"Not many hours, with this spring balm in the air," replied her father. "You must make haste. By noon, it will be all a drizzle."

"Will it be quite safe for her to go alone?" asked Mrs. Gartney.

"I'll ask Aunt Faith to let me have Glory. She showed me the walk last summer. It is fair she should see this, now."

So the morning odds and ends were done up quickly at Cross Corners and at the Old House, and then Faith and Glory set forth together—the latter in as sublime a rapture as could consist with mortal cohesion.

The common roadside was an enchanted path. The glittering rime transfigured the very cart ruts into bars of silver; and every coarse weed was a fretwork of beauty.

"Bells on their toes" they had, this morning, assuredly; each footfall made a music on the sod.

Over the slippery bridge—out across a stretch of open meadow, and then along a track that skirted the border of a sparse growth of trees, projecting itself like a promontory upon the level land—round its abrupt angle into a sweep of meadow again, on whose farther verge rose the Pasture Rocks.

Behind these rocks swelled up gently a slope, half pasture, half woodland—neither open ground nor forest; but, although clear enough for comfortable walking, studded pretty closely with trees that often interlaced their branches overhead, and made great, pillared aisles, among whose shade, in summer, wound delicious little footpaths that all came out together, midway up, into—what you shall be told of presently.

Here, among and beyond the rocks, were oaks, and pines, and savins—each needle-like leaf a shimmering lance—each clustering branch a spray of gems—and the stout, spreading limbs of the oaks delineating themselves against the sky above in Gothic frost-work.

Suddenly—before they thought it could be so near—they came up and out into a broader opening. Between two rocks that made, as it were, a gateway, and around whose bases were grouped sentinel evergreens, they came into this wider space, floored with flat rock, the surface of a hidden ledge, carpeted with crisp mosses in the summer, whose every cup and hollow held a jewel now—and inclosed with lofty oaks and pines, while, straight beyond, where the woods shut in again far closer than below, rose a bold crag, over whose brow hung pendent birches that in their icy robing drooped like glittering wings of cherubim above an altar.

All around and underneath, this strange magnificence. Overhead, the everlasting Blue, that roofed it in with sapphire. In front, the rough, gigantic shrine.

"It is like a cathedral!" said Faith, solemnly and low.

"See!" whispered Glory, catching her companion hastily by the arm—"there is the minister!"

A little way beyond them, at the right, out from among the clumps of evergreen where some other of the little wood walks opened, a figure advanced without perceiving them. It was Roger Armstrong, the new minister. He held his hat in his hand. He walked, uncovered, as he would have into a church, into this forest temple, where God's finger had just been writing on the walls.

When he turned, slowly, his eye fell on the other two who stood there. It lighted up with a quick joy of sympathy. He came forward. Faith bowed. Glory stood back, shyly. Neither party seemed astonished at the meeting. It was so plain why they came, that if they had wondered at all, it would have been that the whole village should not be pouring out hither, also.

Mr. Armstrong led them to the center of the rocky space. "This is the best point," said he. And then was silent. There was no need of words. A greatness of thought made itself felt from one to the other.

Only, between still pauses, words came that almost spoke themselves.

"'Eye hath not seen, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, that which God hath prepared for them that love him.' What a commentary upon His promise is a glory like this!

"'And they shall all shine like the sun in the kingdom of my Father!'"

Faith stood by the minister's side, and glanced, when he spoke, from the wonderful beauty before her to a face whose look interpreted it all. There was something in the very presence of this man that drew others who approached him into the felt presence of God. Because he stood therein in the spirit. These are the true apostles whom Christ sends forth.

Glory could have sobbed with an oppression of reverence, enthusiasm, and joy.

"It is only a glimpse," said Mr. Armstrong, by and by. "It is going, already."

A drip—drip—was beginning to be heard.

"You ought to get away from under the trees before the thaw comes fully on," continued he. "A branch breaks, now and then, and the ice will be falling constantly. I can show you a more open way than the one you came by, I think."

And he gave his arm to Faith over the slope that even now was growing wet and slippery in the sun. Faith touched it with a reverence, and dropped it again, modestly, when they reached a safer foothold.

Glory kept behind. Mr. Armstrong turned now and then, with a kindly word, and a thought for her safety. Once he took her hand, and helped her down a sudden descent in the path, where the water had run over and made a smooth, dangerous glare.

"I shall call soon to see your father and mother, Miss Gartney," said he, when they reached the road again beyond the brook, and their ways home lay in different directions. "This meeting, to-day, has given me pleasure."

"How?" Faith wondered silently, as she kept on to the Cross Corners. She had hardly spoken a word. But, then, she might have remembered that the minister's own words had been few, yet her very speechlessness before him had come from the deep pleasure that his presence had given to her. The recognition of souls cares little for words. Faith's soul had been in her face to-day, as Roger Armstrong had seen it each Sunday, also, in the sweet, listening look she uplifted before him in the church. He bent toward this young, pure life, with a joy in its gentle purity; the joy of an elder over a younger angel in the school of God.

And Glory? she laid up in her own heart a beautiful remembrance of something she had never known before. Of a near approach to something great and high, yet gentle and beneficent. Of a kindly, helping touch, a gracious smile, a glance that spoke straight to the mute aspiration within her.

The minister had not failed, through all her humbleness and shyness, to read some syllables of that large, unuttered life of hers that lay beneath. He whose labor it is to save souls, learns always the insight that discerns souls.

"I have seen the Winter!" cried Faith, glowing and joyous, as she came in from her walk.

"It has been a beautiful time!" said Glory to her shadow sister, when she went to hang away hood and shawl. "It has been a beautiful time—and I've been really in it—partly!"



CHAPTER XVIII.

OUT IN THE SNOW.

"Sydnaein showers Of sweet discourse, whose powers Can crown old winter's head with flowers." CRASHAW.

Winter had not exhausted her repertory, however. She had more wonders to unfold.

There came a long snowstorm.

"Faithie," said her father, coming in, wrapped up in furs from a visit to the stable, "put your comfortables on, and we'll go and see the snow. We'll make tracks, literally, for the hills. There isn't a road fairly broken between here and Grover's Peak. The snow lies beautifully, though; and there isn't a breath of wind. It will be a sight to see."

Faith brought, quickly, sontag, jacket, and cloak—hood and veil, and long, warm snow boots, and in ten minutes was ready, as she averred, for a sledge ride to Hudson's Bay.

Luther drove the sleigh close to the kitchen door, that Faith might not have to cross the yard to reach it, and she stepped directly from the threshold into the warm nest of buffalo robes; while Mis' Battis put a great stone jug of hot water in beside her feet, asserting that it was "a real comfortin' thing on a sleigh ride, and that they needn't be afraid of its leakin', for the cork was druv in as tight as an eye tooth!"

So, out by the barn, into the road, and away from the village toward the hills, they went, with the glee of resonant bells and excited expectation.

A mile, or somewhat more, along the Sedgely turnpike, took them into a bit of woods that skirted the road on either side, for a considerable distance. Away in, under the trees, the stillness and the whiteness and the wonderful multiplication of snow shapes were like enchantment. Each bush had an attitude and drapery and expression of its own, as if some weird life had suddenly been spellbound in these depths. Cherubs, and old women, and tall statue shapes like images of gods, hovered, and bent, and stood majestic, in a motionless poise. Over all, the bent boughs made marble and silver arches in shadow and light, and, far down between, the vistas lengthened endlessly, still crowded with mystic figures, haunting the long galleries with their awful beauty.

They went on, penetrating a lifeless silence; their horse's feet making the first prints since early morning in the unbroken smoothness of the way, and the only sound the gentle tinkle of their own bells, as they moved pleasantly, but not fleetly, along.

So, up the ascent, where the land lay higher, toward the hills.

"I feel," said Faith, "as if I had been hurried through the Louvre, or the Vatican, or both, and hadn't half seen anything. Was there ever anything so strange and beautiful?"

"We shall find more Louvres presently," said her father. "We'll keep the road round Grover's Peak, and turn off, as we come back, down Garland Lane."

"That lovely, wild, shady road we took last summer so often, where the grapevines grow so, all over the trees?"

"Exactly," replied Mr. Gartney. "But you mustn't scream if we thump about a little, in the drifts up there. It's pretty rough, at the best of times, and the snow will have filled in the narrow spaces between the rocks and ridges, like a freshet. Shall you be afraid?"

"Afraid! Oh, no, indeed! It's glorious! I think I should like to go everywhere!"

"There is a good deal of everywhere in every little distance," said Mr. Gartney. "People get into cars, and go whizzing across whole States, often, before they stop to enjoy thoroughly something that is very like what they might have found within ten miles of home. For my part, I like microscopic journeying."

"Leaving 'no stone unturned.' So do I," said Faith. "We don't half know the journey between Kinnicutt and Sedgely yet, I think. And then, too, they're multiplied, over and over, by all the different seasons, and by different sorts of weather. Oh, we shan't use them up, in a long while!"

Saidie Gartney had not felt, perhaps, in all her European travel, the sense of inexhaustible pleasure that Faith had when she said this.

