"Please—please," she protested, "do not say anything more; it never can be,—indeed, it cannot!"

Dick's voice had been tender a moment before, but it was hard now. "Well," he said, "you have amused yourself all summer, I suppose. You made me think you loved me, and everybody else thought so, too."

The hint of blame kept Lois from feeling the sting of conscience. She flung her head back, and looked at him with a flash of indignation in her eyes. "Do you think it's manly to blame me? You had better blame yourself that you couldn't win my love!"

"Do you expect a man to choose his words when you give him his death-blow?" he said; and then, "Oh, Miss Lois, if I wait, can't you learn to care for me? I'll wait,—a year, if you say there's any hope. Or do you love anybody else? Is that the reason?"

"That has nothing to do with it," Lois cried, hotly, "but I don't."

"Then," said Dick eagerly, "you must love me, only you don't recognize it, not having been in love before. Of course it's different with a girl who doesn't know what love is. Oh, say you do!"

Lois, with quick compunction for her anger, was gentle enough now. "I cannot say so. I wish you would forget me, and forgive me if you can. I'm sorry to have grieved you,—truly I am."

There was silence for a few minutes, only broken by a yawn from Max and the snapping of the fire.

"I tell you I cannot forget," the young man said, at last. "You have ruined my life for me. Do you think I'll be apt to forget the woman that's done that? I'll love you always, but life is practically over for me. Remember that, the next time you amuse yourself, Miss Howe!" Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and left her.

Lois drew a long breath as she heard him slam the front door behind him, and then she sat down on the rug again. She was too angry to cry, though her hands shook with nervousness. But under all her excitement was the sting of mortification and remorse.

Max, with that strange understanding which animals sometimes show, suddenly turned and licked her face, and then looked at her, all his love speaking in his soft brown eyes.

"Oh, Max, dear," Lois cried, flinging her arms around him, and resting her cheek on his shining head, "what a comfort you are! How much nicer dogs are than men!"



CHAPTER X.

Dr. Howe, with no thought of Mr. Forsythe's unceremonious call at the rectory, had gone home with Mr. Denner. "One needs a walk," he said, "after one of Miss Deborah's dinners. Bless my soul, what a housekeeper that woman is!"

"Just so," said Mr. Denner, hurrying along at his side,—"just so. Ah—it has often occurred to me."

And when the rector had left him at his white gateway between the Lombardy poplars, Mr. Denner went into his library, and after stumbling about to light his lamp, and stirring his fire to have a semblance, at least, of cheer, he sat down and meditated further on this subject of Miss Deborah's housekeeping.

It was a dreary room, with lofty ceilings and few and narrow windows. The house was much lower than the street, and had that piercing chill of dampness which belongs to houses in a hollow, and the little gentleman drew so close to the smouldering fire that his feet were inside the fender.

He leaned forward, and resting his elbows on his knees, propped his chin on his hands, and stared at the smoke curling heavily up into the cavernous chimney, where the soot hung long and black. It was very lonely. Willie Denner, of course, had long ago gone to bed, and unless the lawyer chose to go into the kitchen for company, where Mary was reading her one work of fiction. "The Accounts of the Death Beds of Eminent Saints," he had no one to speak to. Many a time before had he sat thus, pondering on the solitude of his life, and contrasting his house with other Ashurst homes. He glanced about his cold bare room, and thought of the parlor of the Misses Woodhouse. How pleasant it was, how bright, and full of pretty feminine devices! whereas his library—Mary had been a hard mistress. One by one the domestic decorations of the late lady of the house had disappeared. She could not "have things round a-trapin' dust," Mary said, and her word was law.

"If my little sister had lived," he said, crouching nearer the fire, and watching a spark catch in the soot and spread over the chimney-back like a little marching regiment, that wheeled and maneuvered, and then suddenly vanished, "it would have been different. She would have made things brighter. Perhaps she would have painted, like Miss Ruth; and I have no doubt she would have been an excellent housekeeper. We should have just lived quietly here, she and I, and I need never have thought"—Mr. Denner flushed faintly in the firelight—"of marriage."

Mr. Denner's mind had often traveled as far as this; he had even gone to the point of saying to himself that he wished one of the Misses Woodhouse would regard him with sentiments of affection, and he and Willie, free from Mary, could have a home of their own, instead of forlornly envying the rector and Henry Dale.

But Mr. Denner had never said which Miss Woodhouse; he had always thought of them, as he would have expressed it, "collectively," nor could he have told which one he most admired,—he called it by no warmer name, even to himself.

But as he sat here alone, and remembered the pleasant evening he had had, and watched his fire smoulder and die, and heard the soft sigh of the rising wind, he reached a tremendous conclusion. He would make up his mind. He would decide which of the Misses Woodhouse possessed his deeper regard. "Yes," he said, as he lifted first one foot and then the other over the fender, and, pulling his little coat-tails forward under his arms, stood with his back to the fireplace,—"yes, I will make up my mind; I will make it up to-morrow. I cannot go on in this uncertain way. I cannot allow myself to think of Miss Ruth, and how she would paint her pictures, and play my accompaniments, and then find my mind on Miss Deborah's dinners. It is impracticable; it is almost improper. To-morrow I will decide."

To have reached this conclusion was to have accomplished a great deal.

Mr. Denner went to bed much cheered; but he dreamed of walking about Miss Ruth's studio, and admiring her pictures, when, to his dismay, he found Mary had followed him, and was saying she couldn't bear things all of a clutter.

The next morning he ate his breakfast in solemn haste; it was to be an important day for him. He watched Mary as she walked about, handing him dishes with a sternness which had always awed him into eating anything she placed before him, and wondered what she would think when she heard—He trembled a little at the thought of breaking it to her; and then he remembered Miss Ruth's kind heart, and he had a vision of a pension for Mary, which was checked instantly by the recollection of Miss Deborah's prudent economy.

"Ah, well," he thought, "I shall know to-night. Economy is a good thing,—Miss Ruth herself would not deny that."

He went out to his office, and weighed and balanced his inclinations until dinner-time, and again in the afternoon, but with no result. Night found him hopelessly confused, with the added grievance that he had not kept his word to himself.

This went on for more than a week; by and by the uncertainty began to wear greatly upon him.

"Dear me!" he sighed one morning, as he sat in his office, his little gaitered feet upon the rusty top of his air-tight stove, and his brierwood pipe at his lips—it had gone out, leaving a bowl of cheerless white ashes,—"dear me! I no sooner decide that it had better be Miss Deborah—for how satisfying my linen would be if she had an eye on the laundry, and I know she would not have bubble-and-squeak for dinner as often as Mary does—than Miss Ruth comes into my mind. What taste she has, and what an ear! No one notices the points in my singing as she does; and how she did turn that carpet in Gifford's room; dear me!"

He sat clutching his extinguished pipe for many minutes, when suddenly a gleam came into his face, and the anxious look began to disappear.

He rose, and laid his pipe upon the mantelpiece, first carefully knocking the ashes into the wood-box which stood beside the stove. Then, standing with his left foot wrapped about his right ankle and his face full of suppressed eagerness, he felt in each pocket of his waistcoat, and produced first a knife, then a tape measure, a pincushion, a bunch of keys, and last a large, worn copper cent. It was smooth with age, but its almost obliterated date still showed that it had been struck the year of Mr. Denner's birth.

Next, he spread his pocket handkerchief smoothly upon the floor, and then, a little stiffly, knelt upon it. He rubbed the cent upon the cuff of his coat to make it shine, and held it up a moment in the stream of wintry sunshine that poured through the office window and lay in a golden square on the bare floor.

"Heads," said Mr. Denner,—"heads shall be Miss Deborah; tails, Miss Ruth. Oh, dear me! I wonder which?"

As he said this, he pitched the coin with a tremulous hand, and then leaned forward, breathlessly watching it fall, waver from side to side, and roll slowly under the bookcase. Too much excited to rise from his knees, he crept towards it, and, pressing his cheek against the dusty floor, he peered under the unwieldy piece of furniture, to catch a glimpse of his penny and learn his fate.

At such a critical moment it was not surprising that he did not, hear Willie Denner come into the office. The little boy stood still, surprised at his uncle's attitude. "Have you lost something, sir?" he said, but without waiting for an answer, he fell on his knees and looked also.

"Oh, I see,—your lucky penny; I'll get it for you in a minute."

And stretching out flat upon his stomach, he wriggled almost under the bookcase, while Mr. Denner rose and furtively brushed the dust from his knees.

"Here it is, uncle William," Willie said, emerging from the shadow of the bookcase; "it was clear against the wall, and 'most down in a crack."

Mr. Denner took the penny from the child, and rubbed it nervously between his hands.

"I suppose," he inquired with great hesitation, "you did not chance to observe, William, which—ah—which side was up?"

"No, sir," answered Willie, with amazement written on his little freckled face; "it hadn't fallen, you know, uncle; it was just leaning against the wall. I came in to bring my Latin exercise," he went on. "I'll run back to school now, sir."

He was off like a flash, saying to himself in a mystified way, "I wonder if uncle William plays heads and tails all alone in the office?"

Mr. Denner stood holding the penny, and gazing blankly at it, unconscious of the dust upon his cheek.

"That did not decide it," he murmured. "I must try something else."

For Mr. Denner had some small superstitions, and it is doubtful if he would have questioned fate again in the same way, even if he had not been interrupted at that moment by the rector.

Dr. Howe came into the office beating his hands to warm them, his face ruddy and his breath short from a walk in the cold wind. He had come to see the lawyer about selling a bit of church land; Mr. Denner hastily slipped his penny into his pocket, and felt his face grow hot as he thought in what a posture the rector would have found him had he come a few minutes sooner.

