy who had told me he was going to sea.

Removed from the world of newspapers, the ordinary active interest in the affairs of church and state, there was a great deal of the lively gadding about, neighborly dropping in element in Wallencamp. This applied to the men equally as well as to the women. I remember that Abbie Ann once put out her washing, and this fact kept the whole social element of Wallencamp on the qui vive for a number of days.

The caller would appear at the door at anytime during the day with a good-natured matter-of-fact "I was a passin' by, and thought I'd drop in a minit, jest to see how ye was gittin' along."

"Won't you set?" would be the cordial response. "Do set."

"Wall, I don't know how to spend the time anyway," the visitor would reply; "there's so many things a drivin' on me."

But this care-belabored victim of fate usually concluded by sitting quite complacently for any length of time.

When such visitations occurred out of school hours, and I remained up in my room, as I frequently did at first, the droppers in felt very much aggrieved, as though I had wittingly offended the instincts of good society.

Besides all which, seldom an evening passed that the young people did not come to the Ark en masse to sing.

Then Madeline or Rebecca, or (very rarely) I propelled a strain of doubtful melody from Madeline's little melodeon, while the singers—boys and girls together—chimed in, joyfully rendering with a perfect fearlessness of utterance and deep intensity of expression such songs as "Go, bury thy sorrow, the world hath its share," and "Jesus, keep me near the cross," and "Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow; now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

They knew no other songs. They would sing through a large proportion of the Moody and Sankey Hymnal in a single evening.

At first I listened half amused or thoroughly wearied. But, as the strains grew more familiar and I sang occasionally with the others, I felt each day more tired and more conscious of my own incompetency. And still the Words rang in my ears; "I hear the Saviour say, thy strength indeed is small;" with much about trusting in Him, and his willingness to bear it all. As the wind beat against the Ark on wild nights, so that we could hardly tell which was the wind and which was the roar of the maddened sea, and still those voices chanted hopefully of the "stormless home beyond the river," etc., the words began to strike on something deeper than my physical or intellectual sense, and that not rudely.

I smiled to catch myself humming them over often, and in the school-room, when I felt that my patience was fast oozing, and I experienced a wild desire to loose the reins and let all go, unconsciously I took refuge in repeating those same simple words, going over with them, again and again, beneath my breath, holding on to them as though they possessed some unknown charm to keep me still and strong.

I went to the evening meetings. They were held in the school-house, and were very popular in Wallencamp.

By some provision of the government on behalf of the Indians, a small meeting-house had been built for those in the vicinity of Wallencamp, and they were also provided with a minister for several months during the year. On this account the Indians rather set themselves up above the benighted Wallencampers, whom government had not endowed with the privileges of the sanctuary, while they, in turn, made derisive allusions to the "Nigger-camp" minister, and regarded with contempt its prescribed means of grace.

The Indians enjoyed, for part of the time that I was in Wallencamp, the ministrations of a Baptist clergyman, a truly earnest and intelligent man, gifted with a most forceful manner of utterance, but so lean as to present a phenomenal appearance. This good man feared nothing but that he should fail in some part of the performance of his duty. He believed that it was his duty to come over and preach to the Wallencampers also, in their school-house, and he did so.

I think that the Wallencampers regarded this, on the whole, as a doubtful though entertaining move.

I do not think that they took any particular pains to harass or annoy the Rev. Mr. Rivers. But they certainly did not restrict themselves in that natural freedom which they always enjoyed on the occasions of their spiritual feasts.

They attended, as usual—the old and the young, the good, the bad, the indifferent, with a lively sprinkling of babies.

Though not a cold night, they kept the stove gorged with fuel. It roared furiously. They were restless. They made signs audibly expressive of the fact that the air of the room was insufferably close, and very audibly slammed up the windows. They whispered and giggled; they went out and came in, as they pleased. They drank a great deal of water. I remember particularly, how at the most earnest and affecting part of the Rev. Mr. Rivers' discourse, the immortal Estella, alias the "Modoc," arose in gawky innocence and all good faith from her seat immediately in front of the speaker, and walked to the back part of the room to regale herself with a draught.

The Baptist minister discharged a withering and conscientious reproof at them through his nose.

Now, for, the Wallencampers to be reproved, however scathingly, by some zealous and inspired individual of their own number, was considered, on the whole, as an apt and appropriate thing, but to be reproved by the "Nigger-camp" minister! When, after the meeting he walked with the Keeler family back to the Ark, where he had been hospitably entertained, the Wallencamp boys saw us depart in silent wrath, and I feared that Treachery lay in wait for the Rev. Mr. Rivers.

He sat and talked with us at the Ark for an hour or more, perhaps, before bidding us good-night, and during that time I caught glimpses of faces that appeared at the window, and then vanished again instantly—familiar faces, expressive of much scornful merriment. Now and then I heard a smothered giggle outside, and a scrambling among the bushes. It was a dark night. When the Rev. Mr. Rivers finally rose to depart, and had got as far as the gate, he became helplessly entangled in a perfect network of small ropes. He could neither advance nor recede. In a pitiable and ignominious condition, he called to us for help.

"Those devilish boys!" said Grandpa, with religious fervor of tone, at the same time glancing at me with a delighted twinkle in his eye. "I knew they was up to something. I heered 'em out there;" and he patiently lit his lantern, and went out to cut the minister free; but the Rev. Mr. Rivers did not come to the Wallencamp school-house to preach again.

Among those who looked on with quiet approval at this childish and barbarous performance of the Wallencamp youth, I learned afterwards, were staid Lovell Barlow and little Bachelor Lot.

Left to their own spiritual devices, the Wallencampers carried on their evening meetings after methods formerly approved. They rose and talked—or prayed—or diverted themselves socially—or sang. Everything they were moved to do, they did.

The lame giant, Godfrey Cradlebow, at seasons when the tide came in, would pour forth the utterances of his soul with the most earnest eloquence. At other times, he was morbid and silent, or made skeptical and sneering remarks aside.

Lovell Barlow, though generally regarded as a believer, had never so far overcome his natural modesty and reserve as to address the Wallencamp meeting. But one night, spurred to make the attempt by some of his malicious and fun-loving compatriots, he surprised us all by rising with a violent motion from his seat, and making a sudden plunge forward as though his audience were a cold bath, and he had determined to wade in.