Down under Grover's Peak, with the river on one side, and the white-robed cedar thickets rising on the other—with the low afternoon sun glinting across from the frosted roofs of the red mill buildings and barns and farmhouses to the rocky slope of the Peak.

Then they came round and up again, over a southerly ridge, by beautiful Garland Lane, that she knew only in its summer look, when the wild grape festooned itself wantonly from branch to branch, and sometimes, even, from side to side; and so gave the narrow forest road its name.

Quite into fairyland they had come now, in truth; as if, skirting the dark peak that shut it off from ordinary espial, they had lighted on a bypath that led them covertly in. Trailing and climbing vines wore their draperies lightly; delicate shrubs bowed like veiled shapes in groups around the bases of tall tree trunks, and slight-stemmed birches quivered under their canopies of snow. Little birds hopped in and out under the pure, still shelter, and left their tiny tracks, like magical hieroglyphs, in the else untrodden paths.

"Lean this way, Faith, and keep steady!" cried Mr. Gartney, as the horse plunged breast high into a drift, and the sleigh careened toward the side Faith was on. It was a sharp strain, but they plowed their way through, and came upon a level again. This by-street was literally unbroken. No one had traversed it since the beginning of the storm. The drifts had had it all their own way there, and it involved no little adventurousness and risk, as Mr. Gartney began to see, to pioneer a passage through. But the spirit of adventure was upon them both. On all, I should say; for the strong horse plunged forward, from drift to drift, as though he delighted in the encounter. Moreover, to turn was impossible.

Faith laughed, and gave little shrieks, alternately, as they rose triumphantly from deep, "slumpy" hollows, or pitched headlong into others again. Thus, struggling, enjoying—just frightened enough, now and then, to keep up the excitement—they came upon the summit of the ridge. Now their way lay downward. This began to look really almost perilous. With careful guiding, however, and skillful balancing—tipping, creaking, sinking, emerging—they kept on slowly, about half the distance down the descent.

Suddenly, the horse, as men and brutes, however sagacious, sometimes will, made a miscalculation of depth or power—lost his sure balance—sunk to his body in the yielding snow—floundered violently in an endeavor to regain safe footing—and, snap! crash! was down against the drift at the left, with a broken shaft under him!

Mr. Gartney sprang to his head.

One runner was up—one down. The sleigh stuck fast at an angle of about thirty degrees. Faith clung to the upper side.

Here was a situation! What was to be done? Twilight coming on—no help near—no way of getting anywhere!

"Faith," said Mr. Gartney, "what have you got on your feet?"

"Long, thick snow boots, father. What can I do?"

"Do you dare to come and try to unfasten these buckles? There is no danger. Major can't stir while I hold him by the head."

Faith jumped out into the snow, and valorously set to work at the buckles. She managed to undo one, and to slip out the fastening of the trace, on one side, where it held to the whiffletree. But the horse was lying so that she could not get at the other.

"I'll come there, father!" she cried, clambering and struggling through the drift till she came to the horse's head. "Can't I hold him while you undo the harness?"

"I don't believe you can, Faithie. He isn't down so flat as to be quite under easy control."

"Not if I sit on his head?" asked Faith.

"That might do," replied her father, laughing. "Only you would get frightened, maybe, and jump up too soon."

"No, I won't," said Faith, quite determined upon heroism. While she spoke, she had picked up the whip, which had fallen close by, doubled back the lash against the handle, and was tying her blue veil to its tip. Then she sat down on the animal's great cheek, which she had never fancied to be half so broad before, and gently patted his nose with one hand, while she upheld her blue flag with the other. Major's big, panting breaths came up, close beside her face. She kept a quick, watchful eye upon the road below.

"He's as quiet as can be, father! It must be what Miss Beecher called the 'chivalry of horses'!"

"It's the chivalry that has to develop under petticoat government!" retorted Mr. Gartney.

At this moment Faith's blue flag waved vehemently over her head. She had caught the jingle of bells, and perceived a sleigh, with a man in it, come out into the crossing at the foot of Garland Lane. The man descried the signal and the disaster, and the sleigh stopped. Alighting, he led his horse to the fence, fastened him there, and turning aside into the steep, narrow, unbroken road, began a vigorous struggle through the drifts to reach the wreck.

Coming nearer, he discerned and recognized Mr. Gartney, who also, at the same moment, was aware of him. It was Mr. Armstrong.

"Keep still a minute longer, Faith," said her father, lifting the remaining shaft against the dasher, and trying to push the sleigh back, away from the animal. But this, alone, he was unable to accomplish. So the minister came up, and found Faith still seated on the horse's head.

"Miss Gartney! Let me hold him!" cried he.

"I'm quite comfortable!" laughed Faith. "If you would just help my father, please!"

The sleigh was drawn back by the combined efforts of the two gentlemen, and then both came round to Faith.

"Now, Faith, jump!" said her father, placing his hands upon the creature's temple, close beside her, while Mr. Armstrong caught her arms to snatch her safely away. Faith sprang, or was lifted as she sprang, quite to the top of the huge bank of snow under and against which they had, among them, beaten in and trodden down such a hollow, and the instant after, Mr. Gartney releasing Major's head, and uttering a sound of encouragement, the horse raised himself, with a half roll, and a mighty scramble, first to his knees, and then to his four feet again, and shook his great skin.

Mr. Gartney examined the harness. The broken shaft proved the extent of damage done. This, at the moment, however, was irremediable. He knotted the hanging straps and laid them over the horse's neck. Then he folded a buffalo skin, and arranged it, as well as he could, above and behind the saddle, which he secured again by its girth.

"Mr. Armstrong," said he, as he completed this disposal of matters, "you came along in good time. I am very much obliged to you. If you will do me the further favor to take my daughter home, I will ride to the nearest house where I can obtain a sleigh, and some one to send back for these traps of mine."

"Miss Gartney," said the minister, in answer, "can you sit a horse's back as well as you did his eyebrow?"

Faith laughed, and reaching her arms to the hands upheld for them, was borne safely from her snowy pinnacle to the buffalo cushion. Her father took the horse by the bit, and Mr. Armstrong kept at his side holding Faith firmly to her seat. In this fashion, grasping the bridle with one hand, and resting the other on Mr. Armstrong's shoulder, she was transported to the sleigh at the foot of the hill.

"We were talking about long journeys in small circuits," said Faith, when she was well tucked in, and they had set off on a level and not utterly untracked road. "I think I have been to the Alhambra, and to Rome, and have had a peep into fairyland, and come back, at last, over the Alps!"

Mr. Armstrong understood her.

"It has been beautiful," said he. "I shall begin to expect always to encounter you whenever I get among things wild and wonderful!"

"And yet I have lived all my life, till now, in tame streets," said Faith. "I thought I was getting into tamer places still, when we first came to the country. But I am finding out Kinnicutt. One can't see the whole of anything at once."

"We are small creatures, and can only pick up atoms as we go, whether of things outward or inward. People talk about taking 'comprehensive views'; and they suppose they do it. There is only One who does."

Faith was silent.

"Did it ever occur to you," said Mr. Armstrong, "how little your thought can really grasp at once, even of what you already know? How narrow your mental horizon is?"

"Doesn't it seem strange," said Faith, in a subdued tone, "that the earth should all have been made for such little lives to be lived in, each in its corner?"

"If it did not thereby prove these little lives to be but the beginning. This great Beyond that we get glimpses of, even upon earth, makes it so sure to us that there must be an Everlasting Life, to match the Infinite Creation. God puts us, as He did Moses, into a cleft of the rock, that we may catch a glimmer of His glory as He goes by; and then He tells us that one day we 'shall know even as also we are known'!"

"And I suppose it ought to make us satisfied to live whatever little life is given us?" said Faith, gently and wistfully.

Mr. Armstrong turned toward her, and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"Has that thought troubled you, too? Never let it do so again, my child! Believe that however little of tangible present good you may have, you have the unseen good of heaven, and the promise of all things to come."

"But we do see lives about us in the world that seem to be and to accomplish so much!"

"And so we ask why ours should not be like them? Yes; all souls that aspire, must question that; but the answer comes! I will give you, some day, if you like, the thought that comforted me at a time when that question was a struggle."

"I should like!" said Faith, with deeply stirred and grateful emphasis.

Then they drove on in silence, for a while; and then the minister, pleasantly and easily, brought on a conversation of everyday matters; and so they came to Cross Corners, just as Mrs. Gartney was gazing a little anxiously out of the window, down the road.

Mrs. Gartney urged the minister to come in and join them at the tea table; but "it was late in the week—he had writing to finish at home that evening—he would very gladly come another time."

"Mother!" cried Faith, presently, moving out of a dream in which she had been sitting before the fire, "I wonder whether it has been two hours, or two weeks, or two years, since we set off from the kitchen door! I have seen so much, and I have heard so much. I told Mr. Armstrong, after we met him, that I had been through the Alhambra and the Vatican, and into fairyland, and over the Alps. And after that, mother," she added, low, "I think he almost took me into heaven!"



