"Do as I bid you, of course; sit still while I tell you what I shall do. I shall patiently endure this aching void, as I trust I shall the other inevitable ills of our lot. What could be more appropriate than this prelude of hunger in one proposing to marry a home missionary?"

With an odd blending of delight and sympathy in his face, Hemstead exclaimed: "Lottie! You have received more compliments than you could count in a year, but I am going to give you one different from any that you ever had before. There's not even a trace of morbidness in your nature."

Thus, in playful and serious talk, they passed the hours until the snow-clad mountains were sparkling in the rising sun. Hemstead placed upon Lottie's hand a plain seal-ring that had been his father's, but she covered it with her glove, not wishing the fact of her engagement to transpire until they should reach home.

At last the others awoke, and what they had passed through seemed like a grotesque, horrible dream. De Forrest looked suspiciously at Hemstead and Lottie, but could gather nothing from their quiet bearing towards each other.

Early in the day relief reached them, and by the middle of the forenoon they were doing ample justice to Mrs. Marchmont's sumptuous breakfast.

Then the telltale ring on Lottie's finger revealed the secret, and there was consternation. But poor De Forrest was so outrageously hungry that he had to eat even in this most trying emergency. And yet he had a painful sense that it was not the proper thing to do under the circumstances, and so was exceedingly awkward, for once in his life.

Mr. Dimmerly chuckled all that Sunday with "unbecoming levity," his sister said.

She, poor woman, had lost all confidence in herself as a good manager. In her bosom indignation at her nephew and Lottie contended with the dread of Mrs. Marsden's reproaches.

Bel tried to think that it was not her fault, and Addie did not much care.

The holiday visit came to an end. The months sped away. Lottie's purpose was severely tested. Every possible motive, reason, and argument was brought to bear upon the brave girl. Worse than all, she had to endure the cold, averted looks of those she fondly loved. She pleaded her own cause eloquently. She frequently quoted her friend's example, who was about to marry the army officer.

"But that is very different," they said.

Only once she lost her temper. There was a sort of family conclave of aunts and relatives, and they had beset her sorely. At last she turned upon them suddenly, and asked:

"Are you Christians? Do you believe there is a God?"

"Why, certainly. Do you think we are heathen?"

"Why talk, then, like heathen, and act like infidels? If it's the thing in the fashionable world to marry a trusted servant of a human government, how much better must it be to marry a servant of the King of All! I honor my friend because she marries the man she loves, and I shall marry the one I love. I am of age—I have chosen my lot. Mark my words! you will yet be proud of the one whom you now so despise; while the one you wish me to marry will cover his own and the names of all connected with him with shame"; and she left them to recover from this bombshell of truth, as best they might.

But the patient gentleness which she usually manifested at length won even their obdurate hearts. Her father was the first to relent, and was finally brought, by Lottie's irresistible witchery, quite over on her side. But, in her mother's case, there was only partial resignation to a great but inevitable misfortune. Mrs. Marsden was a sincere idolater of the world for which she lived.

In Aunt Jane, Lottie had a stanch ally, and a sympathizing and comforting helper.

But the postman, who brought, with increasing frequency, letters that were big and heavy, like the writer, was the man whom Lottie most doted on in all the city.

With the whole energy of her forceful, practical nature, she trained herself for her work, as Hemstead was training himself for his. And when, a year later, she gave him her hand at the sacred altar, it was not a helpless hand.

Years have passed. Mr. and Mrs. Hemstead are the chief social, refining, and Christianizing influences of a growing Western town. They have the confidence and sympathy of the entire community, and are people of such force that they make themselves felt in every department of life. They are shaping and ennobling many characters, and few days pass in which Lottie does not lay up in memory some good deed, though she never stops to count her hoard. But, in gladness, she will learn in God's good time that such deeds are the riches that have no wings.

She made good her warning, and never became a "solemn, ghostly sort of a missionary." She was usually as wholesome as the sunshine, or if the occasion required, as a stiff north wind, and had a pronounced little way of her own, when things went wrong at home or in the church, of giving all concerned the benefit of some practical common sense. But she also, in the main, kept her pledge to endure patiently, as she had borne her hunger on the mountain, and many privations and trials of their lot.

While she sustained her husband's hands and doubled his usefulness abroad, he generally found at home a sunny philosopher who laughed him out of half his troubles.

With increasing frequency he said, "Lottie, you are so wholesome; there is not a morbid, unnatural trait in you."

And she inspired him to preach such a wholesome, sunny Gospel that it won even the most prejudiced.

One evening, a feeble, aged man stepped down from the train, and was borne off in triumph by Hemstead to the warmest corner of his hearth.

Lottie gave him such a welcome that the old gentleman cried out: "Hold on. My goodness gracious! haven't you sobered down yet?"

Then, while Frank stood near, with his hand upon her shoulder, looking as proud of her as a man could be, and with just such a black-eyed cherub in her arms as she must have been herself twenty odd years before, her face aglow with health, happiness, and content, she asked, "Well, uncle, what do you think of your meddling now?"

Mr. Dimmerly went off into one of his old-time chuckles, as he said, "This is one of the things which the world never can 'stop.'"

THE END