"Boys!" he began, with a most unnatural ferociousness. Then I felt Lovell's eyes fixed on my face. "And girls, too," he added, more gently; "and girls, too, certainly, I think so;" he continued; "I think so." His tone became very feeble. He glanced about with a wild eye for his hat, grasped it, and went out, and I saw him afterwards, through the window, standing like a statue, in the moonlight, with his arms folded, and with a perfectly cold and emotionless cast of countenance.

Among the professors, Godfrey Cradlebow's mother, Aunt Sibylla, with quite as much fire and less delicacy of expression than characterized the speech of the strange lame man, was always ready to warn, threaten, and exhort.

Grandpa Keeler, too, though not subjected to the renovating and rejuvenating processes of the Sabbath, but just touched up a little here and there, enough to give him a slight "odor of sanctity," and a saving sense of personal discomfort, was always led to the meeting, and kept close by Grandma Keeler's side on the most prominent bench.

When there was one of those frightful pauses which sometimes occurred even in the cheerful concourse of the Wallencampers, casting a depressing influence over all hearts, Grandma Keeler by a series of covert pokes and nudges, would signify to Grandpa that now was the appointed moment for him to arise and let his light shine.

And Grandpa Keeler was not a timid man, but since the event of his clarification, he had shown a stronger dislike than ever to being pestered, and was abnormally quick to detect and resist any advances of that kind. So his movements on these occasions were marked by an angry deliberation, though the old sea-captain never failed in the end, to arise and "hand in his testimony."

His remarks were (originally) clear cut and terse.

"There's no need o' my gittin' up. You all know how I stand" (an admonitory nudge from Grandma)—"What's the matter now, ma?" I could hear the old man swear, mentally, but he went on with the amendment—"or try to. I'm afeered that even the best on us, at some time or nuther, have been up to some devil"—(sly, but awfully emphatic nudge from Grandma) "ahem! we're all born under a cuss!" persisted Grandpa, with irate satisfaction. "I've steered through a good many oceans," he continued, more softly, "but thar' ain't none so—misty—as this—a—" (portentous nudge from Grandma,) "as this pesky ocean of Life! We've got to keep a sharp look-out" (another nudge from Grandma), "ahem, steer clear of the rocks," (persistent nudges from Grandma), "ahem! ahem! trust in God Almighty!" admitted Grandpa with telling force, and sat down.

As for Grandma, she was herself always prompt and faithful in the discharge of duty, however trying the circumstances. She was no hypocrite, this dear old soul! She could not have feigned sentiments which she did not feel, yet it was invariably the case that, as she rose in meeting, her usually cheerful face became in the highest degree tearful and lugubrious. The thought of so many precious souls drifting toward destruction filled her tender heart with woe. She besought them in the gentlest and most persuasive terms to "turn to Jesus." She dwelt long upon His love, standing always with hands reverently clasped before her, and eyes downcast with awe.

I used to long to hear her speak. The sound of that low, tender monotone was in itself inexpressibly soothing. But Grandma's tongue had its mild edge, as well.

Once, when she was speaking, a number of the young people—it was a common occurrence—rose to go out.

Grandma went on talking without raising either her voice or her eyes; but when they had reached the door, "What—" said she, in that tone which, though so mild, somehow unaccountably arrested their progress; "what—poor, wanderin' creeturs—if your understandin's should give out!" meaning, what if you should suddenly be deprived of the use of your legs! "Have you never heered," she continued; "the story of Antynias and Sapfiry?"

But she did not recount the tale. If possible, she would rather use words of love than of malediction.

I shall never forget the faithful manner in which she narrated Abraham's intercession with the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah.

"And Abraham said to the Lord, 'Periodventure there be fifty righteous found,' he said; 'willest thou destroy the city, and them in it? Oh, no! that ain't like the Lord,' he says; 'for to slay the righteous and the wicked together—fur be it.' And the Lord says; 'No. If I find fifty righteous I'll spare all the rest,' he says, 'on account o' them fifty,' he says, and Abraham says, 'O Lord, now I've begun,' he says, 'and you don't seem so very much put out with me as I expected, I've a good mind to keep on askin' ye a little more, jest to see what ye'll say,' he says; 'O Lord, periodventure what if there shouldn't be but forty-five?' he says."

Grandma went through the list of "periodventures," depicting Abraham's growing fear and obsequiousness in the most tragic manner until she got to the hypothetical ten.

"And Abraham said; 'O Lord, I know you won't like it this time, but I've gone so fur now, that I'm going to out with't; and don't—don't git put out, O Lord! and I won't put it one mite lower. Periodventure, O Lord, what if there shouldn't be but ten?' and the Lord said, 'If there wasn't but ten, he wouldn't destroy them wicked cities.' Now," continued Grandma, with tearful impressiveness, "if Abraham had even a ventured to put it down one five more, what more chance do you think there'd be for us here in Wallencamp?"

After the meeting, Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot held their usual theological levee, outside the school-house.

"Wall, Bachelder," said the captain, who always took the initiative with extreme recklessness; "if it was a goin' to take ten to clear Sodom and Germorrer, how many righteous men do you calkalate it 'ud take ter lift the mortgage off'n this ere peninsheler, eh?"

Bachelor Lot was unusually thoughtful.

"Heh!" said he, in his thin drawl. "The Lord knew he was seafe enough—knew he'd a been seafe enough if he'd a said tew; knew he'd a been seafe enough if he'd a said eone, for there's his own statement to the effect—heh!—that there wasn't a righteous man eanywhere, no, not eone."

"Not much leeway, that's a fact, Bachelder," said Captain Sartell, who had an embarrassed way, particularly when discussing subjects of a religious nature, of twisting his powerful blonde head about, and swallowing very hard. "D——d little leeway, I must confess,—wall—all the same for you and me, Bachelder."

Bachelor Lot smiled a little.

"Heh! What was it about that couple, Almiry (Grandma Keeler) was tellin' about—Antynias and Sapfiry—heh, Captain? What streuck 'em eany way? It wasn't because they went out o' meetin', was it? I think it would be a satisfaction to the company, Captain, if you would relate the circumstance."

The brave and honest captain craned his neck about with several hard gulps.