CHAPTER XIX.

A "LEADING."

"The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand And share its dewdrop with another near." MRS. BROWNING.

Glory McWhirk was waiting upstairs, in Faith's pretty, white, dimity-hung chamber.

These two girls, of such utterly different birth and training, were drawing daily toward each other across the gulf of social circumstance that separated them.

Twice a week, now, Glory came over, and found her seat and her books ready in Miss Faith's pleasant room, and Faith herself waiting to impart to her, or to put her in the way of gathering, those bits of week-day knowledge she had ignorantly hungered for so long.

Glory made quick progress. A good, plain foundation had been laid during the earlier period of her stay with Miss Henderson, by a regular attendance, half daily, at the district school. Aunt Faith said "nobody's time belonged to anybody that knew better themselves, until they could read, and write, and figure, and tell which side of the globe they lived on." Then, too, the girl's indiscriminate gleaning from such books as had come in her way, through all these years, assorted itself gradually, now, about new facts.

Glory's "good times" had, verily, begun at last.

On this day that she sat waiting, Faith had been called down by her mother to receive some village ladies who had walked over to Cross Corners to pay a visit. Glory had time for two or three chapters of "Ivanhoe," and to tell Hendie, who strayed in, and begged for it, Bridget Foye's old story of the little red hen, while the regular course of topics was gone through below, of the weather—the new minister—the last meeting of the Dorcas Society—the everlasting wants and helplessness of Mrs. Sheffley and her seven children, and whether the society had better do anything more for them—the trouble in the west district school, and the question "where the Dorcas bag was to go next time."

At last, the voices and footsteps retreated, through the entry, the door closed somewhat promptly as the last "good afternoon" was said, and Faith sprang up the narrow staircase.

There was a lesson in Geography, and a bit of natural Philosophy to be done first, and then followed their Bible talk; for this was Saturday.

Before Glory went it had come to be Faith's practice always to read to her some bit of poetry—a gem from Tennyson or Mrs. Browning, or a stray poem from a magazine or paper which she had laid by as worthy.

"Glory," said she, to-day, "I'm going to let you share a little treasure of mine—something Mr. Armstrong gave me."

Glory's eyes deepened and glowed.

"It is thoughts," said Faith. "Thoughts in verse. I shall read it to you, because I think it will just answer you, as it did me. Don't you feel, sometimes, like a little brook in a deep wood?"

Glory's gaze never moved from Faith's face. Her poetical instinct seized the image, and the thought of her life applied it.

"All alone, and singing to myself? Yes, I did, Miss Faith. But I think it is growing lighter and pleasanter every day. I think I am getting——"

"Stop! stop!" said Faith. "Don't steal the verses before I read them! You're such a queer child, Glory! One never can tell you anything."

And then Faith gave her pearls; because she knew they would not be trampled under foot, but taken into a heart and held there; and because just such a rapt and reverent ecstasy as her own had been when the minister had given her, in fulfillment of his promise, this thought of his for the comfort that was in it, looked out from the face that was uplifted to hers.

"'Up in the wild, where no one comes to look, There lives and sings, a little lonely brook; Liveth and singeth in the dreary pines, Yet creepeth on to where the daylight shines.

"'Pure from their heaven, in mountain chalice caught, It drinks the rains, as drinks the soul her thought; And down dim hollows, where it winds along, Bears its life-burden of unlistened song.

"'I catch the murmur of its undertone That sigheth, ceaselessly,—alone! alone! And hear, afar, the Rivers gloriously Shout on their paths toward the shining sea!

"'The voiceful Rivers, chanting to the sun; And wearing names of honor, every one; Outreaching wide, and joining hand with hand To pour great gifts along the asking land.

"'Ah, lonely brook! creep onward through the pines! Press through the gloom, to where the daylight shines! Sing on among the stones, and secretly Feel how the floods are all akin to thee!

"'Drink the sweet rain the gentle heaven sendeth; Hold thine own path, howeverward it tendeth; For, somewhere, underneath the eternal sky, Thou, too, shalt find the Rivers, by-and-by!'"

Faith's voice trembled with earnestness as she finished. When she looked up from the paper as she refolded it, tears were running down Glory's cheeks.

"Why, the little brook has overflowed!" cried Faith, playfully. If she had not found this to say, she would have cried, herself.

"Miss Faith!" said Glory, "I ain't sure whether I was meant to tell; but do you know what the minister has asked Miss Henderson? Perhaps she won't; I'm afraid not; it would be too good a time! but he wants her to let him come and board with her! Just think what it would be for him to be in the house with us all the time! Why, Miss Faith, it would be just as if one of those great Rivers had come rolling along through the dark woods, right among the little lonely brooks!"

Faith made no answer. She was astonished. Miss Henderson had said nothing of it. She never did make known her subjects of deliberation till the deliberations had become conclusions.

"Why, you don't seem glad!"

"I am glad," said Faith, slowly and quietly. She was strangely conscious at the moment that she said so, glad as she would be if Mr. Armstrong were really to come so near, and she might see him daily, of a half jealousy that Glory should be nearer still.

It was quite true that Mr. Armstrong had this wish. Hitherto, he had been at the house of the elder minister, Mr. Holland. A unanimous invitation had been given to Mr. Armstrong by the people to remain among them as their settled pastor. This he had not yet consented to do. But he had entered upon another engagement of six months, to preach for them. Now he needed a permanent home, which he could not conveniently have at Mr. Holland's.

There was great putting of heads together at the "Dorcas," about it.

Mrs. Gimp "would offer; but then—there was Serena, and folks would talk."

Other families had similar holdbacks—that is the word, for they were not absolute insuperabilities—wary mothers were waiting until it should appear positively necessary that somebody should waive objection, and take the homeless pastor in; and each watched keenly for the critical moment when it should be just late enough, and not too late, for her to yield.

Meanwhile, Mr. Armstrong quietly left all this seething, and walked off out of the village, one day, to Cross Corners, and asked Miss Henderson if he might have one of her quaint, pleasant, old-fashioned rooms.

Miss Henderson was deliberating.

This very afternoon, she sat in the southwest tea parlor, with her knitting forgotten in her lap, and her eyes searching the bright western sky, as if for a gleam that should light her to decision.

"It ain't that I mind the trouble. And it ain't that there isn't house room. And it ain't that I don't like the minister," soliloquized she. "It's whether it would be respectable common sense. I ain't going to take the field with the Gimps and the Leatherbees, nor to have them think it, either. She's over here almost every blessed day of her life. I might as well try to keep the sunshine out of the old house, as to keep her; and I should be about as likely to want to do one as the other. But just let me take in Mr. Armstrong, and there'd be all the eyes in the village watching. There couldn't so much as a cat walk in or out, but they'd know it, somehow. And they'd be sure to say she was running after the minister."

Miss Henderson's pronouns were not precise in their reference. It isn't necessary for soliloquy to be exact. She understood herself, and that sufficed.

"It would be a disgrace to the parish, anyhow," she resumed, "to let those Gimps and Leatherbees get him into their net; and they'll do it if Providence or somebody don't interpose. I wish I was sure whether it was a leading or not!"

By and by she reverted, at last, as she always did, to that question of its being a "leading," or not; and, taking down the old Bible from the corner shelf, she laid it with solemnity on the little light stand at her side, and opened it, as she had known her father do, in the important crises of his life, for an "indication."

The wooden saddle and the gun were not all that had come down to Aunt Faith from the primitive days of the Puritan settlers.

The leaves parted at the story of the Good Samaritan. Bible leaves are apt to part, as the heart opens, in accordance with long habit and holy use.

That evening, while Glory was washing up the tea things, Aunt Faith put on cloak and hood, and walked over to Cross Corners.

"No—I won't take off my things," she replied to Mrs. Gartney's advance of assistance. "I've just come over to tell you what I'm going to do. I've made up my mind to take the minister to board. And when the washing and ironing's out of the way, next week, I shall fix up a room for him, and he'll come."

"That's a capital plan, Aunt Faith!" said her nephew, with a tone of pleased animation. "Cross Corners will be under obligation to you. Mr. Armstrong is a man whom I greatly respect and admire."

"So do I," said Miss Henderson. "And if I didn't, when a man is beset with thieves all the way from Jerusalem to Jericho, it's time for some kind of a Samaritan to come along."

Next day, Mis' Battis heard the news, and had her word of comment to offer.

"She's got room enough for him, if that's all; but I wouldn't a believed she'd have let herself be put about and upset so, if it was for John the Baptist! I always thought she was setter'n an old hen! But then, she's gittin' into years, and it's kinder handy, I s'pose, havin' a minister round the house, sayin' she should be took anyways sudden!"

Village comments it would be needless to attempt to chronicle.

April days began to wear their tearful beauty, and the southwest room at the old house was given up to Mr. Armstrong.



CHAPTER XX.

PAUL.

"Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!" LONGFELLOW.