"Bless my soul, Denner," Dr. Howe said, when, the business over, he rose to go, "this den of yours is cold!" He stooped to shake the logs in the small stove, hoping to start a blaze. The rector would have resented any man's meddling with his fire, but all Mr. Denner's friends felt a sort of responsibility for him, which he accepted as a matter of course.

"Ah, yes," replied Mr. Denner, "it is chilly here. It had not occurred to me, but it is chilly. Some people manage to keep their houses very comfortable in weather like this. It is always warm at the rectory, I notice, and at Henry Dale's, or—ah—the Misses Woodhouse's,—always warm."

The rector, taking up a great deal of room in the small office, was on his knees, puffing at the fire until his face was scarlet. "Yes. I don't believe that woman of yours half looks after your comfort, Denner. Can't be a good housekeeper, or she would not let this stove get so choked with ashes."

"No," Mr. Denner acknowledged—"ah—I am inclined to agree with you, doctor. Not perhaps a really good housekeeper. But few women are,—very few. You do not find a woman like Miss Deborah Woodhouse often, you know."

"True enough," said Dr. Howe, pulling on his big fur gloves. "That salad of hers, the other night, was something to live for. What is that?—'plunge his fingers in the salad bowl'—'tempt the dying anchorite to eat,'—I can't remember the lines, but that is how I feel about Miss Deborah's salad." The rector laughed in a quick, breezy bass, beat his hands together, and was ready to start.

"Yes," said Mr. Denner, "just so,—quite so. But Miss Deborah is a remarkable woman, an estimable woman. One scarcely knows which is the more admirable, Miss Deborah or Miss Ruth. Which should you—ah—which do you most admire?"

The rector turned, with one hand on the door-knob, and looked at the lawyer, with a sudden gleam in his keen eyes. "Well, I am sure I don't know. I never thought of comparing them. They are both, as you say, estimable ladies."

"Oh, yes, yes, just so," said Mr. Denner hurriedly. "I only mentioned it because—it was merely in the most general way; I—I—did not mean to compare—oh, not at all—of course I should never discuss a lady's worth, as it were. I spoke in confidence; I merely wondered what your opinion might be—not"—cried Mr. Denner, bursting into a cold perspiration of fright to see how far his embarrassment had betrayed him—"not that I really care to know! Oh, not at all!"

The rector flung his head back, and his rollicking laugh jarred the very papers on Mr. Denner's desk.

"It is just as well you don't, for I am sure I could not say. I respect them both immensely. I have from boyhood," he added, with a droll look.

Mr. Denner coughed nervously.

"It is not of the slightest consequence," he explained,—"not the slightest. I spoke thoughtlessly; ah—unadvisedly."

"Of course, of course; I understand," cried the rector, and forbore to add a good-natured jest at Mr. Denner's embarrassment, which was really painful.

But when he was well out of hearing, he could not restrain a series of chuckles.

"By Jove!" he cried, clapping his thigh, "Denner!—Denner and Miss Deborah! Bless my soul,—Denner!"

His mirth, however, did not last long; some immediate annoyances of his own forced themselves into his mind.

Before he went to the lawyer's office, he had had a talk with Mrs. Dale, which had not been pleasant; then a letter from Helen had come; and now an anxious wrinkle showed itself under his fur cap, as he walked back to the rectory.

He had gone over to show Mr. Dale a somewhat highly seasoned sketch in "Bell's Life;" in the midst of their enjoyment of it, they were interrupted by Mrs. Dale.

"I want to speak to you about Lois, brother. Ach! how this room smells of smoke!" she said.

"Why, what has the child done now?" said Dr. Howe.

"You needn't say 'What has she done now?' as though I was always finding fault," Mrs. Dale answered, "though I do try to do my Christian duty if I see any one making a mistake."

"Adele," remarked the rector, with a frankness which was entirely that of a brother, and had no bearing upon his office, "you are always ready enough with that duty of fault-finding." Mr. Dale looked admiringly at his brother-in-law. "Why don't you think of the duty of praise, once in a while? Praise is a Christian grace too much neglected. Don't you think so, Henry?"

But Mrs. Dale answered instead: "I am ready enough to praise when there is occasion for it, but you can't expect me to praise Lois for her behavior to young Forsythe. Arabella says the poor youth is completely prostrated by the blow."

"Bah!" murmured Mr. Dale under his breath; but Dr. Howe said impatiently,—

"What do you mean? What blow?"

"Why, Lois has refused him!" cried Mrs. Dale. "What else?"

"I didn't know she had refused him," the rector answered slowly. "Well, the child is the best judge, after all."

"I am glad of it," said Mr. Dale,—"I am glad of it. He was no husband for little Lois,—no, my dear, pray let me speak,—no husband for Lois. I have had some conversation with him, and I played euchre with him once. He played too well for a gentleman, Archibald."

"He beat you, did he?" said the rector.

"That had nothing to do with it!" cried Mr. Dale. "I should have said the same thing had I been his partner"—

"Fudge!" Mrs. Dale interrupted, "as though it made the slightest difference how a man played a silly game! Don't be foolish, Henry. Lois has made a great mistake, but I suppose there is nothing to be done, unless young Forsythe should try again. I hope he will, and I hope she will have more sense."

The rector was silent. He could not deny that he was disappointed, and as he went towards the post-office, he almost wished he had offered a word of advice to Lois. "Still, a girl needs her mother for that sort of thing, and, after all, perhaps it is best. For really, I should be very dull at the rectory without her." Thus he comforted himself for what was only a disappointment to his vanity, and was quite cheerful when he opened Helen's letter.

The post-office was in that part of the drug-store where the herbs were kept, and the letters always had a faint smell of pennyroyal or wormwood about them. The rector read his letter, leaning against the counter, and crumpling some bay leaves between his fingers; and though he was interrupted half a dozen times by people coming for their mail, and stopping to gossip about the weather or the church, he gained a very uncomfortable sense of its contents.

"More of this talk about belief," he grumbled, as he folded the last sheet, covered with the clear heavy writing, and struck it impatiently across his hand before he thrust it down into his pocket. "What in the world is John Ward thinking of to let her bother her head with such questions?"

"I am surprised" Helen wrote, "to see how narrowness and intolerance seem to belong to intense belief. Some of these elders in John's church, especially a man called Dean (the father of my Alfaretta), believe in their horrible doctrines with all their hearts, and their absolute conviction make them blind to any possibility of good in any creed which does not agree with theirs. Apparently, they think they have reached the ultimate truth, and never even look for new light. That is the strangest thing to me. Now, for my part, I would not sign a creed to-day which I had written myself, because one lives progressively in religion as in everything else. But, after all, as I said to Gifford the other day, the form of belief is of so little consequence. The main thing is to have the realization of God in one's own soul; it would be enough to have that, I should think. But to some of us God is only another name for the power of good,—or, one might as well say force, and that is blind and impersonal; there is nothing comforting or tender in the thought of force. How do you suppose the conviction of the personality of God is reached?"

"All nonsense," said the rector, as he went home, striking out with his cane at the stalks of golden-rod standing stiff with frost at the roadside. "I shall tell Gifford he ought to know better than to have these discussions with her. Women don't understand such things; they go off at half cock, and think themselves skeptics. All nonsense!"

But the rector need not have felt any immediate anxiety about his niece. As yet such questions were only a sort of intellectual exercise; the time had not come when they should be intensely real, and she should seek for an answer with all the force of her life, and know the anguish of despair which comes when a soul feels itself adrift upon a sea of unbelief. They were not of enough importance to talk of to John, even if she had not known they would trouble him; she and Gifford had merely spoken of them as speculations of general interest; yet all the while they were shaping and moulding her mind for the future.

But the letter brought a cloud on Dr. Howe's face; he wanted to forget it, he was impatient to shake off the unpleasant remembrances it roused, and so engaged was he in this that by the time he had reached the rectory Mr. Denner and his perplexities were quite out of his mind, though the lawyer's face was still tingling with mortification.

Mr. Denner could not keep his thoughts from his puzzle. Supper-time came, and he was still struggling to reach a conclusion. He carved the cold mutton with more than usual precision, and ate it in anxious abstraction. The room was chilly; draughts from the narrow windows made the lamp flare, and the wind from under the closed door raised the carpet in swells along the floor. He did not notice Willie, who kept his hands in his pockets for warmth, and also because he had nothing for them to do.

When Mr. Denner rang for Mary, the boy said with anxious politeness, "Was—was the mutton good, sir?"

Willie had been well brought up,—he was not to speak unless spoken to; but under the press of hunger nature rebelled, for his uncle, in his absorption, had forgotten to help him to anything.

Mr. Denner carved some meat for the child, and then sat and watched him with such gloomy eyes, that Willie was glad to finish and push his chair back for prayers.

The table was cleared, and then Mary put the Bible in front of Mr. Denner, and Jay's "Morning and Evening Exercises," open at the proper day. Two candles in massive candlesticks on either side of his book gave an unsteady light, and when they flickered threw strange shadows on the ceiling. The frames which held the paintings of Mr. Denner's grandparents loomed up dark and forbidding, and Mary, who always sat with her arms rolled in her apron and her head bowed upon her ample breast, made a grotesque shadow, which danced and bobbed about on the door of the pantry. Mary generally slept through prayers, while for Willie it was a time of nervous dread. The room was so dark, and his uncle's voice so strange and rolling, the little fellow feared to kneel down and turn his back to the long table with its ghastly white cloth; his imagination pictured fearful things stealing upon him from the mysterious space beneath it, and his heart beat so he could scarcely hear the words of the prayer. But Mr. Denner enjoyed it. Not, however, because prayer was the expression of his soul; family prayer was merely a dignified and proper observance. Mr. Denner would not; have omitted it any more than he would have neglected Sunday morning service; but he was scarcely more aware of the words than Willie or Mary were. It was the reading which gave Mr. Denner so much pleasure.