"Wall, to tell the truth, Bachelder, I ain't quite so well posted with the Old Testament as I be with the New, but," he continued, resolutely, "if it would be any favor to the company—as near as I calkalate, this ere Antynias heered that the Lord was a goin' by, and, as near as I calkalate, he clim' up in a tree to see him pass." The captain writhed fearfully, but did not flinch, "And, as near as I calkalate, he got on to a rotten limb, and it let him down. That is," he remarked, with concluding agony, "as near as I calkalate."

"Heh! yees, much obleeged, I'm sure," said Bachelor Lot. "I, heh! I recall the anecdote now, perfectly, but wheere—wheere was Sapfiry?"

"Wall," the captain gave a gulp that actually brought the tears to his eyes; "as near as I calkalate, Sapfiry was under the limb."

"Certainly," said Bachelor Lot; "certainly! and a veery unfortunate poseetion for Sapfiry it was, too. I weesh you would be so kind as to eenform the company in what part of the Sacred Writ this little anecdote is recorded, Captain, as I for one should very much leike to look it up."

Captain Sartell took a determined step forward. "Look y' here, Bachelder," said he; "I don't want no hard words betwixt you and me, for there never has been. But a man's word is a man's word, and a man's friends had ought to stick by it, and I want you to understand that, on this ere point, I ain't agoin' to have no lookin' up."

"Heh!" Bachelor Lot smiled and nodded his head, cheerfully. "I'd be willing to waeger my life, Captain, that if anybody's made a mistake on this point—heh—it ain't you." And with this amicable conclusion, the two stars withdrew.

George Olver sometimes rose in meeting and made a few remarks indicative of a manly spirit and much sound common sense. He was very fond of Rebecca, that was plain. Her continued indifference to him made him sore at heart, and the people in Wallencamp suggested that on this account he was more serious than he would otherwise have been.

As for Rebecca, they said she had given up "seekin' religion," and had returned to the world. She did not rise for prayers any more, and she did not "lead the singin'" any more. And it was true that she seemed to me to have changed, somehow. I knew that she was as girlishly devoted to me as ever, as thoughtful as ever to please me. One Saturday morning, knowing that I had letters in the West Wallen Post Office, which I was anxious to get before Sunday, she walked the whole distance alone to get them, and sent them up to me by one of the school children, so that I should not know who went after them. She was careful lest I should notice any change in her. But I caught a reckless, mocking gleam in her eyes, at times, that had never shone there when I knew her first. She associated more with the "other girls," now. I heard her talking and laughing with them in as loud and careless a tone as their own. She even whispered and laughed in the evening meetings. And this, after all the earnest, serious discourse I had had with her, the "refining," "elevating" influences I had tried to throw around her, having first taken her so graciously under my wing! She knew what belonged to agreeable manners, and the advantage of paying a graceful obedience to the dictates of one's moral sense! Something must be very innately wrong in Rebecca, I thought, something I Had not hitherto suspected, else why should she fail in any degree under so admirable a method!

"My dear," I said to her: "I am often tempted to do wrong—especially because my life has been hitherto so vain and thoughtless—but, having resolved to struggle with temptation, and to repel my own selfish inclinations, I will not be content until I come off conqueror; I will not fall out or loiter by the way; I have trials and perplexities, but I will not submit to them, nor be driven from my purpose. Now, are you struggling to resist the little temptations that come to you day by day? Are you striving to make the very best of yourself, Becky?"

I knew how easily I could move Rebecca, either to laughter or tears, so I was not surprised to see her lip tremble, and her eyes fill; but I was surprised at the look of intense anguish, almost of horror, that came into her face. I had not supposed that she was capable of such strong emotion, and I marvelled greatly, what could be the cause.

"Oh," she said; "you don't know, teacher, you don't know! It never seemed so bad before I knew you. I was different brought up from you, and I loved you, and when I knew, oh, then I could die, but I couldn't tell you! Oh, you wouldn't kiss me again, ever, if you knew; and I wish you wouldn't, for it hurts, it hurts worse than if you didn't!"

Rebecca had turned very pale, and drew her breath in long gasping sobs.

"Baby!" I said reassuringly, stroking her hair; "I don't believe you have done anything very wrong." But Rebecca drew away from me.

"You don't know," she said. "I was brought up different—and it was before you came, and I never knew that, what you told me about not trusting people. I thought it was all true, and oh!—there ain't anybody to help! Oh, I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!"

"Rebecca," I said, a little frightened, and convinced that the girl had some serious trouble at heart. "Tell me what the trouble is? Has any one deceived you? And why should any one wish to deceive you, child?"

Rebecca only moaned and shook her head.

"But you must tell me," I said; "I can't help you unless you do."

She drew herself farther away from me, with only these convulsive sobs for a reply. I did not attempt to get nearer to her, to comfort her as it had been my first impulse to do. She had repulsed me once. "You are nervous and excited, my dear," I decided to say; "and something of little consequence, probably, looks like a mountain of difficulty to you. At any rate, when you get ready to confide in me, you must come to me. I shall not question you again."

So I left her, less with a feeling of commiseration for her than with a deep sense of my own pressing burdens and responsibilities.

I had another ex-pupil (Rebecca had been out of school for several weeks), who was a source of considerable anxiety to me—Luther Larkin. He had ceased coming to the Ark to sing with the others. He had not played on his violin since that first night when the string broke.

I heard that he had gone to New Bedford; and it was a day or two afterwards that, coming out of the school-house after the meeting, I saw him standing on the steps alone. I knew that an escort from among the Wallencamp youths was close behind me. I hastened to put my hand on Luther's arm.

"Will you walk home with me?" I said, looking up in his face and smiling. I knew that the face lifted to his then was a beautiful one, that the hand resting on his arm was small and daintily gloved, unlike the bare coarse hands of the Wallencampers. I knew that my dress had an air and a grace also foreign to Wallencamp, that a delicate perfume went up from my garments, that my voice was more than usually winning. I experienced a dangerous sense of satisfaction in the conquest of this unsophisticated youth—a conquest not wholly without its retributive pain and intoxication.

I felt the Cradlebow's arm tremble as we walked up the lane.

"I have a little private lecture to give you, Luther," I said. "Of course you have been very much absorbed in your own affairs lately, but is that an excuse for forsaking your old friends entirely? Especially if you are going away. Are you going away?"