Glory had not been content with the utmost she could find to do in making the southwest room as clean, and bright, and fresh, and perfect in its appointments as her zealous labor and Miss Henderson's nice, old-fashioned methods and materials afforded possibility for. Twenty times a day, during the few that intervened between its fitting up and Mr. Armstrong's occupation of it, she darted in, to settle a festoon of fringe, or to pick a speck from the carpet, or to move a chair a hair's-breadth this way or that, or to smooth an invisible crease in the counterpane, or, above all, to take a pleased survey of everything once more, and to wonder how the minister would like it.

So well, indeed, he liked it, when he had taken full possession, that he seemed to divine the favorite room must have been relinquished to him, and to scruple at keeping it quite solely to himself.

In the pleasant afternoons, when the spring sun got round to his westerly windows, and away from the southeast apartment, whither Miss Henderson had betaken herself, her knitting work, and her Bible, and where now the meals were always spread, he would open his door, and let the pleasantness stray out across the passage, and into the keeping room, and would often take a book, and come in, himself, also, with the sunlight. Then Glory, busy in the kitchen, just beyond, would catch words of conversation, or of reading, or even be called in to hear the latter. And she began to think that there were good times, truly, in this world, and that even she was "in 'em!"

April days, as they lengthened and brightened, brought other things, also, to pass.

The Rushleigh party had returned from Europe.

Faith had a note from Margaret. The second wedding was close at hand, and would she not come down?

But her services as bridesmaid were not needed this time; there was nothing so exceedingly urgent in the invitation—Faith's intimacy was with the Rushleighs, not the Livingstons—that she could not escape its acceptance if she desired; and so—there was a great deal to be done in summer preparation, which Mis' Battis, with her deliberate dignity, would never accomplish alone; also, there was the forget-me-not ring lying in her box of ornaments, that gave her a little troubled perplexity as often as she saw it there; and Faith excused herself in a graceful little note, and stayed at Cross Corners, helping her mother fold away the crimson curtains, and get up the white muslin ones, make up summer sacks for Hendie, and retouch her own simple wardrobe, which this year could receive little addition.

One day, Aunt Faith had twisted her foot by a slip upon the stairs, and was kept at home. Glory, of course, was obliged to remain also, as Miss Henderson was confined, helpless, to her chair or sofa.

Faith Gartney and the minister walked down the pleasant lane, and along the quiet road to the village church, together.

Faith had fresh, white ribbons, to-day, upon her simple straw bonnet, and delicate flowers and deep green leaves about her face. She seemed like an outgrowth of the morning, so purely her sweet look and fair unsulliedness of attire reflected the significance of the day's own newness and beauty.

"Do you know," said Mr. Armstrong, presently, after the morning greeting had passed, and they had walked a few paces, silently, "do you know that you are one of Glory's saints, Miss Faith?"

Faith's wondering eyes looked out their questioning astonishment from a deep rosiness that overspread her face.

The minister was not apt to make remarks of at all a personal bearing. Neither was this allusion to sainthood quite to have been looked for, from his lips. Faith could scarcely comprehend.

"I found her this morning, as I came out to cross the field, sitting on the doorstone with her Bible and a rosary of beautiful, small, variously tinted shells upon her lap. I stopped to speak with her, and asked leave to look at them. 'They were given to me when I was very little,' she said. 'A lady sent them from Rome. The Pope blessed them!' 'They are very beautiful,' I said, 'and a blessing, if that mean a true man's prayer, can never be worthless. But,' I asked her, 'do you use these, Glory?' 'Not as she did once,' she said. She had almost forgotten about that. She knew the larger beads stood for saints, and the smaller ones between were prayers. 'But,' she went on, 'it isn't for my prayers I keep them now. I've named some of my saints' beads for the people that have done me the most good in my life, and been the kindest to me; and the little ones are thoughts, and things they've taught me. This large one, with the queer spots, is Miss Henderson; and this lovely rose-colored one is Miss Faith; and these are Katie Ryan and Bridget Foye; but you don't know about them.' And then she timidly told me that the white one next the cross was mine. The child humbled me, Miss Faith! It is nearly fearful, sometimes, to get a glimpse of what one is to some trustful human soul, who looks through one toward the Highest!"

Faith had tears in her eyes.

"Glory is such a strange girl," said she. "She seems to have an instinct for things that other people are educated up to."

"She has seized the spirit of the dead Roman calendar, and put it into this rosary. Our saints are the spirits through whom God wills to send us of His own. Whatever becomes to us a channel of His truth and love we must involuntarily canonize and consecrate. Woe, if by the same channel ever an offense cometh!"

Perhaps Faith was nearly the only person in church, to-day, who did not notice that there were strangers in the pew behind the Gimps. When she came out, she was joined; and not by strangers. Margaret and Paul Rushleigh came eagerly to her side.

"We came out to Lakeside to stay a day or two with the Morrises; and ran away from them here, purposely to meet you. And we mean to be very good, and go to church all day, if you will take us home with you meanwhile."

Faith, between her surprise, her pleasure, her embarrassment, the rush of old remembrance, and a quick, apprehensive thought of Mis' Battis and her probable arrangements, made almost an awkward matter of her reply. But her father and mother came up, welcomed the Rushleighs cordially, and the five were presently on their way toward Cross Corners, and Faith had recovered sufficient self-possession to say something beyond mere words of course.

Paul Rushleigh looked very handsome! And very glad, too, to see shy Faith, who kept as invisible as might be at Margaret's other side, and looked there, in her simple spring dress contrasted with Margaret's rich and fashionable, though also simple and ladylike attire, like a field daisy beside a garden rose.

Dinner was of no moment. There was only roast chicken, dressed the day before, and reheated and served with hot vegetables since their coming in, and a custard pudding, and some pastry cakes that Faith's fingers had shaped, and coffee; but they drank in balm and swallowed sunshine, and the essence of all that was to be concrete by and by in fruitful fields and gardens. And they talked of old times! Three years old, nearly! And Faith and Margaret laughed, and Mrs. Gartney listened, and dispensed dinner, or spoke gently now and then, and Paul did his cleverest with Mr. Gartney, so that the latter gentleman declared afterwards that "young Rushleigh was a capital fellow; well posted; his father's million didn't seem to have spoiled him yet."

Altogether, this unexpected visit infused great life at Cross Corners.

Why was it that Faith, when she thought it all over, tried to weigh so very nicely just the amount of gladness she had felt; and was dimly conscious of a vague misgiving, deep down, lest her father and mother might possibly be a little more glad than she was quite ready to have them? What made her especially rejoice that Saidie and the strawberries had not come yet?

When Paul Rushleigh took her hand at parting, he glanced down at the fair little fingers, and then up, inquiringly, at Faith's face. Her eyes fell, and the color rose, till it became an indignation at itself. She grew hot, for days afterwards, many a time, as she remembered it. Who has not blushed at the self-suspicion of blushing?

Who has not blushed at the simple recollection of having blushed before? On Monday, this happened. Faith went over to the Old House, to inquire about Aunt Henderson's foot, and to sit with her, if she should wish it, for an hour. She chose the hour at which she thought Mr. Armstrong usually walked to the village. Somehow, greatly as she enjoyed all the minister's kindly words, and each moment of his accidental presence, she had, of late, almost invariably taken this time for coming over to see Aunt Faith. A secret womanly instinct, only, it was; waked into no consciousness, and but ignorantly aware of its own prompting.

To-day, however, Mr. Armstrong had not gone out. Some writing that he was tempted to do, contrary to his usual Monday habit, had detained him within. And so, just as Miss Henderson, having given the history of her slip, and the untoward wrenching of her foot, and its present condition, to Faith's inquiries, asked her suddenly, "if they hadn't had some city visitors yesterday, and what sent them flacketting over from Lakeside to church in the village?" the minister walked in. If he hadn't heard, she might not have done it; but, with the abrupt question, came, as abruptly, the hot memory of yesterday; and with those other eyes, beside the doubled keenness of Aunt Faith's over her spectacles, upon her, it was so much worse if she should, that of course she couldn't help doing it! She colored up, and up, till the very roots of her soft hair tingled, and a quick shame wrapped her as in a flaming garment.

The minister saw, and read. Not quite the obvious inference Faith might fear—he had a somewhat profounder knowledge of nature than that—but what persuaded him there was a thought, at least, between the two who met yesterday, more than of a mere chance greeting; it might not lie so much with Faith as with the other; yet it had the power—even the consciousness of its unspoken being, to send the crimson to her face. What kept the crimson there and deepened it, he knew quite well. He knew the shame was at having blushed at all.

Nevertheless, Mr. Armstrong remembered that blush, and pondered it, almost as long as Faith herself. In the little time that he had felt himself her friend, he had grown to recognize so fully, and to prize so dearly, her truth, her purity, her high-mindedness, her reverence, that no new influence could show itself in her life, without touching his solicitous love. Was this young man worthy of a blush from Faith? Was there a height in his nature answering to the reach of hers? Was the quick, impulsive pain that came to him in the thought of how much that rose hue of forehead and cheek might mean, an intuition of his stronger and more instructed soul of a danger to the child that she might not dream? Be it as it might, Roger Armstrong pondered. He would also watch.