Perhaps the cases he had never pleaded, the dramatic force which he secretly longed to exert, expended themselves in the sonorous chapters of Isaiah or in the wail of Jeremiah. Indeed, the thought had more than once occurred to Mr. Denner that the rector, who read the service with cheerful haste, might improve in his own delivery, could he listen to the eloquence under which Mary and little Willie sat every evening.

To-night it was the victory of Jephtha. The reading proceeded as usual: Mary slumbered tranquilly at her end of the room; Willie counted the number of panes of glass in the window opposite him, and wondered what he should do if suddenly a white face should peer in at him out of the darkness; Mr. Denner had reached the vow that whatsoever should first meet Jephtha,—when, with his hand extended, his eyebrows drawn together, and his whole attitude expressing the anxiety and fear of the conqueror, he stopped abruptly. Here was an inspiration!

Mary woke with a start. "Is it a stroke?" she exclaimed. But Willie, with one frightened look at the window and the long table, slipped from his chair to kneel, thinking the reading was over. The sound of his little copper-toed boots upon the floor aroused Mr. Denner; he frowned portentously. "So Jephtha passed over unto the children of Ammon," he read on, "to fight against them, and the Lord delivered them into his hands."

When prayers were ended, however, and he was sitting in his library alone, he said with a subdued glee, "That is the way to do it,—the one I see first!" And Mr. Denner went to bed with a quiet mind, and the peace which follows the decision of a momentous question.



CHAPTER XI.

The cold that winter was more persistent and severe in the mountains than down in Ashurst.

At Lockhaven the river had been frozen over for a month, even above the bridge and the mills, where the current was swiftest. Long lines of sawdust, which had been coiling and whirling in the eddies, or stretching across the black seething water, were caught in the ice, or blown about with the powdered snow over its surface.

Rafts could not come down the river, so the mills had no work to do, for the logs on hand at the beginning of the cold snap had been sawed into long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as soon as the thaw came. The cold, still air was sweet with the fragrance of fresh pine boards, and the ground about the mills was covered with sawdust, so that footsteps fell as silently as though on velvet, instead of ringing sharp against the frozen ground.

John Ward, walking wearily home from a long visit to a sick woman, came, as he crossed the lumber-yards, upon a group of raftsmen; they had not heard his approach, and were talking loudly, with frequent bursts of drunken laughter.

It was towards evening; the sky had been threatening all day, and when the clouds lifted suddenly in the west, blown aside like tumultuous folds of a gray curtain, the red sun sent a flood of color across the wintry landscape; the bare branches of the trees were touched with light, and the pools of black, clear ice gleamed with frosty fire. John's face had caught the radiance.

He had come up to the men so silently that he had been standing beside them a moment before they noticed him, and then Tom Davis, with a start of drunken fear, tried to hide the bottle which he held.

"Damn you, mate, you're spillin' it!" cried one of the others, making an unsteady lunge forward to seize the bottle.

"Let up, let up," said Tom thickly. "Don't ye see the preacher?" Though Davis was not one of his flock, he had the same reverence for the preacher which his congregation felt. All Lockhaven loved and feared John Ward.

John had not spoken, even though a little boy, building block houses on a heap of sawdust near the men, had come up and taken his hand with a look of confident affection.

The man who had saved the whiskey stumbled to his feet, and leaning against a pile of lumber stood open-mouthed, waiting for the preacher's rebuke; but Davis hung his head, and began to fumble for a pipe in his sagging coat pocket; with clumsy fingers, scattering the tobacco from his little bag, he tried to fill it.

"Tom," the preacher said, at last, "I want you to come home with me, now. And Jim, you will give me that bottle."

"I can't go home, preacher. I've got to buy some things. She said I was to buy some things for the brats."

"Have you bought them?" John asked. Tom gave a silly laugh.

"Not yet, preacher, not yet."

"Listen, men," John said, with sudden sternness. "You have let this child see you on the road to hell. If he can remember this sight, it will save his soul."

Tom Davis shrank as the preacher said "hell." He gave a maudlin cry, and almost whimpered, "No, sir, no, preacher, I am a-goin' to reform." John had known what note to touch in this debased nature. Not love, nor hope, nor shame, would move Tom Davis, but fear stung him into a semblance of sobriety. "I'll come along wi' you," he went on, swaying back and forth, and steadying himself with a hand on the lumber against which he had been leaning. "This is the last time, preacher. You won't see me this way no more."

Here he hiccoughed, and then laughed, but remembering himself instantly, drew his forehead into a scowl.

The other men slunk away, for the minister had taken the bottle, and Tom Davis was following him through the narrow passages between the great piles of boards, towards his house.

The boy had gone back to his block house; the pile of sawdust in the sheltered corner was more comfortable and not more cheerless than his own home.

John left Davis at his door. The man looked cowed, but there was no shame in his face, and no sense of sin. It was unpleasant to be caught by the preacher, and he was frightened by that awful word, which it was the constant effort of his numb, helpless brain to forget.

John went on alone. He walked slowly, with his eyes fixed absently on the ground, thinking. "Poor Davis," he said, "poor fellow!" The man's future seemed quite hopeless to the preacher, and, thinking of it, he recalled Mrs. Davis's regret that he had not spoken of hell in his sermon.

John sighed. His grief at Helen's unbelief was growing in his silence; yet he realized the inconsistency of his love in hiding his sorrow from her.

"It is robbing her, not to let her share it," he thought, "but I dare not speak to her yet."

More than once during the winter he had tried to show her the truth and the beauty of various doctrines, generally that of reprobation, but she had always evaded discussion; sometimes lightly, for it seemed such a small matter to her, but always firmly.

The preacher loitered, stopping to look at the river and the gaunt line of mills against the sky. He left the path, and went down to the edge of the white ice, so full of air bubbles, it seemed like solid snow, and listened to the gurgle of the hurrying water underneath.

A shed was built close to the stream, to shelter a hand fire-engine. It had not been used for so long that the row of buckets beside it, which were for dipping up water to fill it, were warped and cracked, their iron bands rusty, and out of one or two the bottom had fallen. The door of the shed creaked on its one hinge, and John looked up surprised to see how dark it had grown, then he turned towards home.

"Yes," he said to himself, "I must show her her danger. It will grieve her to force an argument upon her, and I don't think she has had one unhappy hour since we were married; but even if it were not for her own soul's sake, I must not let my people starve for the bread of life, to spare her. I must not be silent concerning the danger of the sinner. But it will trouble her,—it will trouble her."

John had dallied with temptation so long, that it had grown bold, and did not always hide under the plea of wisdom, but openly dared him to inflict the pain of grieving his wife upon himself. He still delayed, yet there were moments when he knew himself a coward, and had to summon every argument of the past to his defense. But before he reached the parsonage door he had lapsed into such tender thoughts of Helen that he said again, "Not quite yet; it seems to annoy her so to argue upon such things. I must leave it until I win her to truth by the force of its own constraining beauty. Little by little I will draw her attention to it. And I must gradually make my sermons more emphatic."

Helen met him at the door, and drew him into the house. "You are so late," she said, pressing his chill fingers against her warm cheek, and chafing them between her hands.

He stopped to kiss her before he took his coat off, smiling at her happiness and his own.

"How raw and cold it is!" she said. "Come into the study; I have a beautiful fire for you. Is it going to snow, do you think? How is your sick woman?"

"Better," he answered, as he followed her into the room. "Oh, Helen, it is good to be at home. I have not seen you since noon."

She laughed, and then insisted that he should sit still, and let her bring his supper into the study, and eat it there by the fire. He watched her with a delicious luxury of rest and content; for he was very tired and very happy.

She put a little table beside him, covered with a large napkin; and then she brought a loaf of brown bread and some honey, with a mould of yellow butter, and last a little covered dish of chicken.

"I broiled that for you myself," she explained proudly; "and I did not mean to give you coffee, but what do you think?—the whole canister of tea has disappeared. When Alfaretta went to get it for my supper, it had gone."

"Oh," John said, smiling, while Helen began to pour some cream into his coffee from a flat little silver jug, "I forgot to mention it: the fact is, I took that tea with me this afternoon,—I thought probably they had none in the house; and I wish you could have seen the woman's joy at the sight of it. I cooked some for her,—she told me how," he said deprecatingly, for Helen laughed; "and she said it was very good, too," he added.

But Helen refused to believe that possible. "It was politeness, John," she cried gayly, "and because, I suppose, you presented her with my lacquered canister."

"I did leave it," John admitted; "I never thought of it." But he forgot even to ask forgiveness, as she bent towards him, resting her hand on his shoulder while she put his cup beside him.

"The fire has flushed your cheek," he said, touching it softly, the lover's awe shining in his eyes; with John it had never been lost in the assured possession of the husband. Helen looked at him, smiling a little, but she did not speak. Silence with her told sometimes more than words.

"It has been such a long afternoon," he said. "I was glad to hurry home; perhaps that is the reason I forgot the canister."

"Shall I send you back for it?" She put her lips for a moment against his hand, and then, glancing out at the night for sheer joy at the warmth and light within, she added, "Why, what is that glow, John? It looks like fire."

He turned, and then pushed back his chair and went to the window.

"It does look like fire," he said anxiously.

Helen had followed him, and they watched together a strange light, rising and falling, and then brightening again all along the sky. Even as they looked the upper heavens began to pulsate and throb with faint crimson.