"Yes," said Luther.

"When?" I asked.

"In April," he answered briefly.



"And weren't you ever coming to see me, again?" I murmured with designing soft reproach.

"I was coming up by and by, to say good-bye," said Luther, brokenly.

"Only for that?" I questioned, and sighed with a perfect abandonment of rectitude and good faith to the selfish gratification of that moment.

"What else should I come up for?" he exclaimed, breaking out into sudden passion. "Except to tell you what you don't want to hear; that I love you, teacher, I love you."

"Oh, hush!" I cried with a little accent of unaffected pain. "It isn't right for me to let you talk to me in that way, Luther. Oh, don't you see? you're nothing but a boy to me!"

"That's a lie!" the boy replied, with face and eyes aflame. "And because I am poor, and because I am more ignorant than you, you make it an excuse to trifle with me—and you look only to the outside, but you know I have lived as long as you—a boy's head, you mean," he went on with choking, fiery bitterness. "And it may be, and you are very kind, God knows! But I can tell you one thing, teacher, it isn't a boy's heart for you to put your foot on!"

It was not a boy's strength in the quivering frame and tense, drawn muscles. In his rare passions I admired Lute Cradlebow.

The greater meekness and patience which always followed, I attributed to a lack of perseverance or a too easy abandonment of purpose.

"I hope you will be very happy all your life through, teacher;" he said, as we stood at the door of the Ark; and he spoke very gently, and as though he was going away then forever. Madeline had the key; she and her companions had lingered at the school-house, as usual, after the meeting. I murmured something about being very happy to have such a kind, true friend; that I should probably leave Wallencamp before he went to sea, but I hoped he would write me about his wanderings over the world, and I should always be happy to answer and give him my sisterly advice.

Luther continued, thoughtfully, almost smiling:—

"You remember that night, teacher, ever so long ago it seems, before I knew you, when the boys dragged me into the Ark and I kissed you? I've always kissed the girls when they come home from anywhere, and I never thought, you know. I didn't mean anything by it."

"Yes," I said. I think I must have looked amused. Luther answered the laugh in my eyes with quiet appreciation.

"Well, teacher," he said; "I should like to kiss you just once to-night, and mean it."

"That's a remarkable request," I said; "to come from my oldest pupil; but it is my privilege to bestow, just once. If you will bend down from your commanding height, and put yourself in an humble and submissive attitude before me."

The Cradlebow knelt on the doorstep. I would have stooped to his forehead, but he put up his arm with an extremely boyish, inoffensive gesture, almost with a sob, I thought, to draw me closer.

I would have had that kiss as passionless as though it had been given to a child. The Cradlebow's breath was pure upon my cheek—but I was compelled to feel the answering flame creep slowly in my own blood.

"Never ask me to do that again!" I exclaimed, in righteous exculpation of the act. "Never!"



CHAPTER VIII.

FESTIVITIES AT THE ARK.

Up from the beach, lightly tripping, capacious reticule in hand, came Mrs. Barlow to spend the day at the Ark, unexpectedly! The inspired and felicitous customs of the Wallencampers admitted of no rude surprises; rational joy, alone, pervaded the Ark at this matutinal advent.

Mrs. Barlow, Lovell's mother, presented a charmingly antique appearance—antique not in the sense of advanced years, but the young antique—the gay, the lively, the never-fading antique. She had even a girlish way of simpering and uttering absurdly rapturous exclamations. Her face might have struck one at first as being of a strangely elongated cast, but for its extreme prettiness and simplicity of expression. Her nose was marked by a becoming scallop or two. Her eyes were of the ocean blue. Her dark hair was arranged, behind, in the simplest and most compact manner possible but, in front, art held delightful play. There, it was parted, slightly to the left, over a broad, high forehead, and disposed in braids of eight strands each, gracefully and lovingly looped over Mrs. Barlow's ears.

The tide of cheerful converse was at its full when I came from school to lunch. Amid this preponderance of female society, my friend, Grandpa, shone with an ardent though faintly tolerated light, giving to the lively flow of the discourse, an occasional salty and comprehensive flavor, which dear Grandma Keeler held herself ever in calm and religious readiness to restrain.

I listened, intensely interested, to the conversation, quite content, for my own part, to keep silence; but I caught Mrs. Barlow's eye fixed on me as if in abstracted, beatific thought. Soon was made known the result of her meditation. She had concluded that I was incapable of descending to subjects of an ordinary nature. Leaning far forward on the table, with a smile more ecstatic than any that had gone before, she directed these words at me in a clear, swift-flowing treble:—

"Oh, ain't it dreadful about them poor delewded Mormons?"

"Why?" I exclaimed, involuntarily, blinded by the absolute unexpectedness of the question, and not knowing, in a dearth of daily papers, but that the infatuated people alluded to had been swallowed up of an earthquake, or fallen in a body into the Great Salt Lake.

"Oh, nothing!" said Mrs. Barlow; "only I think it's dreadful, don't yew, settin' such an example to Christian nations?"

"Dreadful! certainly!" I murmured, with intense relief, and allowed my glasses to drop into my lap again.

Thus the conversation turned to subjects of a religious nature.

"Oh, I think it's so nice to have direct dealin's with the Almighty; don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow. "Oh, I think it is! Brother Mark Barlow says he can hear the Lord speakin' to him jest as plain as they could in Old Testament times; oh, yes, jest as plain exactly; Abraham and all them, yew know! And Brother Mark Barlow generally means to go to Sunday school. He says he thinks it's so interestin'; but it's sich an awful ways. Don't yew think it is? Oh, yes, it's a dreadful ways! He don't always. But yew remember that Saturday we had sich a dreadful storm? oh, wasn't it dreadful! Oh, yes! Well, the next day, that was Sunday, Brother Mark Barlow said he heard the Lord sayin' to him, jest as plain as day; 'Mark Barlow, don't you go to Sunday school to-day! You stay home and pick up laths!' and he did, and oh, he got a dreadful pile! most ten dollars worth; but I think it's so nice, don't yew, to have direct dealin's with the Almighty!"

The Barlows, by the way, were regarded with a sort of contemptuous toleration by the Wallencampers in general, on account of their thrift and penuriousness, the branded qualities of sordid and unpoetic natures.