CHAPTER XXI.

PRESSURE.

"To be warped, unconsciously, by the magnetic influence of all around is the destiny, to a certain extent, of even the greatest souls."—OAKFIELD.

June came, and Saidie Gartney. Not for flowers, or strawberries, merely; but for father's and mother's consent that, in a few weeks, when flowers and strawberries should have fully come, there should be a marriage feast made for her in the simple home, and she should go forth into the gay world again, the bride of a wealthy New York banker.

Aunt Etherege and Saidie filled the house. With finery, with bustle, with important presence.

Miss Gartney's engagement had been sudden; her marriage was to be speedy. Half a dozen seamstresses, and as many sewing machines, were busy in New York—hands, feet, and wheels—in making up the delicate draperies for the trousseau; and Madame A—— was frantic with the heap of elaborate dresses that was thrust upon her hands, and must be ready for the thirtieth.

Mrs. Gartney and Faith had enough to do, to put the house and themselves in festival trim. Hendie was spoiled with having no lessons, and more toys and sugar plums than he knew what to do with. Mr. Selmore's comings and goings made special ebullitions, weekly, where was only a continuous lesser effervescence before. Mis' Battis had not been able to subside into an armchair since the last day of May.

Faith found great favor in the eyes of her brother-in-law elect. He pronounced her a "naive, piquante little person," and already there was talk of how pleasant it would be, to have her in Madison Square, and show her to the world. Faith said nothing to this, but in her heart she clung to Kinnicutt.

Glory thought Miss Gartney wonderful. Even Mr. Armstrong spoke to Aunt Faith of the striking beauty of her elder niece.

"I don't know how she does look," Aunt Faith replied, with all her ancient gruffness. "I see a great show of flounces, and manners, and hair; but they don't look as if they all grew, natural. I can't make her out, amongst all that. Now, Faith's just Faith. You see her prettiness the minute you look at her, as you do a flower's."

"There are not many like Miss Faith," replied Mr. Armstrong. "I never knew but one other who so wore the fresh, pure beauty of God's giving."

His voice was low and quiet, and his eye looked afar, as he spoke.

Glory went away, and sat down on the doorstone. There was a strange tumult at her heart. In the midst, a noble joy. About it, a disquietude, as of one who feels shut out—alone.

"I don't know what ails me. I wonder if I ain't glad! Of course, it's nothing to me. I ain't in it. But it must be beautiful to be so! And to have such words said! She don't know what a sight the minister thinks of her! I know. I knew before. It's beautiful—but I ain't in it. Only, I think I've got the feeling of it all. And I'm glad it's real, somewhere. Some way, I seem to have so much here, that never grows out into anything. Maybe I'd be beautiful if it did!"

So talked Glory, interjectionally, with herself.

In the midst of these excited days, there came two letters to Mr. Gartney.

One was from a gentleman in Michigan, in relation to some land Mr. Gartney owned there, taken years ago, at a very low valuation, for a debt. This was likely, from the rapid growth and improvement in the neighborhood, to become, within a few years, perhaps, a property of some importance.

The other letter was from his son, James Gartney, in San Francisco. The young man urged his father to consider whether it might not be a good idea for him to come out and join him in California.

James Gartney's proposal evidently roused his attention. It was a great deal to think of, certainly; but it was worth thinking of, too. James had married in San Francisco, had a pleasant home there, and was prospering. Many old business friends had gone from Mishaumok, in the years when the great flood of enterprise set westward across the continent, and were building up name and influence in the Golden Land. The idea found a place in his brain, and clung there. Only, there was Faith! But things might come round so that even this thought need to be no hindrance to the scheme.

Changes, and plans, and interests, and influences were gathering; all to bear down upon one young life.

"More news!" said Mr. Gartney, one morning, coming in from his walk to the village post office, to the pleasant sitting room, or morning room, as Mrs. Etherege and Saidie called it, where Faith was helping her sister write a list of the hundreds who were to receive Mr. and Mrs. Selmore's cards—"At Home, in September, in Madison Square." "Whom do you think I met in the village, this morning?"

Everybody looked up, and everybody's imagination took a discursive leap among possibilities, and then everybody, of course, asked "Whom?"

"Old Jacob Rushleigh, himself. He has taken a house at Lakeside, for the summer. And he has bought the new mills just over the river. That is to give young Paul something to do, I imagine. Kinnicutt has begun to grow; and when places or people once take a start, there's no knowing what they may come to. Here's something for you, Faithie, that I dare say tells all about it."

And he tossed over her shoulder, upon the table, a letter, bearing her name, in Margaret Rushleigh's chirography, upon the cover.

Faith's head was bent over the list she was writing; but the vexatious color, feeling itself shielded in her face, crept round till it made her ear tips rosy. Saidie put out her forefinger, with a hardly perceptible motion, at the telltale sign, and nodded at Aunt Etherege behind her sister's back.

Aunt Etherege looked bland and sagacious.

Upstairs, a little after, these sentences were spoken in Saidie's room.

"Of course it will be," said the younger to the elder lady. "It's been going on ever since they were children. Faith hasn't a right to say no, now. And what else brought him up here after houses and mills?"

"I don't see that the houses and mills were necessary to the object. Rather cumbersome and costly machinery, I should think, to bring to bear upon such a simple purpose."

"Oh, the business plan is something that has come up accidentally, no doubt. Running after one thing, people very often stumble upon another. But it will all play in together, you'll see. Only, I'm afraid I shan't have the glory of introducing Faithie in New York!"

"It would be as good a thing as possible. And I can perceive that your father and mother count upon it, also. In their situation what a great relief it would be! Of course, Henderson never could do so mad a thing as take the child up by the roots, again, and transplant her to San Francisco! And I see plainly he has got that in his own head."

A door across the passage at this moment shut, softly, but securely.

Behind it, in her low chair by her sewing table sat the young sister whose fate had been so lightly decreed.

Was it all just so, as Saidie had said? Had she no longer a right to say no? Only themselves know how easily, how almost inevitably, young judgments and consciences are drawn on in the track beaten down for them by others. Many and many a life decision has been made, through this taking for granted that bears with its mute, but magnetic power, upon the shyness and irresolution that can scarcely face and interpret its own wish or will.

It was very true, that, as Saidie Gartney had said, "this had been going on for years." For years, Faith had found great pleasantness in the companionship and evident preference of Paul Rushleigh. There had been nobody to compare with him in her young set in Mishaumok. She knew he liked her. She had been proud of it. The girlish fancy, that may be forgotten in after years, or may, fostered by circumstance, endure and grow into a calm and happy wifehood, had been given to him. And what troubled her now? Was it that always, when the decisive moment approaches, there is a little revulsion of timid feminine feeling, even amidst the truest joy? Or was it that a new wine had been given into Faith's life, which would not be held in the old bottles? Was she uncertain—inconstant; or had she spiritually outgrown her old attachment? Or, was she bewildered, now, out of the discernment of what was still her heart's desire and need?

Paul was kind, and true, and manly. She recognized all this in him as surely as ever. If he had turned from, and forgotten her, she would have felt a pang. What was this, then, that she felt, as he came near, and nearer?

And then, her father! Had he really begun to count on this? Do men know how their young daughters feel when the first suggestion comes that they are not regarded as born for perpetual daughterhood in the father's house? Would she even encumber his plans, if she clung still to her maidenly life?

By all these subtleties does the destiny of woman close in upon her.

Margaret Rushleigh's letter was full of delight, and eagerness, and anticipation. She and Paul had been so charmed with Kinnicutt and Lakeside; and there had happened to be a furnished house to let for the season close by the Morrises, and they had persuaded papa to take it. They were tired of the seashore, and Conway was getting crowded to death. They wanted a real summer in the country. And then this had turned up about the mills! Perhaps, now, her father would build, and they should come up every year. Perhaps Paul would stay altogether, and superintend. Perhaps—anything! It was all a delightful chaos of possibilities; with this thing certain, that she and Faith would be together for the next four months in the glorious summer shine and bloom.

Miss Gartney's wedding was simple. The stateliness and show were all reserved for Madison Square.

Mr. Armstrong pronounced the solemn words, in the shaded summer parlor, with the door open into the sweeter and stiller shade without.

Faith stood by her sister's side, in fair, white robes, and Mr. Robert Selmore was groomsman to his brother. A few especial friends from Mishaumok and Lakeside were present to witness the ceremony.

And then there was a kissing—a hand-shaking—a well-wishing—a going out to the simple but elegantly arranged collation—a disappearance of the bride to put on traveling array—a carriage at the door—smiles, tears, and good-bys—Mr., and Mrs., and Mr. Robert Selmore were off to meet the Western train—and all was over.

Mrs. Etherege remained a few days longer at Cross Corners. As Mis' Battis judiciously remarked, "after a weddin' or a funeral, there ought to be somebody to stay a while and cheer up the mourners."

This visit, that had been so full of happenings, was to have a strange occurrence still to mark it, before all fell again into the usual order.

