"I'm roarin'!" he cried gayly.

Ellen, freed from the responsibility of teaching, put the little yellow book quickly in her pocket, and said mysteriously, "Boys, if you won't ever tell, I'll tell you something."

"I won't," said Jim, while Bobby responded briefly, "G'on."

"Well, you know when the circus came,—you know the pictures on the fences?"

"Yes!" said the little boys together.

"'Member the beautiful lady, ridin' on a horse, and standin' on one foot?"

"Yes!" the others cried, breathlessly.

"Well," said Ellen slowly and solemnly, "when I get to be a big girl, that's what I'm going to be. I'm tired of catechism, and church, and those long blessings father asks, but most of catechism, so I'm going to run away, and be a circus."

"Father'll catch you," said Jim; but Bobby, with envious depreciation, added,—

"How do you know but what circuses have catechism?"

Ellen did not notice the lack of sympathy. "And I'm going to begin to practice now," she said.

Then, while her brothers watched her, deeply interested, she took off her shoes, and in her well-darned little red stockings climbed deliberately upon the grindstone.

"This is my horse," she said, balancing herself, with outstretched arms, on the stone, and making it revolve in a queer, jerky fashion by pressing her feet on it as though it were a treadmill, "and it is bare-backed!"

The iron handle came down with a thud, and Ellen lurched to keep from falling; the boys unwisely broke into cheers.

It made a pretty picture, the sunbeams sifting through the lilacs on the little fair heads, and dancing over Ellen's white apron and rosy face; but Mrs. Grier, who had come to the door at the noise of the cheers, did not stop to notice it.

"Oh, you naughty children!" she cried. "Don't you know it is wicked to play on the Sabbath? Ellen's playing circus, do you say, Bobby? You naughty, naughty girl! Don't you know circus people are all wicked, and don't go to heaven when they die? I should think you'd be ashamed! Go right up-stairs, Ellen, and go to bed; and you boys can each learn a psalm, and you'll have no supper, either,—do you hear?"

The children began to cry, but Mrs. Grier was firm; and when, a little later, Helen came down-stairs, ready for her ride, the house was strangely quiet. Mrs. Grier, really troubled at her children's sinfulness, confided their misdeeds to Helen, and was not soothed by the smile that flashed across her face.

"They were such good children to study their catechism first," she interceded, "and making a horse out of a grindstone shows an imagination which might excuse the playing."

But Mrs. Grier was not comforted, and only felt the more convinced of the lost condition of Mrs. Ward's soul. The conviction of other people's sin is sometimes a very pleasing emotion, so she bade her guest good-by with much cordiality and even pulled the skirt of her habit straight, and gave the gray a lump of sugar.

Helen told John of the scene under the lilacs, as they trotted down the lane to the highway, but his mood was too grave to see any humor in it. Indeed, his frame of mind had changed after he left his wife for his second sermon. The exhilaration and triumph had gone, and the reaction had come. He brooded over his sin, and the harassed, distressed look of the last few days settled down again on his face. But Helen had regained her sweet serenity and content; she felt so certain that the darkness since Thursday had been the shadow in which his sermon had been conceived that her relief brought a joy which obscured any thought of regret that he should hold such views.

John's head was bent, and his hands were clasped upon his saddle-bow, while the reins fell loosely from between his listless fingers.

"You are so tired, John," Helen said regretfully.

He sighed, as though rousing himself from thought. "A little, dearest," and then his sorrowful eyes smiled. "You look so fresh and rested, Helen. It was wise for you to lie down this afternoon."

"Oh, but I didn't," she said quickly. "I was busy thinking."

He looked at her eagerly. "Yes," she continued, "I think I know what has distressed you so these last few days, dear. It is this thought of the suffering of mankind. If you have felt that all the heathen who have died are in hell, I don't wonder at your sorrow. It would be dreadful, and I wish you did not think it. But we will not talk about it,—of course you would rather not talk about it, even to me, but I understand."

She bent forward, and smiled brightly, as she looked at him. But his face was full of grief.

"It was not that, Helen," he said; "it was something nearer than that. It was remorse, because of late, for nearly a year, I have neglected my people. I have not admonished them and warned them as I ought. And nearer still, because I have neglected you."

"Me!" she cried, too much astonished to say more.

"Yes," he answered, his head bent again upon his breast, "you, my dearest, my best beloved,—you, who are dearer than my life to me, dearer than my happiness. I have known that you have been far from truth, that you have not believed, and yet I—I have been silent."

Helen looked at him, and the sudden awful thought flashed into her mind that he did not know what he was saying, and then she said with a gasp: "Oh, John, is that all? Have you been so unhappy just because of that? Oh, you poor fellow!"

She brought her horse close beside his, and laid her hand on his arm. "Dear, what does it matter what I believe or do not believe? We love each other. And where is your tolerance, John?" She laughed, but the look of terrible concern in his face frightened her.

"Ah, Helen," he said, "such tolerance as you would have me show would be indifference."

"Oh, John!" she said, and then began resolutely to speak of other things.

But soon they fell into silence, Helen longing to get home and brush this useless and foolish anxiety from her husband's heart, and he agonizing for his sin towards her and towards his people.

The late afternoon sunshine gilded the tender green of the fields, and slanting deep into the darkness of the woods, touched the rough trunks of the trees with gold. Long shadows stretched across the road, and the fragrance which steals out with the evening dews began to come from unseen blossoms, and early clover; and a breath of the uncertain night wind brought hints of apple orchards or the pungent sweetness of cherry-blossoms. They had gone more than half-way home when they drew rein to water their horses, under a whispering pine by the roadside. The trough, overflowing with sparkling water, was green with moss and lichen, and was so old and soft that a bunch of ferns had found a home on its side. The horses thrust their noses down into it, blowing and sputtering with sheer delight in the coolness. John made a cup of a big beech leaf, and filled it for his wife. As he handed it to her, they heard steps, and in a moment more Mr. Grier came around the curve of the road. His horse, too, was thirsty, and he let the reins fall on its neck while he greeted them both with formal and ministerial dignity, saying he "wished they might have tarried until he came home, and perhaps he could have persuaded them to stay the night."

The horses pounded and splashed in the pools about their feet, and were impatient to be off, but Mr. Grier delayed. He spoke of church matters, and General Assembly, and their respective congregations; and then, with a little hesitation, he said:—

"I had almost hoped, Mrs. Ward, that you would have been in Brother Ward's church to-day, even though Mrs. Grier had much pleasure in seeing you under our roof. I had you in my mind in the preparation of my sermon."

Mr. Grier was a tall, thin man, with watery blue eyes, and a sparse sandy beard growing like a fringe under his chin from ear to ear. He moved his jaws nervously as he waited for her answer, and plucked at his beard with long, lean fingers.

Helen smiled. "Did you think I should be a large contributor to foreign missions, Mr. Grier?"

"No, ma'am," he answered solemnly, "I was not thinking of any benefit to the heathen. I had somewhat to say which I felt might be for the good of your own soul."

Helen flushed, and flung her head back with a haughty look. "Ah,—you are very good, I'm sure," she said, "but"—

Mr. Grier interrupted her, wagging his head up and down upon his breast: "Brother Ward will forgive me for saying so, ma'am, but I had your welfare at heart. Brother Ward, you have my prayers for your dear wife."

"I—I thank you," John said, "but you must not feel that my wife is far from the Lord. Have you been told that the truth is not clear to her eyes? Yet it will be!"

"I hope so,—I hope so," responded Mr. Grier, but with very little hope in his voice; and then, shaking the reins, he jogged on down the shadowy road.

"What does he mean?" cried Helen, her voice trembling with anger, and careless whether the retreating minister overheard her. John gave her a long, tender look.

"Dearest," he said, "I am sorry he should have spoken as he did, but the prayers of a good man"—

"I don't want his prayers," she interrupted, bewildered; "it seems to me simply impertinence!"

"Helen," he said, "it cannot be impertinence to pray for a soul in danger, as yours is, my darling. I cannot tell how he knew it, but it is so. It is my sin which has kept you blind and hidden the truth from you, and how can I be angry if another man joins his prayers to mine for your eternal salvation?"

"You say this because I do not believe in eternal punishment, John?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered gently, "first because of that, and then because of all the errors of belief to which that leads."

"It all seems so unimportant," she said, sighing; "certainly nothing which could make me claim the prayers of a stranger. Ah, well, no doubt he means it kindly, but don't let us speak of it any more, dearest."

Their horses were so close, that, glancing shyly about for a moment into the twilight, Helen laid her head against his arm, and looked tenderly into his face.

He started, and then put a quick arm about her to keep her from falling. "No," he said, "no, I will not forget." It was as though he answered some voice in his soul, and Helen looked at him in troubled wonder.

The rest of the ride was very silent. Once, when he stopped to tighten her saddle-girth for her, she bent his head back, and smiled down into his eyes. He only answered her by a look, but it was enough.



CHAPTER XIX.

Gifford Woodhouse was not quite honest with himself when he said that he felt it was time to go back to Ashurst to make his aunts a visit. He had been restless and absent-minded very often since that flying trip in the early spring. In spite of his sternest reasoning, hope was beginning to grow up in his heart again. Dick Forsythe had not come to Ashurst, and Helen said plainly that she knew Lois was not engaged to him. So why should not Gifford himself be on the spot?

"Not that I would bother Lois," he argued in his own mind, "but just to know if"—And besides, he really ought to see the two little ladies.

He left Lockhaven a few days after John Ward had preached his sermon on foreign missions at Chester. It was reported to have been "powerful," and Elder Dean said he wished "our own people could have been benefited by it."

"I thought the heathen were expected to be benefited by such sermons," Gifford said, twisting a cigarette between his fingers, as he leaned over the half-door of the elder's shop, lazily watching a long white shaving curl up under his plane. "I thought the object was a large contribution."

The elder looked up solemnly, and opened his lips with vast deliberation. "Lawyer Woodhouse," he said, "that's your mistake. They're fer the purpose of instructing us that the heathen is damned, so that we will rejoice in our own salvation, and make haste to accept it if we are unconverted."

He looked hard at the young man as he spoke, for every one knew Lawyer Woodhouse did not go regularly to church, and so, presumably, was not a Christian.