I was sorry when the brief hour of the noon intermission was over, and I had to go back to school.

But at night the Ark became alive. Soon after supper, Mr. Barlow arrived and "Brother Mark Barlow" and Lovell. Then the little room began to fill rapidly. We adjourned to the "parlor" and the melodeon.

"Oh, I do think them plaster Paris picters are so beautiful, don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow, enraptured over a statuette or two of that truly vague description, which adorned the mantelpiece. But she became perfectly lost in delight when Lovell began to sing.

Lovell's was the one execrable voice among the Wallencampers—if anything so weak could be designated by so strong a term—and his manner of keeping time with his head was clock-like in its regularity and painfully arduous; yet, out of that pristine naughtiness which found a hiding-place in the hearts of the Wallencamp youth, Lovell was frequently encouraged to come to the front during their musicals, and if not actually beguiled into executing a solo, was generously applauded in the performance of minor parts. There was comfort, however, in the reflection that if Lovell had indeed possessed the tuneful gift of a Heaven-elected artist, he could not have been so supremely confident of the merit of his own performances, nor could his mother have been more delighted at their brilliancy. She sat with hands clasped in her lap and gazed at her manly offspring.

"Oh, I do think it's so beautiful!" she murmured occasionally to me, aside. "Oh, yes, ain't it beautiful?"

Once, she remarked in greater confidence; "Oh, he's dreadful wild!"

"Lovell?" I inquired, with impulsive incredulity.

"Oh, dreadful!" she continued. "I don't know what he'd ben if we hadn't always restrained him. But somehow, I think there's something dreadful bewitchin' about such folks. Don't yew?"

"Very," I answered with vague, though ardent sympathy.

"Oh, dreadful!" she responded.

Meanwhile the perspiration stood out on Lovell's grave countenance, and his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically backward and forward.

"Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a rebuke to all cynics and unbelievers of any sort whatever.

"Yes'm, so I will, certainly," said Lovell; "so I will, and if I hadn't got such a cold, I'd come down heavy on it too."

"What do you think?" Mrs. Barlow went on in the same confidential aside to me; "he's took it into his head that he wants to get married! Oh, yes, he has really! and I think it's a wonder he never got set on it before. But he never has so but what we could restrain him. But William and I, we're beginning to think he might as well if he wants to. Oh, yes, I think it will be so nice. Don't yew? I think it will be just splendid! And I tell William, Lovell's wife shan't do nothing but set in the parlor and fold her hands, if she don't want to; and she shall have a music, and everything. When we built our new house, you know we used to live in that little house that Brother Mark Barlow lives in now, oh, yes, and I think it's so nice to have a new house, don't yew? I had 'em make the window seats low on purpose, so that Lovell's children could sit on them! Oh, I think it will be so pleasant, don't yew?"

Mrs. Barlow turned her enraptured gaze on me.

"Lovell's wife," I hastened to reply, toying with my glasses; "whoever she may be, is certainly to be envied—and Lovell's children, too"—I added, induced by that transcendently beaming smile; "who will have such a broad window seat to sit on."

Never an evening began in heartier fashion at the Ark.

George Olver, standing next to Rebecca, rolled out a grand and powerful bass.

Lars Thorjon, the Norwegian, maintained a smiling silence, except when he was giving utterance in song to his inspiring tenor.

Madeline played the "music."

I saw her wince sometimes, when the fine though untutored voices around her took on a too wild and exuberant strain. The little woman's own voice was exceedingly gentle and refined; more than that, it had a passionately sweet, sad tone, a rare pathos. I used to wonder what there was in Madeline's heart—what there had been in her life—to make her sing so. Then I remembered how easy it was for her to get out of temper, and how often she slapped the children, and I concluded that it was only a voice after all, and not necessarily indicative of any inward sentiment or emotion.

And the mischievous Harvey Dole—could it be the same youth who stood there now with tearful eyes, chanting his longings to be pure and sanctified and heavenly. This merry youth had a predilection for those religious songs which contained the deepest and saddest sentiment.

"Now, what's the matter with you, Harvey?" said Emily Gaskell, who had but just dropped in. "You know you'll go along hum to-night stunin' my cats! You know what a precious nice time you're calculatin' to have, about two months from now, up in my trees stealin' my peaches, you young devil. 'Wash you from your sins!' Humph! Yes, you need it bad enough, Lord knows! A good poundin', and boilin', and sudzin', you need—and a good soakin' in the bluein' water over night, too."

Emily's eyes sparkled with keen though good-natured satire. There was a flood of crimson color in her cheeks, not entirely the effect of her brisk walk in the open air. She had a spasm of coughing, which she endured as though such discomforts had become quite a matter of course, merely remarking when she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak:—

"Thar', that'll last me for one spell, I guess."

"Won't you set, Emily?" said Grandma.

"No," said Emily. "I can't. I jest come up to tell my man, there, to go home! Levi is over from West Wallen, and wants to see him. Lord, I didn't know you'd got a party, Miss Keeler!" she continued, glancing with an irresistibly comical expression about the room.

"Oh, no! we ain't got no party," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "They jest happened to drop in along."

"Wall now, I should think there'd ben a shower and rained 'em all down at once:" again surveying the occupants of the room with a comprehensively critical air that was hardly flattering.

"I don't see what on 'arth!" she went on. "Half the time you might ransack Wallencamp from top to bottom, and you'd find everybody a'most somewhere, and nobody to hum! It ain't much like the cake Silvy made last week—she's crazier than ever—'Where's the raisins, Silvy?' says I—I always make it chock full of 'em, and there wasn't one,—'Oh,' says Silvy, 'I mixed 'em up so thorough you can't a hardly find 'em.' 'I guess that's jest about the way the Lord put the idees into your head, Silvy,' says I. 'Bless the Lord!' says that poor fool, as slow and solemn as a minister."