"It is fire!" John exclaimed. "Let me get my coat. I must go."

"Oh, not now," Helen said. "You must finish your supper; and you are so tired, John!"

But he was already at the door and reaching for his hat.

"It must be the lumber-yards, and the river is frozen!"

"Wait!" Helen cried. "Let me get my cloak. I will go if you do," and a moment later the parsonage door banged behind them, and they hurried out into the darkness.

The street which led to the lumber-yards had been silent and deserted when John passed through it half an hour before, but now all Lockhaven seemed to throng it.

The preacher and his wife could hear the snapping and crackling of flames even before they turned the last corner and saw the blaze, which, sweeping up into the cold air, began to mutter before it broke with a savage roar. They caught sight of Gifford's broad shoulders in the crowd, which stood, fascinated and appalled, watching the destruction of what to most of them meant work and wages.

"Oh, Giff!" Helen said when they reached his side, "why don't they do something? Have they tried to put it out?"

"It's no use to try now," Gifford answered. "They didn't discover it in time. It has made such headway, that the only thing to do is to see that it burns out, without setting fire to any of the houses. Fortunately the wind is towards the river."

John shook his head; he was too breathless to speak for a moment; then he said, "Something must be done."

"There is no use, Mr. Ward," Gifford explained. But John scarcely heard him; his people's comfort, their morality almost,—for poverty meant deeper sin to most of them,—was burning up in those great square piles of planks.

"Men," he shouted, "men, the engine! To the river! Run! run!"

"Nothing can be done," Gifford said, as the crowd broke, following the preacher, who was far ahead of all; but he too started, as though to join them, and then checked himself, and went back into the deserted street, walking up and down, a self-constituted patrol.

Almost every man had gone to the river. Tom Davis, however, with Molly beside him, stood lolling against a tree, sobered, indeed, by the shock of the fire, but scarcely steady enough on his legs to run. Another, who was a cripple, swaying to and fro on his crutches with excitement, broke into a storm of oaths because his companion did not do the work for which he was himself too helpless. But Tom only gazed with bleared eyes at the fire, and tried to stand up straight.

The little crowd of women about Helen had been silenced at first by the tumult and glare, but now broke into wild lamentations, and entreaties that Heaven would send the engine soon, wringing their hands, and sobbing, and frightening the children that clung about their skirts even more than the fire itself.

"How did it start?" Helen said, turning to the woman next to her, who, shivering with excitement, held a baby in her arms, who gazed at the fire with wide, tranquil eyes, as though it had been gotten up for his entertainment.

"They say," answered the woman, tossing her head in the direction of Tom Davis,—"they say him and some other fellows was in 'mong the lumber this afternoon, drinkin', you know, and smokin'. Most likely a match dropped, or ashes from their pipes. Drunken men ain't reasonable about them things," she added, with the simplicity of experience. "They don't stop to think they're burnin' up money, an' whiskey too; for Dobbs don't trust 'em, now the mill is shut down."

"Yes," said another woman who stood by, "them men! what do they care? You," she shouted, shaking her fist at Tom,—"you'll starve us all, will ye? an' your poor wife, just up from her sick bed! I do' know as she'll be much worse off, though, when he is out of work," she added, turning to Helen—"fer every blessed copper he has goes to the saloon."

"Yer man's as bad as me," Tom protested, stung by her taunts and the jeers of the cripple.

"An' who is it as leads him on?" screamed the woman. "An' if he does take a drop sometimes, it wasn't him as was in the lumber-yard this afternoon, a-settin' fire to the boards, an' burnin' up the food and comfort o' the whole town!"

Tom hurled a torrent of profanity at the woman and the cripple collectively, and then stumbled towards the road with the crowd, for the fire was approaching the side of the yard where they stood, and beating them back into the village street.

The air was filled with the appalling roar and scream of the flames; showers of sparks were flung up against the black sky, as with a tremendous crash the inside of one of the piles would collapse; and still the engine did not come.

"Hurry! hurry!" the women shouted with hoarse, terrified voices, and some ran to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the river.

The men were hurrying; but as they drew the long-unused engine from its shed, an axle broke, and with stiff fingers they tried to mend it. Some had had to run for axes to break the ice, and then they pushed and jostled each other about the square hole they had cut, to dip up the dark, swift water underneath; and all the while the sky behind them grew a fiercer red, and the very ice glared with the leaping flames. At last, pulling and pushing, they brought the little engine up the slope, and then with a great shout dragged it into the outskirts of the yard. They pumped furiously, and a small jet of water was played upon the nearest pile of boards. A hissing cloud of steam almost hid the volunteer firemen, but the flames leaped and tossed against the sky, and the sparks were sucked up into the cold air, and whirled in sheets across the river.

John Ward came breathlessly towards his wife. "Are you all right, Helen? You seemed too near; come back a little further." Then, suddenly seeing the woman beside her with the baby in her arms, he stopped, and looked about. "Where's your boy, Mrs. Nevins?" he said. The woman glanced around her.

"I—I'm not just sure, preacher."

"Have you seen him since six o'clock?"

"No—I—I ain't," the woman answered. There was something in John's face which terrified her, though the mere absence of her son gave her no uneasiness.

"Go back, Helen," he said, quickly,—"go as far as that second house, or I shall not feel sure you are safe. Mrs. Nevins, we must look for Charley. I am afraid—he was in the lumber-yard this afternoon"—

John did not wait to hear the woman's shriek; he turned and ran from group to group, looking for the boy whom he had seen building block houses on the pile of sawdust; but the mother, pushing her baby into a neighbor's arms, ran up and down like a mad woman.

"My boy!" she cried; "Charley! Charley! He's in the fire,—my boy's in the fire!"

Tom Davis had heard the hurried words of the preacher, and the mother's cries roused all the manhood drink had left. He hesitated a moment, and then pushing Molly towards the cripple whose taunts still rung in his ears, "Take care of the brat!" he said, and pulling off his coat, which he wrapped about his head to guard himself from the falling boards, he stooped almost double, and with his left arm bent before his face, and his right extended to feel his way, he ran towards the fire, and disappeared in the blinding smoke.

Even Mrs. Nevins was silenced for a moment of shuddering suspense; and when she tossed her arms into the air again, and shrieked, it was because John Ward came towards her with Charley trotting at his side.

"You should have looked after the child," the preacher said sternly. "I found him on the other side of the yard, near the fire-engine."

Mrs. Nevins caught the boy in her arms in a paroxysm of rage and joy; and then she thought of Tom.

"Oh, preacher," she cried, "preacher! he's run in after him, Tom Davis has!"

"There?" John said, pointing to the fire. "God help him!"

There was no human help possible. Tom had run down between two long piles of boards, not yet in flames, but already a sheet of fire swept madly across the open space. They could only look at each other, dumb with their own helplessness, and wait. How long this horror of expectation lasted no one knew, but at last, as if from the very mouth of hell, Tom Davis came, staggering and swaying,—his singed coat still rolled about his head, and his hands stretched blindly out.

John Ward ran towards him, and even the cripple pressed forward to take his hand. But with unseeing eyes he stood a moment, and then fell forward on his face. They lifted him, and carried him back into the street, away from the glare of light; there were plenty of kindly hands and pitying words, for most of the crowd had gathered about him; even the men who had brought the engine followed, for their efforts to subdue the fire were perfectly futile.

They laid him down on the stiff frozen grass by the roadside; but Molly clung so tightly about his neck, that the preacher could scarcely move her to put his hand upon Tom's heart; Helen lifted the little girl, and laid her own wet cheek against the child's.

The group of men and women stood awed and silent about the prostrate form, waiting for John to raise his head from the broad, still breast; when he lifted it, they knew all was over.

Whether the shock of the heat and tumult, coming upon the stupor of intoxication, and paralyzing the action of the heart, or whether a blow from a burning plank, had killed him, no one could know. The poor sodden, bloated body was suddenly invested with the dignity of death; and how death had come was for a little while a secondary thought.

"He is dead," John said. "He has died like a brave man!"

He stood looking down at the body for some moments, and no one spoke. Then, as there was a stir among those who stood near, and some one whispered that Mrs. Davis must be told, the preacher looked away from the dead man's face.

"Poor soul," he said, "poor soul!"

A few light flakes of snow were beginning to fall in that still, uncertain way which heralds a storm; some touched the dead face with pure white fingers, as though they would hide the degraded body from any eyes less kind than God's.

Helen, who had gone further back into the street that Molly might not look again at her father, came to John's side.

"I will take Molly home with me," she said; "tell Mrs. Davis where she is."

"Gifford is here to go with you?" John asked, with that quick tenderness which never left him. Then he turned away to help in carrying the dead man to his home.

The silent procession, with its awful burden, went back through the streets, lighted yet by the pulsing glare of the fire. John walked beside the still figure with his head bent upon his breast. That first impulse of human exultation in a brave deed was gone; there was a horror of pity instead. Just before they reached Tom's home, he stopped, by a gesture, the men who bore the body.

"Oh, my people," he said, his hands stretched out to them, the snow falling softly on his bared head, "God speaks to you from the lips of this dead man. Listen to his words: the day or the hour knoweth no man; and are you ready to face the judgment-seat of Christ? Oh, be not deceived, be not deceived! Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

It was long past midnight when the knot of men about Tom Davis's door dispersed; the excitement of the fire faded before that frank interest in death, which such people have no hesitation in expressing. Society veils it with decent reserve, and calls it morbid and vulgar, yet it is ineradicably human, and circumstances alone decide whether it shall be confessed.

But when the preacher came out of the house, all was quiet and deserted. The snow, driving in white sheets down the mountains, was tinged with a faint glow, where, in a blinding mist it whirled across the yards; it had come too late to save the lumber, but it had checked and deadened the flames, so that the few unburned planks only smouldered slowly into ashes.