Then Mr. Dean, while he pulled the shavings out of his plane, and threw them on the fragrant heap at his feet, said one or two things which made Gifford stop lounging and forget his cigarette while he listened with a grave face. "Unbelief in the church," "the example for our youth," "the heresy of the preacher's wife."

This was not the first time Gifford had heard such comments, but there was a threat in Mr. Dean's voice, though he did not put it into words, which made the young man carry a growing anxiety about Helen away with him. He could not forget it, even in the rejoicings of his home-coming, and he gave guarded answers about her which were unlike his usual frankness.

Lois noticed it, and wondered a little, but was perhaps more annoyed than troubled by it.

The shyness of her welcome Gifford quite misunderstood.

"After all," he thought, "what was the use of coming? Whatever Forsythe's chances are, there is one thing sure,—she does not care for me. She used to have that old friendly way, at least; but even that is gone, now. I might have known it. I was a fool to run into the fire again. Thank Heaven, that cad isn't here. When he comes, I'll go!"

And so he wandered forlornly about, his hands in his pockets, and a disconsolate look on his face which greatly distressed his aunts. Somehow, too, the big fellow's presence for any length of time embarrassed them. They had been so long without a man in the house, they realized suddenly that he took up a great deal of room, and that their small subjects of conversation could not interest him.

"Perhaps," said Miss Ruth shrewdly, "he has found some nice girl in Lockhaven, and misses her. What do you think, sister?"

"It is not impossible," answered Miss Deborah; "but, dear me, sister, if only Helen Jeffrey had not married so young! I always felt that Providence pointed to her for dear Giff."

"Well," said Miss Ruth, a little color creeping into her cheek, "I think Providence does arrange such things, and as Helen seems much attached to Mr. Ward, no doubt that was meant. It is gratifying to think such things always are meant. I have even thought that when a person no longer very young, even quite advanced in life, remains unmarried, it was because the other, appointed by Heaven, died, no doubt in infancy."

Miss Deborah sniffed. "I should be sorry to think all marriages were planned by Providence," she said, "for it would seem that Providence showed very poor judgment sometimes. Look at Henry Dale. I'm sure there were—others, who would have made him happier, and been quite as good housekeepers, too."

Miss Ruth mentioned her suspicion of the "nice girl in Lockhaven" to Lois, while Miss Deborah added that it was really no pleasure to cook for dear Giff; he was so out of spirits he didn't seem to care for anything; he did not even eat the whigs, and Lois knew how fond he was of whigs. Very likely dear Ruth was right.

This made Lois's interest in Gifford still deeper, though she said, tossing her head with airy impatience, that she did not believe there were any nice girls in Lockhaven; there were only working people there. Then she thought of that talk with Gifford at the stone bench, and recalled the promise she had made, and how she had sealed it. Her cheeks burned till they hurt her.

"He has forgotten it all, long ago," she said to herself; "men never remember such things. Well, he sha'n't think I remember!"

But how often Gifford remembered!

One afternoon he walked over to the stone bench, and sat down on the very same sunken step from which he had looked up into Lois's face that June evening. He saw a bunch of violets growing just where her foot must have rested, and what was more natural—for Gifford was still young—than that pencil and note-book should appear, and, with a long-drawn sigh, he should write hastily,—

O Violet, Dost thou forget?

and then stop, perhaps to sharpen his pencil, and, if the truth be told, to cast about for a rhyme.

Alas, that love and poetry should be checked by anything so commonplace as syllables! Let—wet—yet,—one can fit in the sense easily when the proper rhyme has been decided upon; and who knows but that Gifford, lying there in the grass, with the old lichen-covered step for a desk, might have written a sonnet or a madrigal which would have given him his heart's desire before the moon rose! But an interruption came.

The rector and Mr. Denner were coming back from fishing, along the road on the other side of the hedge, and Dr. Howe turned in here to follow the garden path home, instead of taking the longer way. Both pushed through a gap in the hedge, and discovered Gifford lying in the grass by the stone bench.

"Hello!" said the rector. "Working up a case, young man?"

Perhaps Gifford was not altogether displeased to be interrupted; the song we might have sung is always sweetest. At all events, he very good-naturedly put his note-book back in his pocket, and rolling over on his stomach, his elbows crushing down the soft grass and his fists under his chin, began to talk to the two elder men.

"Had good luck?"

The rector shook his head ruefully. "Denner has two trout. Fate was against me. Any fishing about Lockhaven, Gifford? Ward do any?"

Gifford laughed. "He only fishes for men," he said. "He devotes himself to it day and night. Especially of late; his fear of hell-fire for other people's souls has seemed to take great hold on him."

"Gad!" said Dr. Howe. "He's a queer fellow."

"He's a good fellow," Gifford answered warmly. "And as to his belief, why, you believe in hell, don't you, doctor?"

"Oh, bless my soul, yes," said Dr. Howe, with a laugh, and with a twinkle in his eyes. "I must, you know, and it's well to be on the safe side, Giff; if you believe it here, theoretically, it is to be supposed you won't believe it there, experimentally!" He laughed again, his big, jolly laugh. "Good-by, Denner. You took all the luck."

Then he trudged whistling up the path, striking at the hollyhocks with his rod, and wondering how long it would take Sally to brush the mud off his corduroys.

But Mr. Denner delayed. He laid his rod tenderly down on the grass, and his fishing-basket on the stone bench beside him. Gifford's sense of humor padded a good many of the sharp points of life; he had to look less doleful when he saw that the lawyer had chosen Lois's seat, and even her attitude; his little shriveled hands were clasped upon his knees, and he was bending forward, looking at the young man as he talked. Gifford thought of a sonnet in his left breast-pocket, beginning, "To one who sat 'neath rustling poplar-tree," and smiled.

"Well, now," said Mr. Denner, "it is pleasant to see you at home again, Gifford. It must be a pleasure to your aunts."

"It is a great pleasure to me," the young man replied. "I only wish that I could carry them back to Lockhaven with me."

"What, both of them?" Mr. Denner asked, in an alarmed way.

"Oh, of course," answered the other; "they couldn't be separated. Why, you cannot think of one of them without thinking of the other!"

Mr. Denner sighed. "Just so, just so. I have observed that."

"But I'm afraid," Gifford went on, "they wouldn't be quite happy there. There's no church, you know,—I mean no Episcopal Church,—and then it isn't like Ashurst. Except Helen and Mr. Ward, there are only working people, though, for that matter, Ward works harder than anybody else. Yes, they would miss Ashurst too much."

"You really think they would miss—us?" said Mr. Denner eagerly.

"Yes," responded Gifford slowly. He was beginning to look at the bunch of violets again, and his aunts did not seem so interesting.

"Well, now," Mr. Denner said, "I am sure I am glad to hear you say that, very glad. We—ah—should miss them, I assure you."

Gifford reached out and plucked up the violets by the roots, to save them from Mr. Denner's drab gaiter, and planted them deep in a crevice of the steps.

"Ah—Gifford," said the lawyer, after he had waited a reasonable time for an answer, "a—a friend of mine is in some perplexity concerning an attachment; he wished my advice."

Gifford began to look interested.

"Foreclosure?"

"You—ah, you do not exactly catch my meaning," answered the little gentleman nervously. "I refer—he referred to an affair of—of the affections. Of course you are too young to really understand these things from a—a romantic point of view, as it were, but being a lawyer, your—a—legal training—would make you consider such a matter intelligently, and I might like your advice."

"Oh!" said Gifford, seeming to grasp the situation. "Yes; I had one case of that kind in Lockhaven. Jury gave damages to my client; seems they had been engaged twelve years when she jilted him. I detest those breach-of-promise suits; they"—

Mr. Denner bounded from his seat. "My dear boy, my dear sir," he gasped, "not at all, not at all! You do not apprehend me, Gifford. My friend is in love, sir; he wished my advice, not legally, you understand, but in regard to his choice!"

"Your advice!" Gifford burst out, but instantly apologized by saying he believed it was not usual to ask advice in such matters,—a man usually knew. But perhaps he was mistaken.

"Yes—I am inclined to think you are," responded Mr. Denner, with a jauntiness which sat strangely upon his wrinkled face,—"I think you are. Being still a very young person, Gifford, you scarcely understand the importance of such matters, and the—ah—wisdom of seeking advice. I believe it is always said that youth does not realize the importance of advice. But the fact is, my friend has placed his affections upon two ladies. They are connections, and both he represents to be estimable persons; both, as I understand it, equally admirable. Equally, you observe, Gifford. And he is unable to make up his mind which is the most—I should say the more—desirable. I, unfortunately, was unable to throw any light upon the subject."

"Do you know the young ladies?" asked Gifford.

"I—I may say I have met them," admitted Mr. Denner.

"And how did you advise him?" Gifford asked, his face preternaturally grave.

Mr. Denner looked anxious. "That is just it. I have been unable to come to any conclusion. I wondered if—if I spoke of their characteristics in a general way (they are both so truly estimable) you might have an opinion. He did think he could reach a decision, he tells me, for a friend of his thought he knew a proverb which would throw a light upon it."

"Settle it by a proverb!" cried Gifford.

"Yes," answered Mr. Denner firmly, "yes; and an excellent way it would be, if one could find the proverb."

The air of offended dignity in Mr. Denner's face sobered Gifford at once.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said; "the method was new to me, though it is, no doubt, excellent. May I ask the proverb?"

But the lawyer was hurt. "It is not worth while to mention it. It was not—not suitable. It did not enable my friend to reach a decision, after all; it was merely something in regard to whist."

Gifford hid his face in the grass for a moment, and then he said again, "I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Denner; it struck me as an unusual way of settling a love affair. Your friend must have been much disappointed?"

"He was, he was, sir," answered Mr. Denner, not knowing whether to be angry or injured, and picking up his reel and rod with trembling hands.

"Well, now," Gifford said, sitting up and leaning his arms upon his knees, the laughter still glimmering in his gray eyes, "I could give you a proverb,—unless they are twins?"

Mr. Denner sat down again on the stone bench, and looked at him eagerly.

"No, Gifford, they are not twins,—no. There is a good ten years between them."