"We've been a singing" interposed Grandma Keeler in a voice that contrasted with Emily's, like the flow of a great calm river with the impatient fall of a cataract. "It seems a' most as though I'd been in Heaven. They was jest a singin'—'The Light of the World is Jesus,' I shall never forgit, when I was down to camp-meetin' to Marthy's Vin'yard a good while ago—there was a little blind boy stood up on a bench and sung it all alone; and it made me cry to see him standin' there with his poor little white face, and eyes that couldn't see a' one of all the faces lookin' up to him, a singin' that out as bold and free, and he did pronounce the words so beautiful so as everybody could hear—I can hear him a singin' of it out, now—'The Light of the World is Jesus.' And I suppose we git to thinkin' that the light's in our eyes, maybe, or the light's in the sun, or the light's in the lamp, maybe. But you might put out my eyes,"—said Grandma Keeler, closing her eyes as she spoke, and looking very peaceful and happy—"and you might put out the sun, and you might put out the lamp, and say—'Thar', Almiry's all in the dark room, she can't see nothin' now'—but the Light of the World 'ud be thar jest the same, you couldn't put out the light—'The Light of the World is Jesus.'"

"Oh, I didn't know ye was havin' a meetin'," said Emily Gaskell, mockingly.

"No more we ain't, Emily," said Grandma Keeler. "We was jest cheerin' ourselves up a little, singin' about home. Come you, now, and sing with us":

"We're goin' home, No more to roam."

With eyes still closed, with head thrown back, and a heavenly serene expression on her face, Grandma began the refrain, while Madeline struck the chords on the melodeon, and the singers took up the words with a hearty cheer:—

"We're goin' home, No more to roam, No more to sin and sorrow; No more to wear The brow of care, We're goin' home to-morrow."

Then the chorus, "We're going home," joyfully repeated, died away at last, more plaintively, "We're going home to-morrow."

"Wall, I'm goin' home to-night," said Emily, and, as I looked up at her, I caught the same mischievous gleam in her unsoftened eyes. "So strike up Something lively now, and I'll waltz down the lane to it. 'Are your windows open towards Jerusalem?'—Lord, can't you think o' something warmer than that for this weather?"

But the singers were going on gloriously:

"Are your windows open towards Jerusalem? Though as captives here a little while we stay For the coming of the King in His glory, Are you watching, day by day?"

Emily tightened the shawl around her neck with a quick motion. In going out, she took an indirect course through the room, purposely to pass by where I was sitting.

"Are your windows open towards Jerusalem?" said she, stooping and whispering in my ear: "Dave Rollin's out there hangin' onto the fence one side the bushes, and Lute Cradlebow the other, and they don't see each other no more than two bats."

"Are your windows open towards Jerusalem" was a favorite with the Wallencampers. On this occasion they repeated it several times. Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot, who had been engaging in a game of checkers in the little kitchen, left the board as the well-loved strains greeted their ears, and came in to join the group.

Grandpa had been consigned to the kitchen stove, with a corn-popper. I do not think that he regretted being removed, somewhat from the more inspiring scenes which animated the Ark. I was amused to follow, with my ear, the old gentleman's progress in the successive stages of his corn-shelling and corn-popping operations with certain contingent misfortunes, as when he went into the pantry to look for a pan, and brought down a large quantity of tin-ware clanging about his ears, and rolling in all directions over the floor, while I immediately inferred from the tones of his voice that he was enjoying a little unembarrassed colloquy with the powers of darkness. Once, in his shuffling peregrinations, he tipped over the little bench which sustained the water-pail. A deep sigh of horror and despair escaped his lips, and was followed by a "What the Devil!" borne in upon the song-laden air with unmistakable force and distinctness.

"For Heaven's sake, ma," said Madeline, looking up sharply; "what can pa be a' doin??"

"Oh," calmly said Grandma Keeler, "I guess he's only settlin' down."

And with Grandma, indeed, the turmoils of this sublunary sphere implied only a vast ultimate settling down.

But if such deep rest came to Grandpa, it was only as a dream from which he was soon to be rudely awakened.

The sound of his footsteps had ceased. I knew that he was seated in his chair by the fire, and I heard the long-handled popper shaken back and forth upon the stove, at first as if moved by the power of a steadfast purpose. But the sound grew fainter, the motions less regular. They were several times desperately renewed, and then ceased altogether, so quickly had Grandpa soared beyond the low vicissitudes of a corn-popping world. Soon a burning smell arose. Then the door of the kitchen opened. Grandpa was startled. I knew the catastrophe. The corn-popper with its contents had been precipitated to the floor. Then I heard a courteous male voice, with just a touch of suppressed merriment in it:—

"Never mind, Captain! small business for you, steering such a slim craft as that, eh? On a red-hot, stove, too!"

"Humph! Topmast heavier than the hull," replied Grandpa, accepting with gratitude, in this extremity, the sympathy of the new-comer.

The other gave a low laugh.

"Never mind, Captain!" he repeated, "we'll have it slick here in a minute. Let me take the broom. You've got it wrong side up. By Harry, we've got the deluge inside the Ark this time, Captain!"

"Tarnal water-pail slipped moorin's," confessed Grandpa.

Then followed a vigorous sound of corn rattling, and water swashing against the sides of the room, and I knew that Mr. Rollin, the elegant, was sweeping out the kitchen of the Ark.

"I guess they's somebody else come," exclaimed Grandma, with hospitable glee. "Wall, I declare for't. I guess I'll go out into my kitchen and git that little no-back cheer. Seems to me as though we'd got all the rest on 'em in use, pretty much."

"I'll go, ma," said Madeline. "Teacher'll be wanted to play now, and may be she will? though she can't be got to do it for common folks."

I did not enjoy playing on Madeline's melodeon. Any performances of that kind which I had undertaken had been confined exclusively to an audience of the Wallencampers. I had certainly never made an exception for the amusement of the fisherman. But I flattered myself that there was no trace of resentment in my tone when I said, "Sit still, Madeline, please, I know where the chair is. Don't I, Grandma?" and was groping my way out through the green curtained "keepin'" rooms, towards Grandma's culinary apartment, thankful for a momentary escape from the heated atmosphere of the "parlor," when I heard just behind me a voice of the most exquisite smoothness:—

"Miss Hungerford, allow me."

"Mr. Rollin!" I exclaimed, with an overwhelming sense of the ludicrousness of the situation: "How dared you come through the room where they were all sitting and follow me out here! Did Grandma tell you that I had gone after a little no-back chair for you to sit on?"