John had told Mrs. Davis of her loss with that wonderful gentleness which characterized all his dealings with sorrow. He found her trying to quiet her baby, when he went in, leaving outside in the softly falling snow that ghastly burden which the men bore. She looked up with startled, questioning eyes as he entered. He took the child out of her arms, and hushed it upon his breast, and then, with one of her shaking hands held firm in his, he told her.

Afterwards, it seemed to her that the sorrow in his face had told her, and that she knew his message before he spoke.

Mrs. Davis had not broken into loud weeping when she heard her husband's fate, and she was very calm, when John saw her again, after all had been done which was needful for the dead; only moving nervously about, trying to put the room into an unusual order. John could not bear to leave her; knowing what love is, his sympathy for her grief was almost grief itself; yet he had said all that he could say to comfort her, all that he could of Tom's bravery in rushing into the fire, and it seemed useless to stay. But as he rose to go, putting the child, who had fallen asleep in his arms, down on the bed, Mrs. Davis stopped him.

She stood straightening the sheet which covered Tom's face, creasing its folds between her fingers, and pulling it a little on this side or that.

"Mr. Ward," she said, "he was drunk, Tom was."

"I know it," he answered gently.

"He went out with some money this forenoon," she went on; "he was to buy some things for the young ones. He didn't mean to drink; he didn't mean to go near the saloon. I know it. Mrs. Shea, she came in a bit after he went, and she said she seen him comin' out of the saloon, drunk. But he didn't mean it. Then you brought him home. But, bein' started, preacher, he could not help it, an' he'd been round to Dobbs's again, 'fore he seen the fire."

"Yes," John said.

Still smoothing the straight whiteness of the sheet, she said, with a tremor in her voice:—

"If he didn't want to, preacher—if he didn't mean to—perhaps it wasn't a sin? and him dying in it!"

Her voice broke, and she knelt down and hid her face in the dead man's breast. She did not think of him now as the man that beat her when he was drunk, and starved the children; he was the young lover again. The dull, brutal man and the fretful, faded woman had been boy and girl once, and had had their little romance, like happier husbands and wives.

John did not answer her, but a mist of tears gathered in his eyes.

Mrs. Davis raised her head and looked at him. "Tell me, you don't think it will be counted a sin to him, do you? You don't think he died in sin?" she asked almost fiercely.

"I wish I could say I did not," he answered.

She threw her hands up over her head with a shrill cry.

"You don't think he's lost? Say you don't, preacher,—say you don't!"

John took her hands in his. "Try and think," he said gently, "how brave Tom was, how nobly he faced death to save Charley. Leave the judgments of God to God; they are not for us to think of."

But she would not be put off in that way. Too weak to kneel, she had sunk upon the floor, leaning still against the bed, with one thin, gaunt arm thrown across her husband's body.

"You think," she demanded, "that my Tom's lost because he was drunk to-night?"

"No," he said, "I do not think that, Mrs. Davis."

"Is he saved?" she cried, her voice shrill with eagerness.

John was silent. She clutched his arm with her thin fingers, and shook it in her excitement; her pinched, terrified face was close to his.

"He wasn't never converted,—I know that,—but would the Lord have cut him off, sudden-like, in his sin, if He wasn't goin' to save him?"

"We can only trust his wisdom and his goodness."

"But you think he was cut off in his sins—you think—my Tom's lost!"

The preacher did not speak, but the passionate pity in his eyes told her. She put her hands up to her throat as though she were suffocating, and her face grew ghastly.

"Remember, God knows what is best for his children," John said. "He sends this grief of Tom's death to you in his infinite wisdom. He loves you,—He knows best."

"Do you mean," asked the woman slowly, "that it was best fer Tom he should die?"

"I mean this sorrow may be best for you," he answered tenderly. "God knows what you need. He sends sorrow to draw our souls nearer to Him."

"Oh," she exclaimed, her voice broken and hoarse, "I don't want no good fer me, if Tom has to die fer it. An' why should He love me instead o' Tom? Oh, I don't want his love, as wouldn't give Tom another chance! He might 'a' been converted this next revival, fer you would 'a' preached hell,—I know you would, then. No, I don't want no good as comes that way. Oh, preacher, you ain't going to say you think my Tom's burning in hell this night, and me living to be made better by it? Oh, no, no, no!" She crawled to his feet, and clasped his knees with her shaking arms. "Say he isn't,—say he isn't!"

But the presence of that dead man asserted the hopelessness of John's creed; no human pity could dim his faith, and he had no words of comfort for the distracted woman who clung to him. He could only lift her and try to soothe her, but she did not seem to hear him until he put her baby in her arms; at the touch of its little soft face against her drawn cheek, she trembled violently, and then came the merciful relief of tears. She did not ask the preacher again to say that her husband was not lost; she had no hope that he would tell her anything but what she already knew. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." She tried, poor thing, to find some comfort in the words he spoke of God's love for her; listening with a pathetic silence which wrung his heart.

When John left her, beating his way home through the blinding snow, his face was as haggard as her own. He could not escape from the ultimate conclusion of his creed,—"He that believeth not shall be damned." Yet he loved and trusted completely. His confidence in God's justice could not be shaken; but it was with almost a groan that he said, "O my God, my God, justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne; mercy and truth shall go before thy face! But justice with mercy,—justice first!"



CHAPTER XII.

The snow fell all that night, but the day broke exquisitely clear upon a white and shining world. The sky was blue and sparkling, and the keen north wind had carved the drifts into wonderful overhanging curves, like the curling crests of breakers.

John Ward went early to Mrs. Davis's. The sharp agony of the night before was over; there was even a momentary complacency at the importance of death, for the room was full of neighbors, whose noisy sympathy drove her despair of her husband's fate from her mind. But when she saw John, her terror came back, and she began to be silent, and not so ready to tell the story of the dead man's bravery to each one that entered. But with the people who were not immediately affected, the excitement of Tom's death could scarcely last.

By the afternoon his widow was for the most part alone. Helen had thought it would be so, and waited until then to go and see her. But first she went into her kitchen, and she and Alfaretta packed a little basket with cold meat, and sweet, snowy bread, and some jam, for the children.

"They do say," Alfaretta said, as she tucked the corners of the napkin under the wicker cover,—"they do say Tom Davis went straight to the bad place, last night. He wasn't never converted, you know; but somehow, seein' as he really thought he was going to save that Charley, seein' as he died for him, as you might say, it don't seem like as if it was just"—Alfaretta lowered her voice a little—"as if it was just—fair. Do you think he went there, Mrs. Ward?"

"I know he did not," Helen answered promptly. "I don't think about hell quite as you do, Alfaretta. I cannot believe God punishes people eternally; for if He is good, He could not be so cruel. Why, no human being would be so cruel as that, and do you think we ought to believe that men are better and kinder than God?"

Alfaretta looked confused. "Well, but justice?"

"Justice!" Helen said. "Would it be just if I put a little child where it was certain to fall down, and then punish it for falling? The child did not ask to be put there. So God puts us here, where we must sin; would it be just to punish us eternally for his own work?"

Alfaretta shook her head, and sighed. "Well, I don't know but yer right, though the preacher don't say so."

Helen did not speak for a moment, and then said quietly, "Perhaps not,—not yet; but he will say so some day. He is so good himself, you know, Alfaretta, he cannot bear to think every one else does not love and serve God, too; and it seems to him as though they ought to be punished if they don't."

This was a very lame explanation, but it closed the discussion, and she hurried away from the honest, searching eyes of her servant, which she felt must see through the flimsy excuse. Her eyes burned with sudden tears that blurred the white landscape, it hurt her to excuse her husband's belief even to herself, and gave her a feeling of disloyalty to him: for a moment she weakly longed to creep into the shelter of the monstrous error in which she felt he lived, that they might be one there, as in everything else. "Yet it does not matter," she said to herself, smiling a little. "We love each other. We know we don't think alike on doctrinal points, but we love each other."

She stopped a moment at the lumber-yard. The ghastly blackness of the ruin glared against the snow-covered hills and the dazzling blue of the sky; here and there a puff of steam showed where the melting snow on the cooler beams dripped on the hot embers below. Some scattered groups of lumbermen and their forlorn wives braved the cold, and stood talking the fire over, for, after all, it was the immediate interest; death would not come to them for years, perhaps, but where were they going to get money for their families during the spring? There could be no rafting down the river until after the loggers had brought their rafts from up in the mountains, to be sawed into planks.

Alfaretta's father, who stood contemplating the ruins, and moralizing when any one would stop to listen to him, had pointed this out. Mr. Dean was a carpenter, and kept a grocery store as well, so he could pity the lumbermen from the shelter of comparative affluence. When he saw the preacher's wife, he came over to speak to her.

"Well, ma'am," he said, "the dispensations of Providence is indeed mysterious,—that the river should have been froze last night!"

Mr. Dean had a habit of holding his mouth open a moment before he spoke, and looking as though he felt that his listener was impatient for his words, which were always pronounced with great deliberation. Helen had very little patience with him, and used to answer his slowly uttered remarks with a quickness which confused him.

"It would be more mysterious if it were not frozen, at this time of year," she replied, almost before he had finished speaking. She was in haste to reach Mrs. Davis, and she had no time to hear Elder Dean's platitudes.

He began to open his beak-like mouth in an astonished way, when a by-stander interrupted him: "I suppose this here sudden death in our midst" (it was easy to fall into pious phraseology in the presence of Elder Dean) "will be made the subject of the prayer-meeting to-night?"