Aunt Etherege was to go on Thursday. On Wednesday, the three ladies sat together in the cool, open parlor, where Mr. Armstrong, walking over from the Old House, had joined them. He had the July number of the Mishaumok in his hand, and a finger between the fresh-cut leaves at a poem he would read them.

Just as he had finished the last stanza, amidst a hush of the room that paid tribute to the beauty of the lines and his perfect rendering of them, wheels came round from the high road into the lane.

"It is Mr. Gartney come back from Sedgely," said Aunt Etherege, looking from her window, between the blinds. "Whom on earth has he picked up to bring with him?"

A thin, angular figure of a woman, destitute of crinoline, wearing big boots, and a bonnet that ignored the fashion, and carrying in her hand a black enameled leather bag, was alighting as she spoke, at the gate.

"Mother!" said Faith, leaning forward, and glancing out, also, "it looks like—it is—Nurse Sampson!"

And she put her work hastily from her lap, and rose to go out at the side door, to meet and welcome her.

To do this, she had to pass by Mr. Armstrong. How came that rigid look, that deadly paleness, to his face? What spasm of pain made him clutch the pamphlet he held with fingers that grew white about the nails?

Faith stopped, startled.

"Mr. Armstrong! Are you not well?" said she. At the same instant of her pausing, Miss Sampson entered from the hall, behind her. Mr. Armstrong's eye, lifted toward Faith in an attempt to reply, caught a glimpse of the sharp, pronounced outlines of the nurse's face. Before Faith could comprehend, or turn, or cry out, the paleness blanched ghastlier over his features, and the strong man fell back, fainting.

With quick, professional instinct, Miss Sampson sprang forward, seizing, as she did so, an ice-water pitcher from the table.

"There, take this!" said she to Faith, "and sprinkle him with it, while I loosen his neckcloth! Gracious goodness!" she exclaimed, in an altered tone, as she came nearer to him for this purpose, "do it, some of the rest of you, and let me get out of his way! It was me!"

And she vanished out of the room.



CHAPTER XXII.

ROGER ARMSTRONG'S STORY.

"Even by means of our sorrows, we belong to the Eternal Plan." HUMBOLDT.

"Go in there," said Nurse Sampson to Mr. Gartney, calling him in from the porch, "and lay that man flat on the floor!"

Which Mr. Gartney did, wondering, vaguely, in the instant required for his transit to the apartment, whether bandit or lunatic might await his offices.

All happened in a moment; and in that moment, the minister's fugitive senses began to return.

"Lie quiet, a minute. Faith, get a glass of wine, or a little brandy."

Faith quickly brought both; and Mr. Armstrong, whom her father now assisted to the armchair again, took the wine from her hand, with a smile that thanked her, and depreciated himself.

"I am not ill," he said. "It is all over now. It was the sudden shock. I did not think I could have been so weak."

Mrs. Gartney had gone to find some hartshorn. Mrs. Etherege, seeing that the need for it was passing, went out to tell her sister so, and to ask the strange woman who had originated all the commotion, what it could possibly mean. Mr. Gartney, at the same instant, caught a glimpse of his horse, which he had left unfastened at the gate, giving indications of restlessness, and hastened out to tie him.

Faith and Mr. Armstrong were left alone.

"Did I frighten you, my child?" he asked, gently. "It was a strange thing to happen! I thought that woman was in her grave. I thought she died, when—I will tell you all about it some day, soon, Miss Faith. It was the sad, terrible page of my life."

Faith's eyes were lustrous with sympathy. Under all other thought was a beating joy—not looked at yet—that he could speak to her so! That he could snatch this chance moment to tell her, only, of his sacred sorrow!

She moved a half step nearer, and laid her hand, softly, on the chair arm beside him. She did not touch so much as a fold of his sleeve; but it seemed, somehow, like a pitying caress.

"I am sorry!" said she. And then the others came in.

Mr. Gartney walked round with his friend to the old house.

Miss Sampson began to recount what she knew of the story. Faith escaped to her own room at the first sentence. She would rather have it as Mr. Armstrong's confidence.

Next morning, Faith was dusting, and arranging flowers in the east parlor, and had just set the "hillside door," as they called it, open, when Mr. Armstrong passed the window and appeared thereat.

"I came to ask, Miss Faith, if you would walk up over the Ridge. It is a lovely morning, and I am selfish enough to wish to have you to myself for a little of it. By and by, I would like to come back, and see Miss Sampson."

Faith understood. He meant to tell her this that had been heavy upon his heart through all these years. She would go. Directly, when she had brought her hat, and spoken with her mother.

Mrs. Etherege and Mrs. Gartney were sitting together in the guest chamber, above. At noon, after an early dinner, Mrs. Etherege was to leave.

Mr. Armstrong stood upon the doorstone below, looking outward, waiting. If he had been inside the room, he would not have heard. The ladies, sitting by the window, just over his head, were quite unaware and thoughtless of his possible position.

He caught Faith's clear, sweet accent first, as she announced her purpose to her mother, adding:

"I shall be back, auntie, long before dinner."

Then she crossed the hall into her own room, made her slight preparation for the walk, and went down by the kitchen staircase, to give Parthenia some last word about the early dinner.

"I think," said Mrs. Etherege, in the keenness of her worldly wisdom, "that this minister of yours might as well have a hint of how matters stand. It seems to me he is growing to monopolize Faith, rather."

"Oh," replied Mrs. Gartney, "there is nothing of that! You know what nurse told us, last evening. It isn't quite likely that a man would faint away at the memory of one woman, if his thoughts were turned, the least, in that way, upon another. No, indeed! She is his Sunday scholar, and he treats her always as a very dear young friend. But that is all."

"Maybe. But is it quite safe for her? He is a young man yet, notwithstanding those few gray hairs."

"Oh, Faith has tacitly belonged to Paul Rushleigh these three years!"

Mr. Armstrong heard it all. He turned the next moment, and met his "dear young friend" with the same gentle smile and manner that he always wore toward her, and they walked up the Ridge path, among the trees, together.

A bowlder of rock, scooped into smooth hollows that made pleasant seats, was the goal, usually, of the Ridge walk. Here Faith paused, and Mr. Armstrong made her sit down and rest.

Standing there before her, he began his story.

"One summer—years ago," he said, "I went to the city of New Orleans. I went to bring thence, with me, a dear friend—her who was to have been my wife."

The deep voice trembled, and paused. Faith could not look up, her breath came quickly, and the tears were all but ready.

"She had been there, through the winter and spring, with her father, who, save myself, was the only near friend she had in all the world.

"The business which took him there detained him until later in the season than Northerners are accustomed to feel safe in staying. And still, important affairs hindered his departure.

"He wrote to me, that, for himself, he must risk a residence there for some weeks yet; but that his daughter must be placed in safety. There was every indication of a sickly summer. She knew nothing of his writing, and he feared would hardly consent to leave him. But, if I came, she would yield to me. Our marriage might take place there, and I could bring her home. Without her, he said, he could more quickly dispatch what remained for him to do; and I must persuade her of this, and that it was for the safety of all that she should so fulfill the promise which was to have been at this time redeemed, had their earlier return been possible.

"In the New Orleans papers that came by the same mail, were paragraphs of deadly significance. The very cautiousness with which they were worded weighted them the more.

"Miss Faith! my friend! in that city of pestilence, was my life! Night and day I journeyed, till I reached the place. I found the address which had been sent me—there were only strangers there! Mr. Waldo had been, but the very day before, seized with the fatal disease, and removed to a fever hospital. Miriam had gone with him—into plague and death!

"Was I wrong, child? Could I have helped it? I followed. Ah! God lets strange woes into this world of His! I cannot tell you, if I would, what I saw there! Pestilence—death—corruption!

"In the midst of all, among the gentle sisters of charity, I found a New England woman—a nurse—her whom I met yesterday. She came to me on my inquiry for Mr. Waldo. He was dead. Miriam had already sickened—was past hope. I could not see her. It was against the rule. She would not know me.

"I only remember that I refused to be sent away. I think my brain reeled with the weariness of sleepless nights and horror of the shock.

"I cannot dwell upon the story. It was ended quickly. When I struggled back, painfully, to life, from the disease that struck me down, there were strange faces round me, and none could even tell me of her last hours. The nurse—Miss Sampson—had been smitten—was dying.

"They sent me to a hospital for convalescents. Weeks after, I came out, feeble and hopeless, into my lonely life!

"Since then, God, who had taken from me the object I had set for myself, has filled its room with His own work. And, doing it, He has not denied me to find many a chastened joy.

"Dear young friend!" said he, with a tender, lingering emphasis—it was all he could say then—all they had left him to say, if he would—"I have told you this, because you have come nearer into my sympathies than any in all these years that have been my years of strangerhood and sorrow! You have made me think, in your fresh, maidenly life, and your soul earnestness, of Miriam!

"When your way broadens out into busy sunshine, and mine lies otherwise, do not forget me!"