"She did," replied Mr. Rollin, with impressive gravity: "and I took it as most divinely kind of you, too; though, if I might be allowed any choice in the matter, I think I should be likely to assume a much more graceful and more easeful and natural position in a chair constructed after the ordinary pattern, Miss Hungerford, especially as after my exertions in the kitchen I feel the need of entire repose."

"But this is the only one left," I answered, with suppressed laughter. "Do you think you can find it, Mr. Rollin?"

"If you should leave me now," replied the fisherman; "I should have positively no idea whither to direct my steps."

"Then I shall be very happy to get it for you," I said.

"But I could not think," he continued, "of allowing you to pursue your way through this utter darkness to the extreme rear of the Ark alone. I beg you to show me the way."

I was not disposed to commit so gross an impropriety as to linger with Mr. Rollin in "Grandma's kitchen," which we had reached, and through whose broad, uncurtained windows the moonlight was pouring in with a clear, fantastic radiance.

"Isn't this glorious!" exclaimed the fisherman, in a tone nearly as rapturous as Mrs. Barlow's own. "Oh, you don't think of going back now, Miss Hungerford! After I've mopped the kitchen floor, and braved all Wallencamp in its lair, and groped my way out through those infernally black rooms, for the chance of having a few quiet words with you."

Mr. Rollin's eyes were not snaky, nor his manner suggestive of dark duplicity; yet I always felt a certain unaccountable discomfort while in his presence, as though there was need of keeping my own conscience particularly on the alert.

I knew that the group in the parlor would be counting the moments of our absence.

"How can you ask me—" I began, in a tone of cheerful remonstrance, at the same time readjusting my glasses to glance about for the little "no-back" chair—"How can you ask me to stay out here talking with you, when you know——"

"Oh, I know." Mr. Rollin interrupted quickly. "I know how very thoughtful and considerate you are for those people, Miss Hungerford. I know what lofty ideas you have just now of consecrating yourself to the work of refining and elevating the Wallencampers. I know how coolly you can fix your eyes on a certain goal, and stumble indiscriminately over everything that comes in your way. I know what a deucedly superior state of mind you've gotten into. I know too about Miss B's school, and Miss L's school, and the Seminary at Mount Blank, and the winters in New York."

There was triumph at last, in Mr. Rollin's tone.

"You have taken pains to collect a great deal of information about me;" I replied, virtuously concluding that I should disappoint the fisherman more by not appearing vexed.

"Is it strange?" he continued earnestly, with an unconscious parody on his usually suave and insinuating manner. "You will allow, Miss Hungerford, that you might strike one, at first, as not being exactly in the ordinary line of home missionaries, that is, as not having been trained for the work, exactly; a sort of novitiate, I mean—confound it! You will allow that you might strike one at first, as being deucedly new In that role."

After this, I smiled with a faintly malicious sense of satisfaction at Mr. Rollin's confusion, though I felt that I had been cut to the heart.

"And when I spoke about having found out about your past life," he went on, struggling desperately with his lost cause; "I did not mean that there was anything bad, you know; only that you sought pleasant diversions in common with the rest of humanity, and enjoyed the Heaven-born instinct of knowing how to have a good time, and weren't always the ambitious recluse and religious devotee that you choose to be just at present; though I've sometimes wished that I could turn saint so all of a sudden, but I couldn't," added the fisherman, despondently; "if I should go to the ends of the earth in that capacity, nobody'd take any stock in me, whatever; and, after all, what does it amount to?

"This isn't what I meant to say, any of it;" he sighed angrily. "It's just what I meant not to say—confound it! You've done gloriously; you've played the thing through to perfection; you've made an inimitable success of it; but Wallencamp doesn't offer scope wide enough for your powers. I offer you a field hitherto untilled, left to the wandering winds and the birds of the air, extensive enough in its forlorn iniquity, I assure you, to engage your patient and continued efforts. It may prove productive of good results yet, who knows? Is it my fault that I didn't know you sooner?"

I did not mistake the change in Mr. Rollin's tone, nor the meaning in his eyes, but as we stood there by the window, in the full moonlight, I caught a glimpse of another face outside, vanishing up the lane—almost like a ghostly apparition it seemed to me—the handsome pale young face. I guessed instinctively whose it was, and suffered a pang of sharp, unconfessed pain, while the fisherman was murmuring in my ear.

"Don't speak to me again of missions!" I cried with the strong and tragic air of consciously blighted aspirations. "I shall go on no more missions, great or small. It is very true what you have tried so delicately to intimate. I was not fit for the work I undertook to do. I have only made mistakes all the way along. Possibly I have been only 'playing a part.' What does it amount to, indeed! What does it amount to!"

"Heavens!" said Mr. Rollin; "play a part, by all means; never be sincere in anything you do. I never tried it but once, and I've made a desperate mess of it. Can't you understand that what I said was only in the purest sort of self-defence? You weigh my words so nicely. Well, you are considerate enough, God knows, of those dirty brats and ignorant louts—coddling that girl, Rebecca, who is a good-hearted creature enough, but not fit for respectable people to touch their hands to; and associating with such conceited boors as that George Olver, and that grinning clown, Harvey, and that poor fool, Lovell Barlow, and that what-d'ye-call him—that fiddling young devil with the bird-like name——"

Mr. Rollin stopped suddenly.

"You might make allowances for a man in a passion," he said; "instead of dissecting his words in that cold-blooded way."

"I had no notion of dissecting your words," I said, provoked into a desperate honesty; "I believe them, as a whole, to be utterly false."

"From the very beginning," said Mr. Rollin; "thank you; so I can begin all over again; meanwhile,—you will forgive me? Imagine that I'm one of those dirty little beggars that go to school to you. If one of them should come to you and say that he was sorry?—"

"I should only be intensely surprised," I said; "they never do such things."

"Then I have a superior claim on your clemency," said the fisherman; "for I am sorry and humiliate my soul to the lowest depths of the confessional."

It was the voice of the plausible, easy-going fisherman again.

My hand was on the latch. "I am not angry; I would rather be friends," I said with averted face, as we were returning through the dark "keeping-rooms."