"It will," said Mr. Dean solemnly,—"it will. It is an awful example to unbelievers. An' it is a lesson to the owners not to allow smoking in the yards." Then, with a sharp look at Helen out of his narrow eyes, he added, "I haven't seen you at prayer-meeting, lately, Mrs. Ward. It is a blessed place, a blessed place: the Lord touches sinners' hearts with a live coal from off his altar; souls have been taught to walk in the light, in the light of God." Mr. Dean prolonged the last word in an unctuous way, which he reserved for public prayer and admonition.

Helen did not answer.

But the elder was not rebuffed. "I hope we will see you soon," he said. "A solemn season of revival is approaching. Why have you stayed away so long, Mrs. Ward?"

Annoyed at the impertinence of his questions, Helen's face flushed a little.

"I do not like the prayer-meeting," she answered quietly; but before the elder could recover from the shock of such a statement, Mrs. Nevins had come up to speak to him.

"Have you seen Mrs. Davis yet, Mr. Dean?" she said. "She took on awful, last night; the neighbors heard her. 'T was after twelve 'fore she was quiet."

"Yes, I saw her," responded the elder, shaking his head in a pompous way. "I went to administer consolation. I'm just coming from there now. It is an awful judgment on that man: no chance for repentance, overtook by hell, as I told Mrs. Davis, in a moment! But the Lord must be praised for his justice: that ought to comfort her."

"Good heavens!" cried Helen, "you did not tell that poor woman her husband was overtaken by hell?"

"Ma'am," said Mr. Dean, fairly stuttering with astonishment at the condemnation of her tone—"I—I—did."

"Oh, shame!" Helen said, heedless of the listeners around them. "How dared you say such a thing? How dared you libel the goodness of God? Tom Davis is not in hell. A man who died to save another's life? Who would want the heaven of such a God? Oh, that poor wife! How could you have had the heart to make her think God was so cruel?"

There was a dead silence; Elder Dean was too dumfounded to speak, and the others, looking at Helen's eyes flashing through her tears of passionate pain, were almost persuaded that she was right. They waited to hear more, but she turned and hurried away, her breath quick, and a tightened feeling in her throat.

The elder was the first to break the spell of her words, but he opened his lips twice before a sound came. "May the Lord forgive her! Tom Davis not in hell? Why, where's the good of a hell at all, then?"

Helen's heart was burning with sympathy for the sorrow which had been so cruelly wounded. She had forgotten the reserve which respect for her husband's opinions always enforced. "It is wicked to have said such a thing!" she thought, as she walked rapidly along over the creaking snow. "I will tell her it is not true,—it never could be true."

The path through the ragged, unkempt garden in front of the tenement house was so trodden that the snow was packed and hard. The gate swung back with a jar and clatter, and two limp frosted hens flew shrieking out from the shelter of the ash-heap behind it. The door was open, and Helen could see the square of the entry, papered, where the plaster had not been broken away, with pale green castles embowered in livid trees. On either side was the entrance to a tenement; a sagging nail in one of the door-posts held a coat and a singed and battered hat. Here Helen knocked.

Mrs. Davis was in the small inner room, but came out as her visitor entered, wiping the soapsuds from her bare arms on her dingy gingham apron. On the other side of the room, opposite the door, was that awful Presence, which silenced even the voices of the children.

"I'm washing," the woman said, as she gave her hand to Helen. "It is Tom's best shirt,—fer to-morrow."

Helen took the hand, wrinkled and bleached with the work it had done, and stroked it gently; she did not know what to say. This was not the grief she had thought of,—a woman working calmly at her wash-tub, while her husband lay dead in the next room. Helen could see the tub, with the mist of steam about it, and the wash-board, and the bar of yellow soap.

She followed Mrs. Davis back to her work, and sat down on a bench, out of the way of a little stream of water which had dripped from the leaking tub, and trickled across the floor. She asked about the children, and said she had brought some food for them; she knew it was so hard to have to think of housekeeping at such a time.

But the widow scarcely listened; she stood lifting the shirt from the water, and rubbing it gently between her hard hands, then dipping it back into the suds again. Once she stopped, and drew the back of her wet hand across her eyes, and once Helen heard her sigh; yet she did not speak of her sorrow, nor of Elder Dean's cruel words. For a little while the two women were silent.

"Mrs. Davis," Helen said, at last, "I'm so sorry."

It was a very simple thing to say, but it caught the woman's ear; it was different from any of the sympathy to which, in a dull, hopeless way, she had listened all that morning. The neighbors had sighed and groaned, and told her it was "awful hard on her," and had pitied Tom for his terrible death; and then Mr. Dean had come, with fearful talk of justice, and of hell.

A big tear rolled down her face, and dropped into the tub. "Thank you, ma'am," she said.

She made a pretense of turning towards the light of the one small window to see if the shirt was quite clean; then she began to wring it out, wrapping the twist of wet linen about her wrist. When she spoke again, her voice was steady.

"Elder Dean 'lows I oughtn't to be sorry; he says I'd ought to be resigned to God's justice. He says good folks ought to be glad when sinners go to the bad place, even if they're belonging to them. He 'lows I'd oughtn't to be sorry."

"I am sure you have a right to be sorry Tom is dead," Helen said,—the woman's composure made her calm, too,—"but I do not believe he is in any place now that need make you sorry. I do not believe what Elder Dean said about—hell."

Mrs. Davis looked at her, a faint surprise dawning in her tired eyes, and shook her head. "Oh, I'm not sayin' that he ain't right. I'm not sayin' Tom ain't in the bad place, ner that it ain't justice. I'm a Christian woman. I was convicted and converted when I wasn't but twelve years old, and I know my religion. Tom—he wasn't no Christian, he didn't ever experience a change of heart: it was always like as if he was just going to be converted, when he wasn't in drink; fer he was good in his heart, Tom was. But he wasn't no Christian, an' I'm not sayin' he isn't lost. I'm only sayin',"—this with a sudden passion, and knotting her tremulous hands hard together,—"I'm only sayin' I can't love God no more! Him havin' all the power—and then look at Tom an' me"—

Helen tried to speak, but Mrs. Davis would not listen. "No," she cried, "yer the preacher's wife, but I must say it. He never give Tom a chance, an' how am I goin' to love Him now? Tom,"—she pointed a shaking finger at the coffin in the next room,—"born, as you might say, drinkin'. His father died in a drunken fit, and his mother give it to her baby with her milk. Then, what schoolin' did he get? Nothin', 'less it was his mother lickin' him. Tom's often told me that. He hadn't no trade learned, neither,—just rafted with men as bad as him. Is it any wonder he wasn't converted?"

"I know all that," Helen began to say gently, but Mrs. Davis could not check the torrent of her despairing grief.

"He didn't have no chance; an' he didn't ask to be born, neither. God put him here, an' look at the way He made him live; look at this house; see the floor, how the water runs down into that corner: it is all sagged an' leanin'—the whole thing is rotten look at that one window, up against the wall; not a ray of sunshine ever struck it. An' here's where God's made us live. Six of us, now the baby's come. Children was the only thing we was rich in, and we didn't have food enough to put in their mouths, or decent clothes to cover 'em. Look at the people 'round us here—livin' in this here row of tenements—drinkin', lying' swearin'. What chance had Tom? God never give him any, but He could of, if He'd had a mind to. So I can't love Him, Mrs. Ward,—I can't love Him; Him havin' all the power, and yet lettin' Tom's soul go down to hell; fer Tom couldn't help it, and him livin' so. I ain't denyin' religion, ner anything like that—I'm a Christian woman, an' a member—but I can't love Him, so there's no use talkin'—I can't love Him."

She turned away and shook the shirt out, hanging it over the back of a chair in front of the stove, to dry. Helen had followed her, and put her arm across the thin, bent shoulders, her eyes full of tears, though the widow's were hard and bright.

"Oh, Mrs. Davis," she cried, "of course you could not love a God who would never give Tom a chance and then punish him; of course you could not love Him! But he is not punished by being sent to hell; indeed, indeed, he is not. If God is good, He could not be so cruel as to give a soul no chance, and then send it to hell. Don't ever think that Tom, brave fellow, is there! Oh, believe what I say to you!"

Mrs. Davis seemed stupefied; she looked up into those beautiful distressed brown eyes, and her dry lips moved.

"You don't think," she said, in a hoarse, hurried whisper—"you're not saying—Tom isn't in hell?"

"I know he is not, I know it! Justice? it would be the most frightful injustice, because, don't you see," she went on eagerly, "it is just as you said,—Tom had no chance; so God could not punish him eternally for being what he had to be, born as he was, and living as he did. I don't know anything about people's souls when they die,—I mean about going to heaven,—but I do know this: as long as a soul lives it has a chance for goodness, a chance to turn to God. There is no such place as hell!"

"But—but"—the widow faltered, "he was cut off in his sins. The preacher wouldn't say but he was lost!" Her words were a wail of despair.

Helen groaned; she was confronted by her loyalty to John, yet the suffering of this hopeless soul! "Listen," she said, taking Mrs. Davis's hands in hers, and speaking slowly and tenderly, while she held the weak, shifting eyes by her own steady look, "listen. I do not know what the preacher would say, but it is not true that Tom is lost; it is not true that God is cruel and wicked; it is not true that, while Tom's soul lives, he cannot grow good."

The rigid look in the woman's face began to disappear; her hopeless belief was shaken, not through any argument, but by the mere force of the intense conviction shining in Helen's eyes.

"Oh," she said appealingly, and beginning to tremble, "are you true with me, ma'am?"

"I am true, indeed I am!" Helen answered, unconscious that her own tears fell upon Mrs. Davis's hands; the woman looked at her, and suddenly her face began to flush that painful red which comes before violent weeping.