"Then," said the young man, "what does your friend want better than 'Age before beauty'? Let him propose to the elder."

Mr. Denner laid his rod down upon the grass, and, rising, extended his hand to his companion.

"Gifford," he said, "you are an intelligent young man,—a remarkable young man, sir. I knew it when I determined to ask your advice—for my friend. I thank you. My—my friend thanks you, Gifford. He will act upon this at once; he is forever indebted to you, sir."

It was all so solemn that Gifford's gravity lasted until the little gentleman had disappeared through the hedge, and was far down the road; then he hid his face in the grass, and laughed aloud.

But Mr. Denner was happy. He fairly beamed as he walked along, repeating the proverb to himself. "Yes," he said, "nothing could be better—nothing. How strange that it has not occurred to me before, or that Henry should not have thought of it! 'Age before beauty!' Yes, just so,—just so!"

While he was meditating thus happily, he heard behind him that curious, irregular beat which only the hoofs of a runaway horse can make, and the whirl of flying wheels swinging from side to side. He sprang to one side of the road, his little heart pounding with sudden fright, and looked back to see the rectory phaeton, reeling and almost overturning, dragged madly at the heels of the shaggy little pony. They came flying toward him. Mr. Denner caught a glimpse, through the cloud of dust, of Lois Howe's white face, and a shrinking figure clinging to her. A gray veil fluttered across the face, so that Mr. Denner could not tell who it was, but instantly it flashed through his mind, "It is one of them!" He threw down his basket and rod, and braced himself for the shock of the encounter with the plunging horse; his little nerves, never very firm, were strung like steel. Somehow, in that instant of waiting, the proverb was forgotten; he felt that fate would decide for him. "It shall be this one!" he said aloud,—"this one!" Then the horse seemed upon him; he did not know when he made that jump at the bridle, or felt the iron hoof strike his breast; he had only a confused sense of seeing the gray figure thrown out upon the ground just as he found himself falling backwards. Then he lost consciousness.

When he came to himself, and saw the trees and bushes dance strangely about him for a moment, he found that he had been lifted over to the grass at the roadside, and that Gifford Woodhouse's arm was under his head. As his eyes grew steady, he saw that two men were holding the trembling, steaming horse, and that a little group of people were standing about the phaeton; but the gray figure had disappeared. Gifford was fanning him, and pressing something to his lips with a gentle, anxious hand.

"Gifford," he said faintly—"ah—which?"

"They are neither of them hurt, thank God," answered the young man reverently, "but they owe their lives to you, Mr. Denner."

"Yes—but"—he struggled to say—"which—which was it?"

"He means who was it," said the rector, who had taken his place on the other side of the injured man. "It was my daughter—God bless you, Denner!—and Mrs. Forsythe."

Mr. Denner groaned, and shut his eyes. "Oh, it wasn't either," he murmured; "that's always the way!"

"His mind is wandering," Gifford said, in a low voice. "I'm afraid this is very serious, doctor. Do you think he can be moved now?"

The lawyer did not try to prove his sanity; he only groaned again, but this time it was partly from pain. They lifted him gently, and carried him into his own house, which he had nearly reached when the runaway overtook him.

Both the women in the carriage had been thrown out, but Lois was able to walk, and so far as could be ascertained Mrs. Forsythe was unhurt, save for the shock, which sent her from one fainting fit into another until late that night. They had carried her back to the rectory, Lois clinging to one limp hand, and crying hysterically.

"Oh, she will die," she sobbed, "I know she will die; and it is my fault, it is my carelessness! You needn't say it isn't, father. I know it is! Oh, what shall I do!"

But there was nothing to do; and Mrs. Dale, who had been hastily summoned,—for her reputation for nursing was even wider than Miss Deborah's for housekeeping,—only put her to bed, "to get her out of the way," she said, but really because she was filled with sympathy for her niece's remorse, and felt that the forgetfulness of sleep was the only comfort for her.

"I'll tell you what it is, brother," she said,—she had quietly settled herself in authority at the rectory, despite Jean's air of contemptuous dignity—"I believe Arabella Forsythe will have a chance to die, at last. She's been looking for it these ten years, and as soon as she stops fainting it will be a positive satisfaction to her. I'm afraid she is really a very sick woman."

But no such thought did she impart to Lois, when she tucked her up in bed, giving her a hearty kiss with her soothing draught, and bidding her have some sense and stop crying, for Mrs. Forsythe would be all right in the morning. But the morning brought no comfort; the doctor, who had come from Mercer as quickly as Mrs. Dale's horses could bring him, was very grave.

"The shock to the nervous system," he said,—"we cannot tell what it will do."

Lois was so prostrated by grief at Mrs. Forsythe's condition, no one dared tell her that Mr. Denner was the immediate anxiety. There was an injury to the spine, and the plunging hoofs had done more harm than was at first supposed; things looked very serious for the little gentleman.

The lawyer had fainted when he was lifted over his gloomy threshold, where Mary stood waiting and wringing her hands, and had struggled back to consciousness to find himself on the big, slippery horse-hair sofa, in his dusky library. Dr. Howe was standing at his side, looking anxiously down at him, and a neighbor was trying to slip a pillow under his head. Gifford had gone to help Mary bring a bed down-stairs, for the slightest movement caused Mr. Denner pain, and they dared not lift him, even to take him up to his bedroom.

"What is the matter?" Mr. Denner tried to say. "I seem to be giving trouble. Ah—pray do not mind me, doctor."

"You were hurt, you know, Denner," said the rector, whose feet were planted wide apart, and his hands thrust down in his pockets, and who felt oppressed by the consciousness of his own superabundant vitality, for the lawyer looked so small and thin, and his voice was hardly more than a whisper. "You've been a little faint. You'll be all right soon. But Giff's going to put a bed up in here for you, because you might find it uncomfortable to try to get up-stairs, you know."

Mr. Denner looked anxious at this; he wondered if Mary would not be offended; but he was too strangely weary to talk, and his little twinkling eyes were dim and blurred.

Gifford and Mary had carried down the four big posts of Mr. Denner's bed, which looked like mahogany obelisks, and began to put it together, with many interruptions for Mary to wipe her eyes on the corner of her gingham apron, and remark it would soon be over, and she did not know where she would ever get such another place. Once the rector turned and sharply bade her hold her tongue. Mr. Denner opened his eyes at that, though he had scarcely seemed to hear her. Nor did he know why Gifford and the rector talked so long with the doctor on the broad flat stone at the front door, in the fragrant spring twilight. Afterwards he beckoned Gifford to him.

He did not quite like, he said, to leave his rod out over night; he could go and get it in the morning, he knew, but if it wouldn't be too much trouble, he would be obliged if Gifford would bring it in. And there were two trout in the basket: perhaps he would be good enough to present them, with his compliments, to the Misses Woodhouse. Gifford went for the rod, but could not go back without an inquiry at the rectory.

"Arabella Forsythe," said Mrs. Dale,—"well, as I told brother, I think this is her opportunity. She really is in a bad way, Giff. Lois wasn't hurt at all, wonderful to say; but, naturally, she's in great distress, because she blames herself for the whole thing."

"How so?" asked Gifford.

"Well, of course," Mrs. Dale answered, rubbing her little red nose with her handkerchief, and with a suspicious mist in her eyes,—"of course it really was her fault, only we mustn't let her know we think so. You see, she was driving. (I've always said women don't know how to drive; they're too inconsequent.) She wasn't paying attention to her horse, and let a rein slip. Before she could pick it up, the horse shied at a newspaper blowing along the road. Well, you know the rest. But Lois does not know that we think it was her carelessness."

Gifford hesitated a moment, and then said slowly, "But wouldn't it be better to help her face the truth of it now? There is no use to try to escape self-reproaches that have their root in facts."

"Nonsense!" responded Mrs. Dale sharply. "I thought you had more sympathy!"

Gifford had told his aunts of the accident, when he brought them the offering of the two small fishes, and the ladies were full of distress and anxiety, and the flutter of excited interest which would be sure to be felt in a place like Ashurst. They had gone at once to the rectory, to see if they could be of use, though, as Miss Deborah said to her sister, "with Adele Dale there, of course there is nothing more to be desired." Nevertheless, the next morning, Miss Ruth ran over with a bowl of wine jelly from Miss Deborah, and brought back word that Mrs. Forsythe was "still breathing;" and that the gravest apprehensions were felt for Mr. Denner.

Miss Deborah was waiting in the parlor to hear the news; so important an occasion seemed to demand the dignity of the parlor, and in a high-backed armchair, with her feet on a cricket and a fresh handkerchief in her hand, she listened to Miss Ruth's agitated and tearful story.

"I will make some whips for William Denner," she said promptly, as Miss Ruth finished, "and we will take them to him this afternoon."

"Well, but, sister," said Miss Ruth, hesitating, "do you think—we'd better? Ought not we to let Giff take them?"

"Why?" asked Miss Deborah. "He is able to see us, isn't he?"

"It is not quite that," answered the younger sister nervously, taking off her bonnet, and beginning to roll the strings tight and smooth between her fingers, "but—he is in—his chamber, sister. Would it be quite—proper?"

"I think," said Miss Deborah, holding her head very straight, "we are old enough to"—

"You may be," returned Miss Ruth firmly, "but I am not."

Miss Deborah was silent for a moment; then she said, "Well, perhaps you are right, dear Ruth; though he is certainly very ill, and didn't you say he was in the library?"

"Yes," said Miss Ruth, "he is very ill, but the fact of his couch being in the library does not alter it. If anything sad should be going to happen,—it would be different, then."

"Of course," assented Miss Deborah.

"You see," Miss Ruth explained, "if we saw him, and then he got well, it would be very awkward."

"True," said Miss Deborah. "And certainly single women cannot be too delicate in such matters. We will send the whips by Giff. Poor, poor William Denner! Let me see,—were you to be his partner on Saturday? Oh, no, I recollect: it was I,—it was my turn."

"I think not," Miss Ruth replied gently; "you played last week. I should have played with him this time."

"Not at all," said Miss Deborah firmly, "he was mine."



CHAPTER XX.

The suspense was very hard for Lois Howe to bear.