"When you get out of this realm of myths and missions, and general dread and discomfort," said Mr. Rollin, "on to comprehensible soil again, where ordinary sinners are sure of some sort of a footing,—and bad as a fellow is he knows there are plenty more like him,—then I shan't appear to you in such a deucedly poor light as I do now, a doubtful sort of pearl in a setting of isolated cedars, with my beauty and my genius and my heavenly aspirations all unappreciated, or made to descend as a greater measure of condemnation on my devoted auburn head. Truly, I believe that an evil star attends my course in Wallencamp. My own ideas seem strange to me. I cannot grasp them. My language is wild and disconnected, I fancy, like that of the early Norse poets. When I meet you in the world, I shall hope to recover some of the old-time coherence and felicity of speech which I remember to have heard practised among the world's people; and it isn't long now, thank Heaven, before you'll leave Wallencamp behind you. When you go home——"

When I should go home, indeed! I had hardly dared to cherish the thought. I stifled the rising flood of exultation in my breast—but how pale and interesting I should look! And, then, I would describe Wallencamp to my own loving friends as it really was, and what a lion they would make of me! Had they not always lionized my virtuous efforts to the fullest extent!

My face must have been very happy in the dark. I felt even almost kindly towards Mr. Rollin. We were at the last door. As we entered the lighted room, Grandma's broad face began to beam with slow surprise, "Why," said she; "where's the little no-back cheer?"

Mr. Rollin's resources in such extremities usually bespoke a lifetime of patient and adroit application, but now he hesitated. The accumulated glory of years seemed likely to be wrecked on the phantom of a little no-back chair.

"Moonstruck? Eh, Mr. Rollin?" inquired Harvey Dole.

The fisherman regarded Harvey with a smile of quiet and amused sufferance.

"Ah! Mrs. Keeler," said he, with a graceful bow in Grandma's direction; "Mrs. Philander did me the honor when I came in, to ask me to stand up with the singers at the melodeon; a position which I shall be most happy to take, although I fear that my vocal powers are of an exceptionally poor order."

The fisherman turned over the leaves of the despised Moody and Sankey hymnal for Madeline, was profoundly attentive while the singing was going on, and made suave and affable remarks here and there during the intervals; then glanced at his watch with an expression of highly-affected concern, bade an elaborate adieu to the company, and retired from the scene.

"Oh, I think that Mr. Rollin is so elegant, don't yew?" said Mrs. Barlow. "Oh, yes; I think he's so genteel!"

"I don't think so at all," said Lovell. "I don't, certainly. I don't think so."

"He ain't got much voice;" said Mrs. Barlow, clasping her hands in raptured appreciation of her matchless Lovell.

Finally, Grandpa, with a haggard smile on his features, stumbled across the little landing of the stairway, between the parlor and the kitchen, bearing with him a pan of much scorched and battered pop-corn.

"Oh, ain't them beautiful!" arose Mrs. Barlow's reassuring cry.

Grandma had already set an example to her guests by making a convenient receptacle of her capacious lap, and pouring some of the corn into it, an example which the fortunate scions of the skirted tribe, now arranged in rows on one side of the room, followed, each in turn. Of the male species on the other side of the room, Lovell happened to be first in line. As the corn came nearer and nearer to him, he began to look about wildly, and to cough. His legs trembled violently with the effort he was making to keep them close together. He accepted the pan of pop-corn with a gesture of feverish haste, and proceeded to pour the contents into his lap, but, as he poured they disappeared, and the faster he poured the faster they disappeared, and the more strenuous exertions he made to keep his legs close together, the wider seemed to grow the chasm through which the corn went rattling down on to the floor, until Lovell's eyes began to whirl in their orbits and drops of sweat stood out upon his forehead.

Harvey, who appreciated the situation and was bursting with a desire to roar out his mirthful emotions, showed a kind heart above all, and turned the tables nicely in poor Lovell's behalf.

"Look here, Lovell!" he cried; "that's a pretty trick to play on us fellows, you rascal! you'd better let up on that, now!"

Lovell grasped at the idea as a drowning man might grasp at a good substantial raft that should come floating down his way.

"T-that's so," he stammered. "It is too bad, Harvey. It-t-t is, certainly, but anything for a j-joke, you know. Here, take it yourself, Harvey, t-take it; take it, quick!"

And Lovell got down on his knees as though he would have rendered dumb thanks to Heaven for his unexpected deliverance, and proceeded to gather up the corn with glad alacrity.

After this, the water was passed, and, at such times, it was always comforting to consider how bountiful nature had been in this respect to Wallencamp, and that the demand could never be quite equal to the supply.

Then the company began to disperse with many hand-shakings and "Why don't ye all drop into my house?" etc., etc.

Lovell Barlow came back twice to shake hands with me; and returning the third time, got lost, somehow, in the general confusion, and shook hands very fervently with his mother, who was standing in the door.

I heard one of the departing visitors exclaim: "Why, where's Lute? I should a thought he'd a dropped in, sure!"

And another answered: "Oh, he's got some new notion into his head, I reckon! goin' on a cruise, may be!"

Rebecca was going out with a girl companion, talking rather loudly. I was moved to take her hand a moment, gently detaining her. She looked exceedingly bright and pretty. Her physical beauty was perfect, yet I believed that the soul was only half awakened in the girl.

So as I held her hand a moment, with the others taking noisy leave about us, I looked into her face with what she might have read as: "Weren't you laughing rather loudly, my dear? I can see now that you are not so happy as you would have people believe. Why not confide in me, and let me straighten your difficulty out for you?"

But Rebecca's eyes were downcast, and her cheeks crimson. She let her hand slip passively out of mine, and passed on, without a word.



CHAPTER IX.

LOVELL "POPS THE QUESTION."

One morning, ere we had breakfasted at the Ark, Lovell Barlow, like some new-fangled orb of day, was seen to surmount the ruddy verge of the horizon. He bore a gun upon his shoulders, and advanced with a singularly martial and self-confident tread. As he entered the Ark, he placed the gun against the wall, and sat down and folded his arms, and looked as though he could be brave without it.

"Well, Madeline," said he, with a determined gaze fixed straight before him on vacuity, and with a desperate affectation of spontaneity in his tone—"Well, Madeline, mother and father have gone to Aunt Marcia's, I suppose to spend a week, I suppose—ahem!—ahem!—I suppose so."

"You don't say so, Lovell!" exclaimed Madeline. "And what'll poor Robin do now, Lovell? Oh, what'll poor Robin do now?"