"If you're true, if you're right, then I can be sorry. I wouldn't let myself be sorry while I couldn't have no hope. Oh, I can be that sorry it turns me glad!"

The hardness was all gone now; she broke into a storm of tears, saying between her sobs, "Oh, I'm so glad—I'm so glad!"

A long time the two women sat together, the widow still shaken by gusts of weeping, yet listening hungrily to Helen's words, and sometimes even smiling through her tears. The hardship of loss to herself and her children was not even thought of; there was only intense relief from horrible fear; she did not even stop to pity Tom for the pain of death; coming out of that nightmare of hell, she could only rejoice.

The early sunset flashed a sudden ruddy light through the window in the front room, making a gleaming bar on the bare whitewashed wall, and startling Helen with the lateness of the hour.

"I must go now," she said, rising. "I will come again to-morrow."

Mrs. Davis rose, too, lifting her tear-stained face, with its trembling smile, towards her deliverer. "Won't you come in the other room a minute?" she said. "I want to show you the coffin. I got the best I could, but I didn't have no pride in it. It seems different now."

They went in together, Mrs. Davis crying quietly. Tom's face was hidden, and a fine instinct of possession, which came with the strange uplifting of the moment, made his wife shrink from uncovering it.

She stroked the varnished lid of the coffin, with her rough hands, as tenderly as though the poor bruised body within could feel her touch.

"How do you like it?" she asked anxiously. "I wanted to do what I could fer Tom. I got the best I could. Mr. Ward give me some money, and I spent it this way. I thought I wouldn't mind going hungry, afterwards. You don't suppose,"—this with a sudden fear, as one who dreads to fall asleep lest a terrible dream may return,—"you don't suppose I'll forget these things you've been tellin' me, and think that of Tom?"

"No," Helen answered, "not if you just say to yourself that I told you what Mr. Dean said was not true. Never mind if you cannot remember the reasons I have given you,—I'll tell them all to you again; just try and forget what the elder said."

"I will try," she said; and then wavering a little, "but the preacher, Mrs. Ward?"

"The preacher," Helen answered bravely, "will think this way, too, some day, I know." And then she made the same excuse for him which she had given Alfaretta, with the same pang of regret.

"Yes, ma'am," the woman said, "I see. I feel now as though I could love God real hard 'cause He's good to Tom. But Mrs. Ward, the preacher must be wonderful good, fer he can think God would send my Tom to hell, and yet he can love Him! I couldn't do it."

"Oh, he is good!" Helen cried, with a great leap of her heart.

The wind blew the powdered snow about, as she walked home in the cold white dusk, piling it in great drifts, or leaving a ridge of earth swept bare and clean. The blackened lumber-yards were quite deserted in the deepening chill which was felt as soon as the sun set; the melting snow on the hot, charred planks had frozen into long icicles, and as she stopped to look at the ruin one snapped, and fell with a splintering crash.

One of those strangely unsuggested remembrances flashed into her mind: the gleam of a dove's white wing against the burning blue of a July sky, the blaze of flowers in the rectory garden, and the subtle, penetrating fragrance of mignonette. Perhaps the contrast of the intense cold and the gathering night brought the scene before her; she sighed; if she and John could go away from this grief and misery and sin, which they seemed powerless to relieve, and from this hideous shadow of Calvinism!

"After all," she thought, hurrying along towards home and John, "Mrs. Davis is right,—it is hard to love Him. He does not give a chance to every one; none of us can escape the inevitable past. And that is as hard as to be punished unjustly. And there is no help for it all. Oh, where is God?"

Just as she left the lumber-yard district, she heard her name called, and saw Gifford Woodhouse striding towards her. "You have been to those poor Davises I suppose," he said, as he reached her side, and took her empty basket from her hand.

"Yes," she answered, sighing. "Oh, Gifford, how dreadful it all is,—the things these people say, and really believe!" Then she told him of Elder Dean, and a little of her talk with Mrs. Davis. Gifford listened, his face growing very grave.

"And that is their idea of God?" he said, as she finished. "Well, it is mine of the devil. But I can't help feeling sorry you spoke as you did to the elder."

"Why?" she asked.

"Well," he said, "to assert your opinion of the doctrine of eternal damnation as you did, considering your position, Helen, was scarcely wise."

"Do you mean because I am the preacher's wife?" she remonstrated, smiling. "I must have my convictions, if I am; and I could not listen to such a thing in silence. You don't know John, if you think he would object to the expression of opinion." Gifford dared not say that John would object to the opinion itself. "But perhaps I spoke too forcibly; I should be sorry to be unkind, even to Elder Dean."

"Well," Gifford said doubtfully, "I only hope he may not feel called upon to 'deal with you.'"

They laughed, but the young man added, "After all, when you come to think of it, Helen, there is no bigotry or narrowness which does not spring from a truth, and nothing is truer than that sin is punished eternally. It is only their way of making God responsible for it,—not ourselves,—and arranging the details of fire and brimstone, which is so monstrous. Somebody says that when the Calvinists decided on sulphur they did not know the properties of caustic potash. But there are stages of truth; there's no use knocking a man down because he is only on the first step of the ladder, which you have climbed into light. I think belief in eternal damnation is a phase in spiritual development."

"But you don't really object to my protest?" she said. "Come, Giff, the truth must be strong enough to be expressed."

"I don't object to the protest," he answered slowly, "but I hope the manner of it will not make things difficult for Mr. Ward."

Helen laughed, in spite of her depression. "Why, Gifford," she said, "it is not like you to be so apprehensive, and over so small a matter, too. Mr. Dean has probably forgotten everything I said, and, except that I mean to tell him, John would never hear a word about it."



CHAPTER XIII.

The winter was passing very quietly in Ashurst; the only really great excitement was Helen's letter about the fire and Colonel Drayton's attack of gout.

Life went on as it had as far back as any one cared to remember, with the small round of church festivals and little teas, and the Saturday evening whist parties at the rectory. But under monotonous calm may lurk very wearing anxiety, and this was the case in Ashurst.

Mr. Denner endeavored, with but indifferent success, to conceal the indecision which was still preying upon his mind. For the suggestion gained from Jephtha had proved useless. He had, indeed, tried to act upon it. A day or two after the thought had come to him which so interrupted family prayers, Mr. Denner sallied forth to learn his fate. It was surprising how particular he was about his linen that morning,—for he went in the morning,—and he arrayed himself in his best clothes; he saw no impropriety, considering the importance of the occasion, in putting on his evening coat. He even wore his new hat, a thing he had not done more than half a dozen times—at a funeral perhaps, or a fair—since he bought it, three years before.

It was a bright, frosty day, and the little gentleman stepped briskly along the road towards the house of the two sisters. He felt as light-hearted as any youth who goes a-wooing with a reasonable certainty of a favorable answer from his beloved. He even sang a little to himself, in a thin, sweet voice, keeping time with his stick, like a drum-major, and dwelling faithfully on all the prolonged notes.

"Believe me," sang Mr. Denner,—

"'Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Which I gaze on so fondly to-day'"—

Mr. Denner's rendering of charms was very elaborate. But while he was still lingering on the last word, disappointment overtook him.

Coming arm in arm down the road were two small figures. Mr. Denner's sight was not what it once was; he fumbled in the breast of his bottle-green overcoat for his glasses, as a suspicion of the truth dawned upon him.

His song died upon his lips, and he turned irresolutely, as though to fly, but it was too late; he had recognized at the same moment Miss Deborah and Miss Ruth Woodhouse. By no possibility could he say which he had seen first.

He advanced to meet them, but the spring had gone from his tread and the light from his eye; he was thrown back upon his perplexities. The sisters, still arm in arm, made a demure little bow, and stopped to say "Good-morning," but Mr. Denner was evidently depressed and absent-minded.

"I wonder what's the matter with William Denner, sister?" Miss Ruth said, when they were out of hearing.

"Perhaps he's troubled about his housekeeping," answered Miss Deborah. "I should think he might be, I must say. That Mary of his does keep him looking so! And I have no doubt she is wasteful; a woman who is economical with her needle and thread is pretty apt not to be saving in other things."

"What a pity he hasn't a wife!" commented Miss Ruth. "Adele Dale says he's never been in love. She says that that affair with Gertrude Drayton was a sort of inoculation, and he's been perfectly healthy ever since."

"Very coarse in dear Adele to speak in that way," said Miss Deborah sharply. "I suppose he never has gotten over Gertrude's loss. Yet, if his sister-in-law had to die, it is a pity it wasn't a little sooner. He was too old when she died to think of marriage."

"But, dear Deborah, he is not quite too old even yet, if he found a person of proper age. Not too young, and, of course, not too old."

Miss Deborah did not reply immediately. "Well, I don't know; perhaps not," she conceded. "I do like a man to be of an age to know his own mind. That is why I am so surprised at Adele Dale's anxiety to bring about a match between young Forsythe and Lois, they are neither of them old enough to know their own minds. And it is scarcely delicate in Adele, I must say."

"He's a very superior young man," objected Miss Ruth.

"Yes," Miss Deborah acknowledged; "and yet"—she hesitated a little—"I think he has not quite the—the modesty one expects in a young person."

"Yes, but think how he has seen the world, sister!" cried Miss Ruth. "You cannot expect him to be just like other young people."

"True," said Miss Deborah, nodding her head; "and yet"—it was evident from her persistence that Miss Deborah had a grievance of some kind—"yet he seems to have more than a proper conceit. I heard him talk about whist, one evening at the rectory; he said something about a person,—a Pole, I believe,—and his rules in regard to 'signaling.' I asked him if he played," Miss Deborah continued, her hands showing a little angry nervousness; "and he said, 'Oh, yes, I learned to play one winter in Florida!' Learned to play in a winter, indeed! To achieve whist"—Miss Deborah held her head very straight—"to achieve whist is the work of a lifetime! I've no patience with a young person who says a thing like that."