When Mrs. Dale drove her from the sick-room for air and exercise, she wandered restlessly about the rectory, or went to Mr. Denner's door to beg a word of encouragement from Mary, or take a momentary comfort from the messages he sent her that he was better, and he begged she would not allow herself the slightest discomfort; it was really of no consequence,—no consequence at all.

Gifford was almost always with the little gentleman, and scarcely left him, even to walk through the garden to the grassy street with Lois. On Sunday, however, late in the afternoon, he went home with her; for Mr. Dale, with whom she had come, was going to sit awhile with Mr. Denner, and Gifford felt he could be spared.

The hour was full of that peculiar Sunday afternoon quiet which seems to subdue even the crickets and the birds. There was a breath of fragrance from some fresh-cut grass, still wet from a noon thunder shower, which had left the air crystal-clear and fresh. Their shadows stretched far ahead along the road, where the dust was still damp, though the setting sun poured a flood of yellow light behind them. Lois walked as though very tired; she scarcely noticed her companion, and did not speak except to answer his questions.

"Isn't there any change in Mrs. Forsythe?" he asked, with anxious sympathy.

Lois shook her head. "No," she said.

"Hasn't the rector gotten word to her son yet?"

"No," Lois said again. "We telegraphed twice, but he seems to be out of town, and nobody knows his address."

Gifford made no comment.

"I wish he would come!" the girl cried passionately. "It would be a relief to have him reproach me."

"I hope there will be no need of reproaches. I do hope his mother will get well."

"Oh, no, no," Lois said, "she won't! I know it."

"Try to be more hopeful," he urged. "The doctor said there was absolutely no injury except the shock. I believe she will get well, Lois."

"Oh, you don't know her," Lois answered. "You don't know how frail she is. And then there's Mr. Denner! It is the responsibility of it that kills me, Giff! I cannot get away from it for one single minute."

They had walked along the road where the accident had taken place, and Lois shivered as she saw the trampled grass, though it had been her wish that they should come this way.

"Oh," she said, putting her hands over her eyes, "life can never look the same to me, even if they get well!"

"No," Gifford said, "I understand that. But it may have a new sweetness of gratitude, Lois."

When they came to the gap in the hedge which was the outlet for the rectory path, Gifford held aside the twigs for her to enter.

"Let us sit down on the stone bench a little while," he said. "This is where poor little Mr. Denner sat that afternoon. Oh," he added in a lower tone, "just think from what a grief he may have saved us! I feel as though I could never be able to show him my gratitude." Then he looked at the transplanted bunch of violets, which was fresh and flourishing, and was silent.

Lois sat down a little reluctantly. The memory of that June night, nearly a year ago, flashed into her mind; she felt the color creep up to her forehead. "Oh," she thought, "how contemptible I am to have any thought but grief,—how shallow I am, how cruel!"

And to punish herself for this, she rushed into speaking of her responsibility again.

Gifford noticed her nervousness. "She is afraid of me," he said to himself. "She wouldn't be, if she cared."

"You see, Gifford," she began, "I keep saying to myself every moment, 'I did it—it was my carelessness—all, all my fault.' Father tried to comfort me, and so did Mrs. Forsythe as soon as she could speak, and Mr. Denner has sent word that I must not give him a thought (dear Mr. Denner!), but oh, I know!"

Gifford looked at her pale face, with the sweet trembling lip. "It is awfully hard for you," he said.

"Every one said I was not to blame," she went on unsteadily, "that it was not my fault; but, Gifford, if they die, I shall have been their murderer!"

She pressed her hands tight together to keep her self-control.

"No, Lois," he answered gently, "it is not right to feel that; your will would be to die now for either of them" ("Oh, yes, yes!" she said), "so don't blame yourself any more than you must."

"Than I must?" she repeated slowly, looking at him with questioning eyes. "How do you mean? They say there is no blame, Gifford."

He did not answer; his face was full of a grieved reluctance.

"Why," she said, with a quick breath, "do you blame me?"

Gifford put his strong, steady hand impulsively over hers. "I only know how you must blame yourself," he said pitifully. "I wish I could bear the pain of it for you."

"Then you say it is my fault?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, Lois," he answered, looking down at her with anxious tenderness. "I wish I didn't have to say it, but if it is true, if you were careless, it's best to meet it. I—I wish you would let me help you bear it."

Lois sat up very straight, as though bracing herself against a blow. "You are right. I knew it was all my fault; I said so. But there's no help. Let us go home now, please."

Gifford rose silently, and they went together between the sweet-smelling borders, up to the rectory. "I wish I could help you," he said wistfully, as she turned to say good-night at the foot of the steps.

"You cannot," she answered briefly. "No one can; and there's nothing I can do to make up for it. I cannot even die as an atonement. Oh, if I could only die!"

Gifford walked back, distressed and shocked; he was not old enough yet to know that the desire of death is part of youth, and it seemed as though he too had incurred a great responsibility. "What a brute I was to say it!" he said to himself. "I feel as though I had struck a woman. And it made her wish she was dead,—good heavens! How cruel I was! Yet if it was true, it must have been right to tell her; I suppose it was my brutal way!"

Lois went at once to Mrs. Forsythe's bedside, eager to hear of some improvement, but the invalid only shook her head wearily.

"No, no better," she said; "still breathing, that's all. But you must not grieve; it only distresses me."

Lois knelt down, and softly kissed her hand.

"My only trouble," Mrs. Forsythe continued, "is about my boy. Who will take care of him when I am gone?"

She said much more than this, and perhaps even Gifford's persistent justice could not have sustained the conviction that he had done right to tell Lois that the blame of the accident rested upon her, if he had known the thoughts of a possible atonement which passed through her mind when Mrs. Forsythe spoke thus of her son. It was not the first time since her injury that she had told Lois of her anxiety for Dick's future, and now the girl left her with a dazed and aching heart.

Mrs. Dale, full of importance and authority, met her in the hall.

"I've got some beef-tea for Arabella Forsythe," she said, balancing the tray she carried on one hand, and lifting the white napkin with the other to see that it was all right, "if I can only persuade her to take it. I never saw anybody who needed so much coaxing. But there! I must not be hard on her; she is pretty sick, I must say,—and how she does enjoy it! I said she would. But really, Lois, if we don't have some word from that young man soon, I don't know what we shall do, for she is certainly worse to-night. Your father has just had a letter from somebody, saying that he went away with some friends on a pleasure trip, and didn't leave his address. I thought he was so anxious to get to Ashurst,—well, that is Arabella's story. I shouldn't wonder if he didn't see his mother alive,—that's all I've got to say!"

She nodded her sleek head, and disappeared into the sick-room. Lois had a sudden contraction of the heart that made her lips white. "If aunt Deely says Mrs. Forsythe is worse, it is surely very bad."

She stumbled blindly up-stairs; she wanted to get away from everybody, and look this horrible fact in the face. She found her way to the garret, whose low, wide window, full of little panes of heavy greenish glass, looked over the tree-tops towards the western sky, still faintly yellow with sunset light, and barred by long films of gray cloud. She knelt down and laid her cheek against the sill, which was notched and whittled by childish hands; for this had been a play-room once, and many a rainy afternoon she and Helen and Gifford had spent here, masquerading in the queer dresses and bonnets packed away in the green chests ranged against the wall, or swinging madly in the little swing which hung from the bare rafters, until the bunches of southernwood and sweet-marjoram and the festoons of dried apples shook on their nails. She looked at the stars and hearts carved on the sill, and a big "Gifford" hacked into the wood, and she followed the letters absently with her finger.

"He blames me," she said to herself; "he sees the truth of it. How shall I make up for it? What can I do?"

She stayed by the window until the clouds turned black in the west; down in the heavy darkness of the garden the crickets began their monotonous z-z-ing, and in the locust-trees the katydids answered each other with a sharp, shrill cry. Then she crept down-stairs and sat outside of Mrs. Forsythe's room, that she might hear the slightest sound, or note the flicker of the night-lamp burning dimly on the stand at the bedside.

Gifford, sitting in another sick-room, was suffering with her, and blaming himself, in spite of principle.

Mr. Denner lay in his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where a taper flickered on a small table which held the medicines.

"I think," said Mr. Denner, folding his little hands upon his breast,—"I think, Gifford, that the doctor was not quite frank with me, to-day. I thought it proper to ask him if my injury was at all of a serious nature, if it might have—ah—I ought to apologize for speaking of unpleasant things—if it might have an untoward ending. He merely remarked that all injuries had possibilities of seriousness in them; he appeared in haste, and anxious to get away, so I did not detain him, thinking he might have an important case elsewhere. But it seemed as though he was not quite frank, Gifford; as though, in fact, he evaded. I did not press it, fearing to embarrass him, but I think he evaded."

Gifford also evaded. "He did not say anything which seemed evasive to me, Mr. Denner. He was busy charging me to remember your medicines, and he stopped to say a word about your bravery, too."

Mr. Denner shook his head deprecatingly at this, but he seemed pleased. "Oh, not at all, it was nothing,—it was of no consequence." One of the shutters blew softly to, and darkened the room; Gifford rose, and, leaning from the window, fastened it back against the ivy which had twisted about the hinge from the stained bricks of the wall. "I cannot claim any bravery," the sick man went on. "No. It was, as it were, accidental, Gifford."

"Accidental?" said the young man. "How could that be? I heard the horse, and ran down the road after the phaeton just in time to see you make that jump, and save her."

Mr. Denner sighed. "No," he replied, "no, it was quite by chance. I—I was mistaken. I am glad I did not know, however, for I might have hesitated. As it was, laboring under a misapprehension, I had no time to be afraid."

"I don't think I quite understand," said Gifford.

Mr. Denner was silent. The room was so dark now, he could scarcely see the young man's face as he stood leaning against one of the huge bed-posts. Behind him, Mr. Denner just distinguished his big secretary, with its pigeon-holes neatly labeled, and with papers filed in an orderly way. No one had closed it since the afternoon that he had been carried in and laid on the horse-hair sofa. He had given Mary the key then, and had asked her to fetch the bottle of brandy from one of the long divisions where it stood beside a big ledger. The little gentleman had hesitated to give trouble in asking to have it locked again, though that it should be open offended his ideas of privacy. Now he looked at it, and then let his eyes rest upon the nephew of the Misses Woodhouse.