A solemn baptism of mingled grief and joy seemed to touch the soul of Faith. One hand covered her face, that was bowed down, weeping. The other lay in her companion's, who had taken it as he uttered these last words. So it rested a moment, and then its fellow came to it, and, between the two, held Roger Armstrong's reverently, while the fair, tearful face lifted itself to his.

"I do thank you so!" And that was all.

Faith was his "dear, young friend!" How the words in which her mother limited his thoughts of her to commonplace, widened, when she spoke them to herself, into a great beatitude! She never thought of more—scarcely whether more could be. This great, noble, purified, God-loving soul that stood between her and heaven, like the mountain peak, bathing its head in clouds, and drawing lightnings down, leaned over her, and blessed her thus!

She never suspected her own heart, even when the remembrance of Paul came up and took a tenderness from the thought how he, too, might love, and learn from, this her friend. She turned back with a new gentleness to all other love, as one does from a prayer!



CHAPTER XXIII.

QUESTION AND ANSWER.

"Unless you can swear, 'For life, for death!' Oh, fear to call it loving!" MRS. BROWNING.

Faith sent Nurse Sampson in to talk with Mr. Armstrong. Then he learned all that he had longed to know, but had never known before; that which took him to his lost bride's deathbed, and awoke out of the silent years for him a moment refused to him in its passing.

Miss Sampson came from her hour's interview, with an unbending of the hard lines of her face, and a softness, even, in her eyes, that told of tears.

"If ever there was an angel that went walking about in black broadcloth, that man is the one," said she.

And that was all she would say.

"I'm staying," she explained, in answer to their inquiries, "with a half-sister of mine at Sedgely. Mrs. Crabe, the blacksmith's wife. You see, I'd got run down, and had to take a rest. Resting is as much a part of work as doing, when it's necessary. I had a chance to go to Europe with an invaleed lady; but I allers hate such halfway contrivances. I either want to work with all my might, or be lazy with all my might. And so I've come here to do nothing, as hard as ever I can."

"I know well enough," she said again, afterwards, "that something's being cut out for me, tougher'n anything I've had yet. I never had an hour's extra rest in my life, but I found out, precious soon, what it had been sent for. I'm going to stay on all summer, as the doctor told me to; but I'm getting strong, already; and I shall be just like a tiger before the year's out. And then it'll come, whatever it is. You'll see."

Miss Sampson stayed until the next day after, and then Mr. Gartney drove her back to Sedgely.

In those days it came to pass that Glory found she had a "follower."

Luther Goodell, who "did round" at Cross Corners, got so into the way of straying up the field path, in his nooning hours, and after chores were done at night, that Miss Henderson at last, in her plain, outright fashion, took the subject up, and questioned Glory.

"If it means anything, and you mean it shall mean anything, well and good. I shall put up with it; though what anybody wants with men folks cluttering round, is more than I can understand. But, if you don't want him, he shan't come. So tell me the truth, child. Yes, or no. Have you any notion of him for a husband?"

Glory blushed her brightest at these words; but there was no falling of the eye, or faltering of the voice, as she spoke with answering straightforwardness and simplicity.

"No ma'am. I don't think I shall ever have a husband."

"No ma'am's enough. The rest you don't know anything about. Most likely you will."

"I shouldn't want anybody, ma'am, that would be likely to want me."

And Glory walked out into the milk room with the pans she had been scalding.

It was true. This woman-child would go all through life as she had begun; discerning always, and reaching spiritually after, that which was beyond; which in that "kingdom of heaven" was hers already; but which to earthly having and holding should never come.

God puts such souls, oftener than we think, into such life. These are His vestals.

Miss Henderson's foot had not grown perfectly strong. She, herself, said, coolly, that she never expected it to. More than that, she supposed, now she had begun, she should keep on going to pieces.

"An old life," she said, "is just like old cloth when it begins to tear. It'll soon go into the ragbag, and then to the mill that grinds all up, and brings us out new and white again!"

"Glory McWhirk," said she, on another day after, "if you could do just the thing you would like best to do, what would it be?"

"To-day, ma'am? or any time?" asked Glory, puzzled as to how much her mistress's question included.

"Ever. If you had a home to live in, say, and money to spend?"

Glory had to wait a moment before she could so grasp such an extraordinary hypothesis as to reply.

"Well?" said Miss Henderson, with slight impatience.

"If I had—I should like best to find some little children, without any fathers or mothers, as I was, and dress them up, as you did me, and curl their hair, and make a real good time for them, every day!"

"You would! Well, that's all. I was curious to know what you'd say. I guess those beans in the oven want more hot water."

The Rushleighs had come to Lakeside. Every day, nearly, saw Paul, or Margaret, or both, at Cross Corners.

Faith was often, also, at Lakeside.

Old Mr. Rushleigh treated her with a benignant fatherliness, and looked upon her with an evident fondness and pride that threw heavy weight in the scale of his son's chances. And Madam Rushleigh, as she began to be called, since Mrs. Philip had entered the family, petted her in the old, graceful, gracious fashion; and Margaret loved her, simply, and from her heart.

With Paul himself, it had not been as in the days of bouquets, and "Germans," and bridal association in Mishaumok. They were all living and enjoying together a beautiful idyl. Nothing seemed special—nothing was embarrassing.

Faith thought, in these days, that she was very happy.

Mr. Armstrong relinquished her, almost imperceptibly, to her younger friends. In the pleasant twilights, though, when her day's pleasures and occupations were ended, he would often come over, as of old, and sit with them in the summer parlor, or under the elms.

Or Faith would go up the beautiful Ridge walk with him; and he would have a thought for her that was higher than any she could reach, by herself, or with the help of any other human soul.

And the minister? How did his world look to him? Perhaps, as if clouds that had parted, sending a sunbeam across from the west upon the dark sorrow of the morning, had shut again, inexorably, leaving him still to tread the nightward path under the old, leaden sky.

A day came, that set him thinking of all this—of the years that were past, of those that might be to come.

Mr. Armstrong was not quite so old as he had been represented. A man cannot go through plague and anguish, as he had, and "keep," as Nurse Sampson had said, long ago, of women, "the baby face on." There were lines about brow and mouth, and gleams in the hair, that seldom come so early.

This day he completed one-and-thirty years.

The same day, last month, had been Faith's birthday. She was nineteen.

Roger Armstrong thought of the two together.

He thought of these twelve years that lay between them. Of the love—the loss—the stern and bitter struggle—the divine amends and holy hope that they had brought to him; and then of the innocent girl life she had been living in them; then, how the two paths had met so, in these last few, beautiful months.

Whither, and how far apart, trended they now?

He could not see. He waited—leaving the end with God.

A few weeks went by, in this careless, holiday fashion, with Faith and her friends; and then came the hour when she must face the truth for herself and for another, and speak the word of destiny for both.

She had made a promise for a drive round the Pond Road. Margaret and her brother were to come for her, and to return to Cross Corners for tea.

At the hour fixed, she sat, waiting, under the elms, hat and mantle on, and whiling the moments of delay with a new book Mr. Armstrong had lent her.

Presently, the Rushleighs' light, open, single-seated wagon drove up.

Paul had come alone.

Margaret had a headache, but thought that after sundown she might feel better, and begged that Faith would reverse the plan agreed upon, and let Paul bring her home to tea with them.

Paul took for granted that Faith would keep to her engagement with himself. It was difficult to refuse. She was ready, waiting. It would be absurd to draw back, sensitively, now, she thought. Besides, it would be very pleasant; and why should she be afraid? Yet she wished, very regretfully, that Margaret were there.

She shrank from tete-a-tetes—from anything that might help to precipitate a moment she felt herself not quite ready for.

She supposed she did care for Paul Rushleigh as most girls cared for lovers; that she had given him reason to expect she should; she felt, instinctively, whither all this pleased acquiescence of father and mother, and this warm welcome and encouragement at Lakeside, tended; and she had a dim prescience of what must, some time, come of it: but that was all in the far-off by and by. She would not look at it yet.

She was afraid, now, as she let Paul help her into the wagon, and take his place at her side.

She had been frightened by a word of her mother's, when she had gone to her, before leaving, to tell how the plan had been altered, and ask if she had better do as was wished of her.

Mrs. Gartney had assented with a smile, and a "Certainly, if you like it, Faith; indeed, I don't see how you can very well help it; only——"

"Only what, mother?" asked Faith, a little fearfully.

"Nothing, dear," answered her mother, turning to her with a little caress. But she had a look in her eyes that mothers wear when they begin to see their last woman's sacrifice demand itself at their hands.

"Go, darling. Paul is waiting."

It was like giving her away.

So they drove down, through byways, among the lanes, toward the Wachaug Road.

Summer was in her perfect flush and fullness of splendor. The smell of new-mown hay was in the air.

As they came upon the river, they saw the workmen busy in and about the new mills. Mr. Rushleigh's buggy stood by the fence; and he was there, among his mechanics, with his straw hat and seersucker coat on, inspecting and giving orders.

"What a capital old fellow the governor is!" said Paul, in the fashion young men use, nowadays, to utter their affections.

"Do you know he means to set me up in these mills he is making such a hobby of, and give me half the profits?"