Miss Ruth was silenced for a moment; she had no excuse to offer.

"Adele Dale says the Forsythes are coming back in April," she said, at last.

"Yes, I know it," answered Miss Deborah. "I suppose it will all be arranged then. I asked Adele if Lois was engaged to him;—she said, 'Not formally.' But I've no doubt there's an understanding."

Miss Deborah was so sure of this that she had even mentioned it casually to Gifford, of course under the same seal of confidence with which it had been told her.

It was quite true that Dick and his mother were to return to Ashurst. After storming out of the rectory library the night of the Misses Woodhouse's dinner party, Dick had had a period of hatred of everything connected with Ashurst; but that did not last more than a month, and was followed by an imploring letter to Lois. Her answer brought the anger back again, and then its reaction of love; this see-saw was kept up, until his last letter had announced that he and his mother were coming to take the house they had had before, and spend the summer.

"We will come early," he wrote. "I cannot stay away. I have made mother promise to open the house in April, so in a month more I shall see you. I had an awful time to get her to come; she hates the country except in summer, but at last she said she would. She knows why I want to come, and she would be so happy if"—and then the letter trailed off into a wail of disappointment and love.

Impatient and worried, Lois threw the pages into the fire, and had a malicious satisfaction in watching the elaborate crest curl and blacken on the red coals. "I wish he'd stay away," she said; "he bothers me to death. I hate him! What a silly letter!"

It was so silly, she found herself smiling, in spite of her annoyance. Now, to feel amusement at one's lover is almost as fatal as to be bored by him. But poor Dick had no one to tell him this, and had poured out his heart on paper, in spite of some difficulty in spelling, and could not guess that he was laughed at for his pains.

Miss Deborah and Miss Ruth were rewarded for their walk into Ashurst by a letter from Gifford, which made them quite forget Mr. Denner's looks, and Mrs. Dale's bad taste in being a matchmaker.

He would be at home for one day the next week; business had called him from Lockhaven, and on his way back he would stay a night in Ashurst. The little ladies were flurried with happiness. Miss Deborah prepared more dainties than even Gifford's healthy appetite could possibly consume, and Miss Ruth hung her last painting of apple-blossoms in his bedroom, and let her rose jar stand uncovered on his dressing-table for two days before his arrival. When he came, they hovered about him with small caresses and little chirps of affection, as though they would express all the love of the months in which they had not seen him.

Gifford had thought he would go to the rectory in the evening, and somehow the companionship of his aunts while there had not occupied his imagination; but it would have been cruel to leave them at home, so after tea, having tasted every one of Miss Deborah's dishes, he begged them to come with him to see Dr. Howe. They were glad to go anywhere if only with him, and each took an arm, and bore him triumphantly to the rectory.

"Bless my soul," said Dr. Howe, looking at them over his glasses, as they came into the library, "it is good to see you again, young man! How did you leave Helen?" He pushed his chair back from the fire, and let his newspapers rustle to the floor, as he rose. Max came and sniffed about Gifford's knees, and wagged his tail, hoping to be petted. Lois was the only one whose greeting was constrained, and Gifford's gladness withered under the indifference in her eyes.

"She doesn't care," he thought while he was answering Dr. Howe, and rubbing Max's ears with his left hand. "Helen may be right about Forsythe, but she doesn't care for me, either."

"Sit here, dear Giff," said Miss Ruth, motioning him to a chair at her side.

"There's a draught there, dear Ruth," cried Miss Deborah anxiously. "Come nearer the fire, Gifford." But Gifford only smiled good-naturedly, and leaned his elbow on the mantel, grasping his coat collar with one hand, and listening to Dr. Howe's questions about his niece.

"She's very well," he answered, "and the happiest woman I ever saw. Those two people were made for each other, doctor."

"Well, now, see here, young man," said the rector, who could not help patronizing Gifford, "you'll disturb that happiness if you get into religious discussions with Helen. Women don't understand that sort of thing; young women, I mean," he added, turning to Miss Deborah, and then suddenly looking confused.

Gifford raised his eyebrows. "Oh, well, Helen will reason, you know; she is not the woman to take a creed for granted."

"She must," the rector said, with a chuckle, "if she's a Presbyterian. She'll get into deep water if she goes to discussing predestination and original sin, and all that sort of thing."

"Oh," said Gifford lightly, "of course she does not discuss those things. I don't think that sort of theological rubbish had to be swept out of her mind before the really earnest questions of life presented themselves. Helen is singularly free from the trammels of tradition—for a woman."

Lois looked up, with a little toss of her head, but Gifford did not even notice her, nor realize how closely she was following his words.

"John Ward, though," Gifford went on, "is the most perfect Presbyterian I can imagine. He is logical to the bitter end, which is unusual, I fancy. I asked him his opinion concerning a certain man, a fellow named Davis,—perhaps Helen wrote of his death—I asked Ward what he thought of his chances for salvation; he acknowledged, sadly enough, that he thought he was damned. He didn't use that word, I believe," the young man added, smiling, "but it amounted to the same thing."

There was an outcry from his auditors. "Abominable!" said Dr. Howe, bringing his fist heavily down on the table. "I shouldn't have thought that of Ward,—outrageous!"

Gifford looked surprised. "What a cruel man!" Lois cried; while Miss Deborah said suddenly,—

"Giff, dear, have those flannels of yours worn well?" But Gifford apparently did not hear her.

"Why, doctor," he remonstrated, "you misunderstand Ward. And he is not cruel, Lois; he is the gentlest soul I ever knew. But he is logical, he is consistent; he simply expresses Presbyterianism with utter truth, without shrinking from its conclusions."

"Oh, he may be consistent," the rector acknowledged, with easy transition to good-nature, "but that doesn't alter the fact that he's a fool to say such things. Let him believe them, if he wants to, but for Heaven's sake let him keep silent! He can hold his tongue and yet not be a Universalist. Medio tutissimus ibis, you know. It will be sure to offend the parish, if he consigns people to the lower regions in such a free way."

"There is no danger of that," Gifford said; "I doubt if he could say anything on the subject of hell too tough for the spiritual digestion of his flock. They are as sincere in their belief as he is, though they haven't his gentleness; in fact, they have his logic without his light; there is very little of the refinement of religion in Lockhaven."

"What a place to live!" Lois cried. "Doesn't Helen hate it? Of course she would never say so to us, but she must! Everybody seems so dreadfully disagreeable; and there is really no one Helen could know."

"Why, Helen knows them all," answered Gifford in his slow way, looking down at the girl's impulsive face.

"Lois," said her father, "you are too emphatic in your way of speaking; be more mild. I don't like gush."

"Lois punctuates with exclamation points," Gifford explained good-naturedly, meaning to take the sting out of Dr. Howe's reproof, but hurting her instead.

"But, bless my soul," said the rector, "what does Helen say to this sort of talk?"

"I don't think she says anything, at least to him;" Gifford answered. "It is so unimportant to Helen, she is so perfectly satisfied with Ward, his opinions are of no consequence. She did fire up, though, about Davis," and then he told the story of Elder Dean and Helen's angry protest.

Dr. Howe listened, first with grave disapproval, and then with positive irritation.

"Dean," Gifford concluded, "has taken it very much to heart; he told me—he's a client of mine, a stupid idiot, who never reasoned a thing out in his life—he told me that 'not to believe in eternal damnation was to take a short cut to atheism.' He also confided to me that 'a church which could permit such a falling from the faith was in a diseased condition.' I don't believe that opinion has reached Ward, however. It would take more grit than Dean possesses to dare to find fault with John Ward's wife to her husband."

"What folly!" cried the rector, his face flushed with annoyance. "What possessed Helen to say such a thing! She ought to have had more sense. Mark my words, that speech of hers will make trouble for Ward. I don't understand how Helen could be so foolish; she was brought up just as Lois was, yet, thank Heaven, her head isn't full of whims about reforming a community. What in the world made her express such an opinion if she had it, and what made her have it?"

Dr. Howe had risen, and walked impatiently up and down the room, and now stood in front of Gifford, with a forefinger raised to emphasize his words. "There is something so absurd, so unpleasant, in a young woman's meddling with things which don't belong to her, in seeing a little mind struggle with ideas. Better a thousand times settle down to look after her household, and cook her husband's dinner, and be a good child."

Lois laughed nervously. "She has a cook," she said.

"Don't be pert, Lois, for Heaven's sake," answered her father, though Miss Deborah had added,—

"Gifford says dear Helen is a very good housekeeper."

"Pray," continued the rector, "what business is it of hers what people believe, or what she believes herself, for that matter, provided she's a good girl, and does her duty in that station of life where it has pleased God to put her,—as the wife of a Presbyterian minister? 'Stead of that she tries to grapple with theological questions, and gets into hot water with the parish. 'Pon my word, I thought better of the child! I'll write and tell her what I think of it." (And so he did, the very next day. But his wrath had expended itself in words, and his letter showed no more of his indignation than the powdery ashes which fell out of it showed the flame of the cigar he was smoking when he wrote it.) "And as for Ward himself," the rector went on, "I don't know what to think of him. Did you know he had given up his salary? Said 'Helen had enough for them to live on,' and added that they had no right to any more money than was necessary for their comfort; anything more than that belonged to the Lord's poor. Bless my soul, the clergyman comes under that head, to my mind. Yes, sir, he's willing to live on his wife! I declare, the fellow's a—a—well, I don't know any word for him!"