"Gifford," he said, "would you be so obliging as to take the small brass key from my ring,"—here he thrust his lean hand under his pillow, and produced his bunch of keys, which jingled as he held them unsteadily out,—"and unlock the little lower drawer in the left-hand side of my writing-desk?"

Gifford took the ring over to the candle, which made the shadow of his head loom up on the opposite wall, as he bent to find the little brass key among a dozen others of all shapes and sizes.

"I have unlocked it, sir," he said, a moment later.

"Take the candle, if you please," responded Mr. Denner, "and you will see, I think, in the right-hand corner, back, under a small roll, a flat, square parcel."

"Yes, sir," Gifford answered, holding the candle in his left hand, and carefully lifting the parcel.

"Under that," proceeded Mr. Denner, "is an oval package. If you will be good enough to hand me that, Gifford. Stay,—will you lock the drawer first, if you please, and the desk?"

Gifford did so, and then put the package into Mr. Denner's hands. He held it a moment before he gently removed the soft, worn tissue paper in which it was wrapped; his very touch was a caress.

"I was desirous," he said, "of having this by me. It is a miniature of my little sister, sir. She—perhaps you scarcely remember her? She died when I was twenty. That is forty-one years ago. A long time, Gifford, a long time to have missed her. She is the only thing of—of that nature that I have loved—since I was twenty."

He stopped, and held the miniature up to look at it; but the light had faded, and the ivory only gleamed faintly.

"I look at this every day when I am in health, and I like it by me now. No, not the candle, I thank you, Gifford. I called for it now (how tarnished these pearls are in the frame! If—if I should not recover, it must be reset. Perhaps you will see to that for me, Gifford?),—I called for it now, because I wished to say, in the event of my—demise, I should wish this given to one of your aunts, sir."

Gifford came out from the shadow at the foot of the bed, and took Mr. Denner's hand. He did not speak; he had only the man's way of showing sympathy, and one weaker than Gifford could not have resisted the piteous longing for life in Mr. Denner's tone, and would have hastened to reassure him. But Gifford only held his hand in a firm, gentle grasp, and was silent.

"I should wish one of them to have it," he continued. "I have not provided for its welfare in my will; I had thought there was no one for whom I had enough—enough regard, to intrust them with it. I even thought to destroy it when I became old. Some people might wish to carry it with them to the grave, but I could not—oh, no, not my little sister! See, Gifford—take it to the light—not that little merry face. I should like to think it was with your aunts. And—and there is, as it were, a certain propriety in sending it to—her."

Gifford took the miniature from the lawyer's hand, and, kneeling by the candle, looked at it. The faded velvet case held only the rosy, happy face of a little child; not very pretty, perhaps, but with eyes which had smiled into Mr. Denner's for forty years, and Gifford held it in reverent hands.

"Yes," said the old man, "I would like one of them to have it."

"I shall remember it, sir," Gifford answered, putting the case down on the lawyer's pillow.

The room was quite still for a few moments, and then Mr. Denner said, "Gifford, it was quite accidental, quite by mistake, as it were, that I stopped the horse for Mrs. Forsythe and little Lois. I—I thought, sir, it was one of your aunts. One of your aunts, do you understand Gifford? You know what I said to you, at the stone bench, that afternoon? I—I alluded to myself, sir."

Gifford was silent, almost breathless; it all came back to him,—the warm, still afternoon, the sunshine, the faintly rustling leaves of the big silver poplar, and Mr. Denner's friend's love story. But only the pathos and the tenderness of it showed themselves to him now. He put his hand up to his eyes, a moment; somehow, he felt as though this was something too sacred for him to see.

"I know, sir," he said; "I—I see."

"I trust," Mr. Denner continued, in a relieved voice, "there is no impropriety in mentioning this to you, though you are still a youth. You have seemed older these last few days, more—ah—sedate, if I may so express it. They—they frequently speak as though you were quite a youth, whereas it appears to me you should be considered the head of the family,—yes, the head of the family. And therefore it seemed to me fitting that I should mention this to you, because I wished to request you to dispose of the miniature. It would have been scarcely proper to do otherwise, scarcely honorable, sir."

"I am grateful to you for doing so," Gifford replied gently. "I beg you will believe how entirely I appreciate the honor of your confidence."

"Oh, not at all," said Mr. Denner, waving his hand, "not at all,—pray do not mention it. And you will give it to one of them," he added, peering through the dusk at the young man, "if—if it should be necessary?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, "I will; but you did not mention which one, Mr. Denner."

Mr. Denner was silent; he turned his head wearily toward the faint glimmer which showed where the window was, and Gifford heard him sigh. "I did not mention which,—no. I had not quite decided. Perhaps you can tell me which you think would like it best?"

"I am sure your choice would seem of most value to them."

Mr. Denner did not speak; he was thinking how he had hoped that leap at the runaway horse would have decided it all. And then his mind traveled back to the stone bench, and his talk with Gifford, and the proverb. "Gifford," he said firmly, "give it, if you please, to Miss Deborah."

They did not speak of it further. Gifford was already reproaching himself for having let his patient talk too much, and Mr. Denner, his mind at last at rest, was ready to fall asleep, the miniature clasped in his feverish hand.

The next day, Gifford had no good news to carry to the rectory. The lawyer had had a bad night, and was certainly weaker, and sometimes he seemed a little confused when he spoke. Gifford shrank from telling Lois this, and yet he longed to see her, but she did not appear.

She was with Mrs. Forsythe, her aunt said; and when he asked for the invalid, Mrs. Dale shook her head. "I asked her how she felt this morning, and she said, 'Still breathing!' But she certainly is pretty sick, though she's one to make herself out at the point of death if she scratches her finger. Still—I don't know. I call her a sick woman."

Mrs. Dale could not easily resign the sense of importance which attends the care of a very sick person, even though Arabella Forsythe's appetite had unquestionably improved.

"We've telegraphed again for her son," she went on, "though I must say she does not seem to take his absence much to heart. They are the sort of people, I think, that love each other better at a distance. Now, if I were in her place, I'd be perfectly miserable without my children. I don't know what to think of his not writing to her. It appears that he's on a pleasure party of some kind, and he's not written her a line since he started; so of course she does not know where he is."

But to Lois Mrs. Forsythe's illness was something beside interest and occupation. The horror of her possible death hung over the young girl, and seemed to sap her youth and vigor. Her face was drawn and haggard, and her pleasant gray eyes had lost their smile. Somehow Mr. Denner's danger, which to some extent she realized, did not impress her so deeply; perhaps because that was, in a manner, the result of his own will, and perhaps, too, because no one quite knew how much the little gentleman suffered and how near death he was.

Lois had heard Gifford's voice as she went into the sick-room, and his words of blame rung again in her ears. They emphasized Mrs. Forsythe's despair about her son's future. She spoke to Lois as though she knew there was no possible chance of her recovery.

"You see, my dear," she said, in her soft, complaining voice, which sometimes dropped to a whisper, "he has no aunts or uncles to look after him when I am gone; no one to be good to him and help him to be good. Not that he is wild or foolish, Lois, like some young men, but he's full of spirit, and he needs a good home. Oh, what will he do without me. He has no one to take care of him!"

Lois was too crushed by misery to feel even a gleam of humor, when the thought flashed through her mind that she might offer to take his mother's place; but she knew enough not to express it.

"Oh," Mrs. Forsythe continued, "if he were only married to some sweet girl that I knew and loved how happy I should be, how content!"

"I—I wish he were," Lois said.

"My death will be so hard for him, and who will comfort him! I am sorry I distress you by speaking so, but, my dear child, on your death-bed you look facts in the face. I cannot help knowing his sorrow, and it makes me so wretched. My boy,—my poor boy! If I could only feel easy about him! If I thought, oh, if I could just think, you cared for him! I know I ought not to speak of it, but—it is all I want to make me happy. I might have had a little more of life, a few months, perhaps, if it had not been for the accident. There, there, you mustn't be distressed; but if I could know you cared for him, it would be worth dying for, Lois."

"I do care for him!" Lois sobbed. "We all do!"

Mrs. Forsythe shook her head. "You are the only one I want; if you told me you would love him, I should be happy, so happy! Perhaps you don't like to say it. But listen: I know all about last fall, and how you sent the poor fellow away broken-hearted; but I couldn't stop loving you, for all that, and I was so glad when he told me he was going to try again; and that is what he is coming down to Ashurst for. Yes, he is coming to ask you. You see, I know all his secrets; he tells me everything,—such a good boy, he is. But I've told you, because I cannot die, oh, I cannot die, unless I know how it will be for him. If you could say yes, Lois, if you could!"

Her voice had faltered again, and the pallor of weariness which spread grayly over her face frightened Lois. She shivered, and wrung her hands sharply together.

"Oh," she said, "I would do anything in the world for you—but—but"—

"But this is all I want," interrupted the other eagerly. "Promise this, and I am content to die. When he asks you—oh, my dear, my dear, promise me to say yes!"

Lois had hidden her face in the pillow. "It was all my fault," she was saying to herself; "it is the only atonement I can make."

"I will do anything you want me to," she said at last.

Mrs. Forsythe, laid her shaking hand on the girl's bowed head. "Oh, look at me! You give me life when you say that. Will you promise to say yes, Lois?"

She lifted her head, but she would not look into Mrs. Forsythe's eyes.

"Yes," she answered, twisting her fingers nervously together. "I promise if—if he wants me."

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" Mrs. Forsythe said, and then, to Lois's horror, she burst into tears. She tried to say it was joy, and Lois must not be frightened, but the young girl fled for Mrs. Dale, and then ran up to the garret, and locked the door.

She went over to the western window and threw herself upon the floor, her face hidden in her arms.

"He made me do it," she said between her sobs; "he said it was my fault. Well, I have made up for it now. I have atoned. I have promised."

She was too miserable even to take the satisfaction which belongs to youth, of observing its own wretchedness. She sobbed and cried without consciousness of tears. At last, for very weariness and exhaustion, she fell asleep, and was wakened by hearing Mrs. Dale rap sharply at the door.