Faith had not known. She thought him very good.

"Yes; he would do anything, I believe, for me—or anybody I cared for."

Faith was silent; and the strange fear came up in heart and throat.

"I like Kinnicutt, thoroughly."

"Yes," said Faith. "It is very beautiful here."

"Not only that. I like the people. I like their simple fashions. One gets at human life and human nature here. I don't think I was ever, at heart, a city boy. I don't like living at arm's length from everybody. People come close together, in the country. And—Faith! what a minister you've got here! What a sermon that was he preached last Sunday! I've never been what you might call one of the serious sort; but such a sermon as that must do anybody good."

Faith felt a warmth toward Paul as he said this, which was more a drawing of the heart than he had gained from her by all the rest.

"My father says he will keep him here, if money can do it. He never goes to church at Lakeside, now. It needs just such a man among mill villages like these, he says. My father thinks a great deal of his workpeople. He says nobody ought to bring families together, and build up a neighborhood, as a manufacturer does, and not look out for more than the money. I think he'll expect a great deal of me, if he leaves me here, at the head of it all. More than I can ever do, by myself."

"Mr. Armstrong will be the very best help to you," said Faith. "I think he means to stay. I'm sure Kinnicutt would seem nothing without him, now."

"Faith! Will you help me to make a home here?"

She could not speak. A great shock had fallen upon her whole nature, as if a thunderbolt she had had presentiment of, burst from a clear blue sky.

They drove on for minutes, without another word.

"Faith! You don't answer me. Must I take silence as I please? It can't be that you don't care for me!"

"No, no!" cried Faith, desperately, like one struggling for voice through a nightmare. "I do care. But—Paul! I don't know! I can't tell. Let me wait, please. Let me think."

"As long as you like, darling," said he, gently and tenderly. "You know all I can tell you. You know I have cared for you all my life. And I'll wait now till you tell me I may speak again. Till you put on that little ring of mine, Faith!"

There was a little loving reproach in these last words.

"Please take me home, now, Paul!"

They were close upon the return path around the Lake. A look of disappointed pain passed over Paul Rushleigh's features. This was hardly the happy reception, however shy, he had hoped and looked for. Still he hoped, however. He could not think she did not care for him. She, who had been the spring of his own thoughts and purposes for years. But, obedient to her wish, he touched his horse with the lash, and urged him homeward.

Paul helped her from the wagon at the little white gate at Cross Corners, and then they both remembered that she was to have gone to Lakeside to tea.

"What shall I tell Margaret?" he asked.

"Oh, don't tell her anything! I mean—tell her, I couldn't come to-night. And, Paul—forgive me! I do want so to do what is right!"

"Isn't it right to let me try and make you happy all your life?"

A light had broken upon her—confusedly, it is true—yet that began to show her to herself more plainly than any glimpse she had had before, as Paul's words, simple, yet burning with his strong sure love, came to her, with their claim to honest answer.

She saw what it was he brought her; she felt it was less she had to give him back. There was something in the world she might go missing all the way through life, if she took this lot that lay before her now. Would he not miss a something in her, also? Yet, must she needs insist on the greatest, the rarest, that God ever sends? Why should she, more than others? Would she wrong him more, to give him what she could, or to refuse him all?

"I ought—if I do—" she said, tremulously, "to care as you do!"

"You never can, Faith!" cried the young man, impetuously. "I care as a man cares! Let me love you! care a little for me, and let it grow to more!"

Men, till something is accorded, are willing to take so little! And then the little must become so entire!

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mis' Battis, as Faith came in. "Who'd a thought o' seein' you home to tea! I s'pose you ain't had none?"

"Yes—no. That is, I don't want any. Where is my mother?"

"She and your pa's gone down to Dr. Wasgatt's. I knew 'twould be contrary to the thirty-nine articles that they should get away from there without their suppers, and so I let the fire right down, and blacked the stove."

"Never mind," said Faith, abstractedly. "I don't feel hungry." And she went away, upstairs.

"'M!" said Mis 'Battis, significantly, to herself, running a released knitting needle through her hair, "don't tell me! I've been through the mill!"

Half an hour after, she came up to Faith's door.

"The minister's downstairs," said she. "Hope to goodness, he's had his supper!"

"Oh, if I dared!" thought Faith; and her heart throbbed tumultuously. "Why can't there be somebody to tell me what I ought to do?"

If she had dared, how she could have leaned upon this friend! How she could have trusted her conscience and her fate to his decision!

"Does anything trouble you to-night, Miss Faith?" asked Mr. Armstrong, watching her sad, abstracted look in one of the silent pauses that broke their attempts at conversation. "Are you ill, or tired?"

"Oh, no!" answered Faith, quickly, from the surface, as one often does when thoughts lie deep. "I am quite well. Only—I am sometimes puzzled."

"About what is? Or about what ought to be?"

"About doing. So much depends. I get so tired—feeling how responsible everything makes me. I wish I were a little child again! Or that somebody would just take me and tell me where to go, and where to stay, and what to do, and what not. From minute to minute, as the things come up."

Roger Armstrong, with his great, chastened soul, yearned over the child as she spoke; so gladly he would have taken her, at that moment, to his heart, and bid her lean on him for all that man might give of help—of love—of leading!

If she had told him, in that moment, all her doubt, as for the instant of his pause she caught her breath with swelling impulse to do!

"'And they shall all be led of God';" said the minister. "It is only to be willing to take His way rather than one's own. All this that seems to depend painfully upon oneself, depends, then, upon Him. The act is human—the consequences become divine."

Faith was silenced then. There was no appeal to human help from that. Her impulse throbbed itself away into a lonely passiveness again.

There was a distance between these two that neither dared to pass.

A word was spoken between mother and daughter as they parted for the night.

"Mother! I have such a thing to think of—to decide!"

It was whispered low, and with cheek hidden on her mother's neck, as the good-night kiss was taken.

"Decide for your own happiness, Faithie. We have seen and understood for a long time. If it is to be as we think, nothing could give us a greater joy for you."

Ah! how much had father and mother seen and understood?

The daughter went her way, to wage her own battle in secret; to balance and fix her decision between her own heart and God. So we find ourselves left, at the last, in all the great crises of our life.

Late that night, while Mr. and Mrs. Gartney were felicitating each other, cheerily, upon the great good that had fallen to the lot of their cherished child, that child sat by her open window, looking out into the summer night; the tossing elm boughs whispering weird syllables in her ears, and the stars looking down upon her soul struggle, so silently, from so far!

"Mr. Rushleigh's here!" shouted Hendie, precipitating himself, next morning, into the breakfast room, where, at a rather later hour than usual, Mrs. Gartney and Faith were washing and wiping the silver and china, and Mr. Gartney still lingered in his seat, finishing somebody's long speech, reported in the evening paper of yesterday.

"Mr. Rushleigh's here, on his long-tailed black horse! And he says he'll give me a ride, but not yet. He wants to see papa. Make haste, papa."

Faith dropped her towel, and as Mr. Gartney rose to go out and meet his visitor, just whispered, hurriedly, to her mother:

"I'll come down again. I'll see him before he goes." And escaped up the kitchen staircase to her own room.

Paul Rushleigh came, he told Mr. Gartney, because, although Faith had not authorized him to appeal to her father to ratify any consent of hers, he thought it right to let him know what he had already said to his daughter. He did not wish to hurry Faith. He only wished to stand openly with Mr. Gartney in the matter, and would wait, then, till she should be quite ready to give him her own answer.

He explained the prospect his father offered him, and the likelihood of his making a permanent home at Kinnicutt.

"That is," he added, "if I am to be so happy as to have a home, anywhere, of my own."

Mr. Gartney was delighted with the young man's unaffected warmth of heart and noble candor.

"I could not wish better for my daughter, Mr. Rushleigh," he replied. "And she is a daughter whom I may fairly wish the best for, too."

Mr. Gartney rose. "I will send Faith," said he.

"I do not ask for her," answered Paul, a flush of feeling showing in his cheek. "I did not come, expecting it—my errand was one I owed to yourself—but Faith knows quite well how glad I shall be if she chooses to see me."

As Mr. Gartney crossed the hall from parlor to sitting room, a light step came over the front staircase.

Faith passed her father, with a downcast look, as he motioned with his hand toward the room where Paul stood, waiting. The bright color spread to her temples as she glided in.

She held, but did not wear, the little turquoise ring.

Paul saw it, as he came forward, eagerly.

A thrill of hope, or dread—he scarce knew which—quivered suddenly at his heart. Was he to take it back, or place it on her finger as a pledge?

"I have been thinking, Paul," said she, tremulously, and with eyes that fell again away from his, after the first glance and greeting, "almost ever since. And I do not think I ought to keep you waiting to know the little I can tell you. I do not think I understand myself. I cannot tell, certainly, how I ought—how I do feel. I have liked you very much. And it was very pleasant to me before all this. I know you deserve to be made very happy. And if it depends on me, I do not dare to say I will not try to do it. If you think, yourself, that this is enough—that I shall do the truest thing so—I will try."