"Come, Lois, come!" she cried. "What's the matter? Dick Forsythe is here. Do have politeness enough to come down-stairs. I don't know but that his mother is a shade better, but she has had a chance to die twice over, the time he's been getting here!"



CHAPTER XXI.

The news of the anxiety in Ashurst hurried Helen's visit. She might be of use, she thought, and she had better go now than a week later.

Perhaps, too, she felt the necessity of calm. She had been forced into a tumult of discussion and argument, which at last she had begun to meet with the silence of exhaustion. Elder Dean had come to see her, and she had received him at first with patience, and given him her reasons for not believing in hell. There had even been a moment when Helen fancied that she might convince him of what was so clear and simple to her own mind. But to each argument of hers he had but one reply,—"The Bible, ma'am, the Word of God, instructs us" thus or thus,—and he returned again and again with unwearied obstinacy to his own position. After a while Helen's annoyance at the man got the better of her judgment, and she wrote to him, saying she did not wish to argue with him again, and must beg him not to come to the parsonage to see her.

Mr. Grier, too, horrified at his wife's reports of what Mrs. Ward had said, hastened to Lockhaven to reproach and admonish John for permitting such heresy in his household; for Mr. Grier held with St. Paul that the husband was head of the wife, even to the extent of regulating her conscience. John was not at home, so he turned his attack upon the real offender, assuring her that it was for her soul's sake that he thus dealt with her. Helen had brought the interview to a sudden close by refusing to hear further argument, and bowing Mr. Grier from the room, with a certain steady look from under her level brows and a compression of the lips which, greatly to his surprise when he thought it over, silenced him.

The talks with John could not, of course, be called painful, for they were with him, but they were futile.

When the last evening came before she was to leave home, Helen knew, with a dull pain of helpless remorse, that it was a relief to go; she was glad that she could not hear Elder Dean's voice for a fortnight, or even know, she said with a pathetic little laugh to her husband, that she "was destroying anybody's hope of hell, in the parish."

"Yes," John answered, "it will be good for you to be away from it all for a time. It is hard to think clearly, hurried by my impatient anxiety to have you reach a certain conclusion. I realize that. But I know you will try to reach it, dearest."

Helen shook her head wearily. "No, I am afraid I cannot promise that. You must not hope that I shall ever come to believe in eternal damnation. Of course I believe that the consequences of sin are eternal; the effect upon character must be eternal, and I should think that would be hell enough, sometimes. But I shall never, never believe in it as you do."

"Oh, Helen," her husband said, "I cannot cease to hope while I have power to pray."

Helen sighed. "I wish you could understand how useless it is, dearest, or how it hurts me, this talk of hell. For people to be good for fear of hell is like saying 'Honesty is the best policy;' it is degrading. And it seems selfish to me, somehow, to think so much about one's own salvation,—it is small, John. The scheme of salvation that the elders talk so much about really resolves itself into a fear of hell and hope of heaven, all for the individual soul, and isn't that selfish? But after all, this question of eternal punishment is such a little thing, so on the outside of the great puzzle. One goes in, and in: Why is sin, which is its own punishment, in the world at all? What does it all mean, anyhow? Where is God, and why does He let us suffer here, with no certainty of a life hereafter? Why does He make love and death in the same world? Oh, that is so cruel,—love and death together! Is He, at all? Those are the things, it seems to me, one has to think about. But why do I go all over it? We can't get away from it, can we?"

"Those questions are the outgrowth of unbelief in justice," he said eagerly; "if you only realized justice and mercy, the rest would be clear."

She came over to him, and, kneeling down, put her head on his knee. "Oh, John, how can I leave you to-morrow?"

It was true that they could not drop the subject. Hour after hour they had sat thus, John instructing, proving, reasoning, with always the tenderest love and patience in his voice. Helen listening with a sweet graciousness, which kept her firm negations from making her husband hopeless. He had showed her, that Sunday evening after the sermon on foreign missions, what he felt had been his awful sin: he had deprived his people of the bread of life for her sake, and, for fear of jarring the perfect peace of their lives and giving her a moment's unhappiness, he had shrunk from his duty to her soul.

At first Helen had been incredulous. She could not realize that her mere unbelief in any doctrine, especially such a doctrine as this of eternal punishment, could be a matter of serious importance to her husband. It needed an effort to treat his argument with respect. "What does it matter?" she kept saying. "We love each other, so never mind what we believe. Believe anything you want, darling. I don't care! Only love me, John. And if my ideas offend your people, let us leave Lockhaven; or I can keep silence, unless I should have to speak for what seems to me truth's sake."

And then John tried to show her how he had wronged his people and been false to his own vows and that he dared not leave them until he had rooted out the evil his own neglect had allowed to grow up among them, and that her mere silence would not reach the root of the evil in her own soul. And the importance of it!

"Oh," he cried, once, when they had been talking until late into the night, "is not your soul's life of importance, Helen? When I see you going down to eternal death because I have failed in my duty to you, can I satisfy myself by saying, We love one another? Because I love you, I cannot be silent. Oh, I have wronged you, I have not loved you enough! I have been content with the present happiness of my love,—my happiness! I had no thought of yours."

So they had gone over and over the subject, until to Helen it seemed threadbare, and they sat now in the dusky library, with long stretches of silence between their words.

Alfaretta brought in the lamps. In view of Mrs. Ward's departure for a fortnight, her father, still with an eye to wages, deferred giving notice. "Besides," he thought, "Mrs. Ward may be convicted and converted after she's been dealt with."

Helen had risen, and was writing some instructions for her maid: just what was to be cooked for the preacher, and what precautions taken for his comfort. As she put her pen down, she turned to look at her husband. He was sitting, leaning forward, with his head bowed upon his hand, and his eyes covered.

"Helen," he said, in a low, repressed voice, "once more, just once more, let me entreat you; and then we will not speak of this before you go."

She sighed. "Yes, dearest, say anything you want."

There was a moment's silence, and then John rose, and stood looking down at her. "I have such a horror of your going away. I do not understand it; it is more than the grief and loneliness of being without you for a few days. It is vague and indefinable, but it is terribly real. Perhaps it is the feeling that atonement for my sin towards you is being placed out of my reach. You will be where I cannot help you, or show you the truth. Yet you will try to find it! I know you will. But now, just this last night, I must once more implore you to open your heart to God's Spirit. Ah, my Helen, I have sinned against Heaven and before you, but my punishment will be greater than I can bear if I enter heaven without you! Heaven? My God, it would be hell! The knowledge that my sin had kept you out—yet even as I speak I sin."

He was walking up and down the room, his hands knotted in front of him, and his face filled with hopeless despair.

"Yes, I sin even in this, for my grief is not that I have sinned against God in my duty to his people and in forgetting Him, but that I may lose you heaven, I may make you suffer!"

Helen came to him, and tried to put her arms about him. "Oh, my dear," she said, "don't you understand? I have heaven now, in your love. And for the rest,—oh, John, be content to leave it in Hands not limited by our poor ideas of justice. If there is a God, and He is good, He will not send me away from you in eternity; if He is wicked and cruel, as this theology makes Him, we do not want his heaven! We will go out into outer darkness together."

John shuddered. "Lay not this sin to her charge," she heard him say; "she knows not what she says. Yet I—Oh, Helen, that same thought has come to me. You seemed to make my heaven,—you; and I was tempted to choose you and darkness, rather than my God. Sin, sin, sin,—I cannot get away from it. Yet if I could only save you! But there again I distrust my motive: not for God's glory, but for my own love's sake, I would save you. My God, my God, be merciful to me a sinner!"

In his excitement, he had pushed her arm from his shoulder, and stood in tense and trembling silence, looking up, as though listening for an answer to his prayer.

Helen dared not speak. There is a great gulf fixed between the nearest and dearest souls when in any spiritual anguish; even love cannot pass it, and no human tenderness can fathom it. Helen could not enter into this holiest of holies, where her husband's soul was prostrate before its Maker. In the solitude of grief and remorse he was alone.

It was this isolation from him which broke her calm. It seemed profane even to look upon his suffering. She shrank away from him, and hid her face in her hands. That roused him, and in a moment the old tenderness enveloped her.

He comforted her with silent love, until she ceased to tremble, and looked again into his tender eyes.

"What I wanted to say," he said, after a while, when she was leaning quietly against his breast, "was just to tell you once more the reasons for believing in this doctrine which so distresses you, dearest. To say, in a word, if I could, why I lay such stress upon it, instead of some of the other doctrines of the church. It is because I do believe that salvation, eternal life, Helen, depends upon holding the doctrine of reprobation in its truth and entirety. For see, beloved: deny the eternity of punishment, and the scheme of salvation is futile. Christ need not have died, a man need not repent, and the whole motive of the gospel is false; revelation is denied, and we are without God and without hope. Grant the eternity of punishment, and the beauty and order of the moral universe burst upon us: man is a sinner, and deserves death, and justice is satisfied; for, though mercy is offered, it is because Christ has died. And his atonement is not cheapened by being forced upon men who do not want it. They must accept it, or be punished."

Helen looked up into his face with a sad wonder. "Don't you see, dear," she said, "we cannot reason about it? You take all this from the Bible, because you believe it is inspired. I do not believe it is. So how can we argue? If I granted your premises, all that you say would be perfectly logical. But I do not, John. I cannot. I am so grieved for you, dearest, because I know how this distresses you; but I must say it. Silence can never take the place of truth, between us."

"Oh, it did, too long, too long!" John groaned. "Is there no hope?" and then he began his restless walk again, Helen watching him with yearning eyes.

"I cannot give it up," he said at last. "There must be some way by which the truth can be made clear to you. Perhaps the Lord will show it to me. There is no pain too great for me to bear, to find it out; no, even the anguish of remorse, if it brings you to God! Oh, you shall be saved! Do the promises of the Eternal fail?"

He came over to her, and took her hands in his. Their eyes met. This sacrament of souls was too solemn for words or kisses. When they spoke again it was of commonplace things.

It was hard for her to leave the little low-browed house, the next morning. John stopped to gather a bunch of prairie roses from the bush which they had trained beneath the study window, and Helen fastened them in her dress; then, just as they were ready to start, the preacher's wife ran back to the study, and hurriedly put one of the roses from her bosom into a vase on the writing-table, and stooped and gave a quick, furtive kiss to the chair in which John always sat when at work on a sermon.

They neither of them spoke as they walked to the station, and no one spoke to them. Helen knew there were shy looks from curtained windows and peeping from behind doors, for she was a moral curiosity in Lockhaven; but no one interrupted them. Just before she started, John took her hand, and held it in a nervous grasp. "Helen," he said hoarsely, "for the sake of my eternal happiness seek for truth, seek for truth!"

She only looked at him, with speechless love struggling through the pain in her eyes.

The long, slow journey to Ashurst passed like a troubled dream. It was an effort to adjust her mind to the different life to which she was going. Late in the afternoon, the train drew up to the depot in Mercer, and Helen tried to push aside her absorbing thought of John's suffering, that she might greet her uncle naturally and gladly. The rector stood on the platform, his stick in one hand and his glasses in the other, and his ruddy face beaming with pleasure. When he saw her, he opened his arms and hugged her; it would have seemed to Dr. Howe that he was wanting in affection had he reserved his demonstrations until they were alone.

"Bless my soul," he cried, "it is good to see you again, my darling child. We're all in such distress in Ashurst, you'll do us good. Your husband couldn't come with you? Sorry for that; we want to see him oftener. I suppose he was too busy with parish work,—that fire has kept his hands full. What? There is the carriage,—Graham, here's Miss Helen back again. Get in, my dear, get in. Now give your old uncle a kiss, and then we can talk as much as we want."

Helen kissed him with all her heart; a tremulous sort of happiness stole over the background of her troubled thoughts, as a gleam of light from a stormy sunset may flutter upon the darkness of the clouds.

"Tell me—everything! How is Lois? How are the sick people? How is Ashurst?"

Dr. Howe took up a great deal of room, sitting well forward upon the seat, with his hands clasped on his big stick, which was planted between his knees, and he had to turn his head to see Helen when he answered her.

"Mrs. Forsythe is better," he said; "she is certainly going to pull through, though for the first week all that we heard was that she was 'still breathing.' But Denner is in a bad way; Denner is a very sick man. Gifford has been with him almost all the time. I don't know what we should have done without the boy. Lois is all right,—dreadfully distressed, of course, about the accident; saying it is her fault, and all that sort of thing. But she wasn't to blame; some fool left a newspaper to blow along the road and frighten the horse. She needs you to cheer her up."

"Poor little Mr. Denner!" Helen exclaimed. "I'm glad Giff is with him. Has Mr. Forsythe come?"

"Yes," said the rector; "but they are queer people, those Forsythes. The young man seems quite annoyed at having been summoned: he remarked to your aunt that there was nothing the matter with his mother, and she must be moved to her own house; there was nothing so bad for her as to have a lot of old women fussing over her. I wish you could have seen Adele's face! I don't think she admires him as much as she did. But his mother was moved day before yesterday, and he has a trained nurse for her. Your aunt Adele feels her occupation gone, and thinks Mrs. Forsythe will die without her," the rector chuckled. "But she won't,—she'll get well." Here he gave a heavy sigh, and said, "Poor Denner!"

"You don't mean Mr. Denner won't get well?" Helen asked anxiously.

"I'm afraid not," Dr. Howe answered sadly.

They were silent for a little while, and then Helen said in a hushed voice, "Does he know it, uncle Archie?"

"No," said the rector explosively, "he—he doesn't!"

Dr. Howe was evidently disturbed; he pulled up one of the carriage windows with some violence, and a few minutes afterwards lowered it with equal force. "No, he doesn't," he repeated. "The doctor only told me this morning that there was no hope. Says it is a question of days. He's very quiet; does not seem to suffer; just lies there, and is polite to people. He was dreadfully troubled at breaking up the whist party last Saturday; sent apologies to the other three by Gifford." Dr. Howe tugged at his gray mustache, and looked absently out of the window. "No, I don't believe he has an idea that he—he won't get well." The rector had a strange shrinking from the word "death."

"I suppose he ought to know," Helen said thoughtfully.

"That is what the doctor said," answered the rector; "told me he might want to settle his affairs. But bless my soul, what affairs can Denner have? He made his will fifteen years ago, and left all he had to Sarah Denner's boy. I don't see what he has to do."

"But, uncle," Helen said, "mightn't he have some friends or relatives to whom he would want to send a message,—or perhaps see? People you never heard of?"

"Oh, no, no," responded Dr. Howe. "I've known William Denner, man and boy, these sixty years. He hasn't any friends I don't know about; he could not conceal anything, you know; he is as simple and straightforward as a child. No; Willie Denner'll have his money,—there's not too much of it,—and that's all there is to consider."

"But it is not only money," Helen went on slowly: "hasn't he a right to know of eternity? Not just go out into it blindly?"

"Perhaps so,—perhaps so," the rector admitted, hiding his evident emotion with a flourish of his big white silk handkerchief. "You see," he continued, steadying his cane between his knees, while he took off his glasses and began to polish them, "the doctor wants me to tell him, Helen."

"I suppose so," she said sympathetically.

"And I suppose I must," the rector went on, "but it is the hardest task he could set me. I—I don't know how to approach it."

"It must be very hard."

"Of course it seems natural to the doctor that I should be the one to tell him. I'm his pastor, and he's a member of my church—Stay! is he?" Dr. Howe thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled his forehead, as he thought. "Yes, oh yes, I remember. We were confirmed at the same time, when we were boys,—old Bishop White's last confirmation. But he hasn't been at communion since my day."

"Why do you think that is, uncle Archie?" Helen asked.

"Why, my dear child, how do I know?" cried the rector. "Had his own reasons, I suppose. I never asked him. And you see, Helen, that's what makes it so hard to go and tell Denner that—that he's got to die. Somehow, we never touched on the serious side of life. I think that's apt to be the case with friends in our position. We have gone fishing together since we were out of pinafores, and we have played whist,—at least I've watched him,—and talked politics or church business over our pipes; but never anything like this. We were simply the best of friends. Ah, well, Denner will leave a great vacancy in my life."

They rode in silence for some time, and then Helen said gently, "Yes, but uncle, dear, that is the only way you are going to help him now,—with the old friendship. It is too late for anything else,—any religious aid, I mean,—when a man comes to look death in the face. The getting ready for death has gone, and it is death itself, then. And I should think it would be only the friend's hand and the friend's eyes, just the human sympathy, which would make it easier. I suppose all one can do is to say, 'Let my friendship go with you through it all,—all this unknown to us both.'"

Dr. Howe turned and looked at her sharply; the twilight had fallen, and the carriage was very dark. "That's a heathenish thing to say, Helen, and it is not so. The consolations of religion belong to a man in death as much as in life; they ought not to belong more to death than to life, but they do, sometimes. It isn't that there is not much to say to Denner. It is the—the unusualness of it, if I can so express it. We have never touched on such things, I tell you, old friends as we are; and it is awkward, you understand."

They were very quiet for the rest of the long drive. They stopped a moment at Mr. Denner's gate; the house was dark, except for a dim light in the library and another in the kitchen, where Mary sat poring over her usual volume. Gifford came out to say there was no change, and opened the carriage door to shake hands with Helen.

"He would have prayers to-night," he said to the rector, still talking in a hushed voice, as though the spell of the sick-room were on him out under the stars, in the shadows of the poplar-trees. "He made Willie read them aloud to Mary, he told me; he said it was proper to observe such forms in a family, no matter what the conditions might be. Imagine Willie stumbling through Chronicles, and Mary fast asleep at her end of that big dark dining-room!"

Gifford smiled, but the rector was too much distressed to be amused; he shivered as they drove away.

"Ah," he said sharply, "how I hate that slam of a carriage door! Makes me think of but one thing. Yes, I must see him to-morrow. I must tell him to-morrow."

The rector settled back in his corner, his face darkening with a grieved and troubled frown, and they did not speak until they reached the rectory gate. As it swung heavily back against the group of white lilacs behind it, shaking out their soft, penetrating fragrance into the night air, some one sprang towards the carriage, and almost before it stopped stood on the steps, and rapped with impatient joy at the window.

It was Lois. She had thrown a filmy white scarf about her head, and had come out to walk up and down the driveway, and listen for the sound of wheels. She had not wanted to stay in the house, lest Mr. Forsythe might appear.

Lois had scarcely seen him since he arrived, though this was not because of his devotion to his mother. He spent most of his time lounging about the post-office, and swearing that Ashurst was the dullest, deadest place on the face of the earth. He had not listened to Lois's self-reproaches, and insisted that blame must not even be mentioned. He was quite in earnest, but strangely awkward. Lois, weighed down by the consciousness of her promise, felt it was her fault, yet dared not try to put him at his ease, and fled, at the sound of his step, to her refuge in the garret. She did not feel that her promise to Mrs. Forsythe meant that she must give opportunity as well as consent. But Dick did not force his presence upon her, and he was very uncomfortable and distrait when at the rectory.

She need not have feared his coming again that evening. He was in the library of his mother's house, covering many pages of heavy crested note-paper with his big, boyish writing. Strangely enough, however, for a young gentleman in love with Miss Lois Howe, he was addressing in terms of ardent admiration some one called "Lizzie."

But in the gladness of meeting Helen, Lois almost forgot him. Her arms around her cousin's neck, and Helen's lips pressed against her wet cheek, there was nothing left to wish for, except the recovery of the two sick people.

"Oh, Helen! Helen! Helen!" she cried hysterically, while Dr. Howe, flourishing his silk handkerchief, patted them both without discrimination, and said, "There, my dear, there, there."



CHAPTER XXII.

After Helen had gone, John Ward went back to the parsonage, dazed and stupefied by the exhaustion of the moral conflict which for nearly a month had strained every fibre of his soul.

The house seemed dark and empty. His face brightened a moment, as he sat wearily down at his writing-table and saw the prairie rose in the slender vase. He leaned his head on his hand, and drew the flower towards him, touching it with gentle fingers, as though he caressed the bloom of Helen's cheek. Then he pushed it in front of her picture which stood always on the same table, and thought vaguely that he would leave it there until she put a fresh one in its place.

And so his thoughts came heavily back to the old grief and anxiety. He went over all the arguments he had used, and saw new points and reasons which he had neglected to give, and he even drew his pen and paper towards him, and began to make some notes. He would send them to her; and, away from him, surely what he should say would have an added force.

Yet he could not fix his mind upon his subject. He found himself heavily conscious of the silence of the house; and by and by he rose and went up-stairs to their bedroom, standing drearily in the centre of the floor, and looking about at his own loneliness. He lifted a bit of lace upon her dressing-table, and smoothed it between his fingers, noting the faint scent of orris which it held. Again that strange, unreasonable fear of her absence seized him, and he was glad to go out and find some pressing occupation to forget it.

When he started (as he had had to do of late), alone, for prayer-meeting, his mind was dulled by its own pain of anxiety, and he went absently through the services, saying little, and "opening" the meeting as soon as he could. After that, he sat with head bent and arms folded, scarcely hearing what was said.

Just before he pronounced the benediction, however, Elder Dean rose, and, stepping with elaborate quiet to the pulpit, handed him a note, and sat down again, covering his face with a big horny hand, and swinging one foot nervously. John opened the folded paper, and held it up to one of the tall lamps beside his desk, for the writing was dim and crabbed, and the light poor, and then read a call that the Session should meet immediately after the prayer-meeting. No object for consideration was named, and the paper was signed by Mr. Dean and another elder. John put it down, and, noticing that his four elders sat together on one of the bare settees, omitted the usual request that they should all remain.

The little congregation gradually dispersed. Then Elder Dean arose, and, creaking heavily down the aisle, closed and locked the front door, and put out four of the lamps in the back of the room for economy's sake. After that he sat down again on the settee beside the three other elders, and the lecture-room was silent.

John looked up, and waited for some one to speak, then, suddenly recalling his duty of moderator, he called the Session to order, and asked the reason for meeting.

Mr. Johnson, who was the youngest elder in the church, shuffled his feet under the bench, coughed slightly, and looked at his colleagues. Mr. Bent and Mr. Smith kept their eyes upon the ground, and Mr. Dean folded and unfolded his arms several times.

"Brethren," said the preacher, "we have asked the blessing of God upon the deliberations of this Session; it now remains to bring the business before it."

Mr. Dean poked Mr. Smith furtively, who replied in a loud whisper, "It is your place, Brother Dean."

The elder's face turned a dull mottled red; he felt John's surprised eyes upon him. Under cover of blowing his nose violently, he rose, and, shifting from one foot to the other, he glanced imploringly at his companions. But no one spoke.

"Brother Ward," he began at last, opening and shutting his mouth until his upper lip looked like a hooked beak, "this Session has been called for the consideration of—of the spiritual condition of this church. The duties of the elders of a church are heavy, and painful—and—and—large. But they are discharged,—they are always," said Mr. Dean, inflating his chest, and raising one hand, "discharged! The church expects it, and the church is not disappointed. Yet it is most terribly painful, sometimes—most awful, and—unpleasant."

Here Mr. Dean stopped, and coughed behind his hand. Mr. Johnson crossed his legs, and glanced back at the door as though calculating his chances of escape. The other two men did not look up. Elder Dean had no reason to fear that he had not the attention of the moderator. John was watching him with burning eyes.

"Proceed," he said.

"Well," he continued, "as we always perform our painful, most painful duties, we are here to-night. We are here to-night, Mr. Moderator, to consider the spiritual welfare of the church, and of one especial soul connected with the church. This soul is—is far from grace; it is in a lost condition; a stranger to God, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. But that is not all. No. It is—ah—spreading its own disease of sin in the vitals of the church. It is not only going down to hell itself, but it is dragging others along with it. It is to consider the welfare of that soul, Brother Ward, that this Session has been convened. It is a very difficult task which is set before us, but we are sustained by duty,—by duty, sir! We will not have to reproach ourselves for neglect of an immortal soul. We wish to summon"—

"Do you refer," said John Ward, rising, his hands clenched upon the pulpit rail, his face rigid and his teeth set,—"do you refer to my wife?"

The three men on the bench started as though they had received a galvanic shock. Elder Dean, with his lips parted, looked at his minister in silence.

"Answer me," said John Ward.

"Mr. Moderator," replied the elder in a quavering voice, "if I do refer to your wife, that is not the way it is to be considered. I refer to a sin-sick soul. I refer to a—a cause of falling from grace, in this church. I refer to a poor neglected sinner, who must be saved; yes, sir, saved. If she happens to be your wife, I—I—am sorry."

The room was very silent. The flaring lamps shone on the bare, whitewashed walls and on the shamed faces of the four men; the shadows in the corners pressed upon the small centre of light. One of the lamps smoked, and Mr. Bent rose to turn it down, and a deeper gloom settled upon the group. Mr. Johnson nervously opened a hymn-book, and began to turn the pages. For a moment the rustle of the paper was the only sound that broke the quiet.

John Ward, appalled and angry, humiliated that his most sacred grief was dragged from his heart to be gazed at and discussed by these men, was yet silenced by his accusing conscience.

"There is no need," he said at last, with painful slowness, and breathing hard, "to bring this matter before the Session. As preacher of this church, I prefer to deal with that soul according to the wisdom God gives me. I neither ask nor desire your advice."

Elder Dean turned to his companions, and raised his hands slightly. Mr. Smith responded to his look by rising and saying, still gazing fixedly upon the floor, "This ain't the way, Brother Ward, to consider this matter. Your wisdom ain't enough, seein' that it has allowed things to get to this pass. All we desire is to deal with Mrs. Ward for her own good. Brother Dean speaks of the evil in the church,—ain't it our duty to check that? It appears, sir, that, preacher of this church or not, you've allowed her sin of unbelief to remain unreproved, and the consequence is its spread in the church: that's what we're responsible for; that's our duty. If you've neglected your duty, we ain't a-goin' to neglect ours." He wagged his head emphatically, and then sat down.

John Ward was too entirely without self-consciousness to feel the change in the tone of these men. Their old sincerely felt admiration and awe of their preacher was gone. The moment they became his critics, they ceased to feel his superiority. Disapproval was power, and their freedom from the trammels of respect made them cruel. But the outcry of John's conscience made him deaf to smaller things. He sat bending forward, his hands locked together, and the vein in his forehead standing out like whip-cord; his lips were white and compressed.

Mr. Dean got on his feet again, with much less embarrassment in his manner. Mr. Smith's share in the responsibility was a great relief.

"It is exactly as Brother Smith says," he said. "If it was just—just her, we wouldn't, perhaps, meddle, though I ain't sure but what it would be our duty. But the church,—we have got to protect it. We would wish to summon her, and see if we can bring her to a realizing sense of her condition before proceeding to any extreme measure. If she remained in a hardened state, it would then be our duty to bring charges and proof. And we should do it, bein' supported by a sense of duty—and by the grace of God."

Here Mr. Johnson rose, rather noisily, and Mr. Dean looked at him impatiently.

"He'll spoil it all," he muttered, as he sat down between Mr. Smith and Mr. Bent.

"I just want to say," said Mr. Johnson, in a quick, high voice, "that I'm not in sympathy with this meeting."

John looked at him eagerly.

"It is my idea that these sort of things never do. The day has passed for forcing people into believing things,—yes, sir,—and it doesn't do any good, anyhow. Now, my advice would be, don't disturb things, don't break up the peace. I'm for peace and quiet and a happy life, before anything else. Just let's not say anything about it. There's nothing, brethren, like argument for disturbing a church or a home. I know it; I'm a married man. And I just advise you to keep quiet. Use your influence in a quiet, easy way, but nothing else. May be it will come out all right, after all."

He sat down again, and Mr. Dean and Mr. Smith began to whisper to him with evident indignation.

But the preacher's face was full of doubt and grief. "No," he said at last, moving his dry lips with a visible effort, "we cannot conquer sin by hiding it or forgetting it, and I believe that this Session has the welfare of the church sincerely at heart; but I do not believe the plan you propose will profit either the church or the soul of whom you speak. Her absence at present would, at all events, make it necessary to defer any action. In the mean time, I believe that the Lord will teach me wisdom, and will grant grace and peace to her whose welfare is the subject of your prayers. If I reach any conclusion in the matter which you ought to know, I will communicate with you. If there is no further motion, this meeting is adjourned."

The elders rose, and with the exception of Mr. Johnson, retreated in embarrassed haste. They ducked their heads, and made a guttural noise in their throats, as though to say good-night; but they were ashamed to speak to him, though Mr. Bent said as he turned his back on the preacher, "We'll—ah—pray for her."

Mr. Johnson stopped to justify his presence, and say again, "Don't notice it, Mr. Ward. I'd just gently like bring her round some time; keep on prayin', an' all that, but don't force it. It will only make trouble for you."

John hurried away from him, stung to the quick. This, then, was his own real attitude; this was what his plea of wisdom had meant this last year. His own deceit loomed up before his soul, and the sky of faith grew black. One by one, the accusations of the elders repeated themselves to him, and he made no protest. His assenting conscience left him absolutely defenseless.



CHAPTER XXIII.

There was a strange unreality about Helen's wakening, the first morning in Ashurst.

The year in Lockhaven seemed to have made as little change as a dream. Here she was, back in her old room. How familiar everything looked! Her little white bed; the old cherry-wood dressing-case, with its shining brass rings and spotless linen cover; the morning sunshine dancing with the shadows of the leaves, and falling in a golden square upon the floor; the curtains at the south window blowing softly to and fro in the fresh wind, and the flutter of wings outside in the climbing roses; even the bunch of white lilacs on the little table, apparently all just as she had left them nearly a year ago. Lockhaven and theology were behind her, and yet in some indefinable way she was a stranger in a strange land.

The consciousness of a difference had come the night before, when Lois poured out her fears and griefs to her cousin (all except her promise to Mrs. Forsythe) as soon as they were alone.

Lois felt no difference. Helen had been away for a long time, but she was still the same Helen to her; strong, and true, and gentle, with perhaps a little more gravity in her eyes, but Lois was so grave herself she did not notice that. Whereas with Helen there was a dual life: the one, absorbing, passionate, and intense; the other, a memory; a tender, beautiful past, no longer a necessity.