ay._' Reuben! Reuben! we must agonize to enter into the
strait gate!"

"It's a long agony," said Reuben; and he rose and paced back and forth
for a time; then suddenly stopping before the Doctor, he laid his hand
upon his shoulder, (the boy was of manly height now, and overtopped the
old gentleman by an inch,)--"Father, it grieves me to pain you,--indeed
it does; but truth is truth. I have told you my story; but if you wish
it, I will live outwardly as if no such talk had passed. I will respect
as much as ever all your religious observances, and no person shall be
the wiser."

"I would not have you practise hypocrisy, my son; but I would not have
you withdraw yourself from any of the appointed means of grace."

And at this Reuben went out,--out far upon the hills, from which he saw
the village roofs, and the spire, and the naked tree-tops, the fields
all bare and brown, the smoke of a near house curling lazily into the
sky; and the only sound that broke the solemn stillness was the drumming
of a partridge in the woods or the harsh scream of a belated jay.

Never had Reuben been more kind or attentive to the personal wants of
the old gentleman than on the days which followed upon this interview.
There was something almost like a daughter's solicitude in his
watchfulness. On the next Sunday the Doctor preached with an emotion
that was but poorly controlled, and which greatly mystified his people.
Twice in the afternoon his voice came near to failing. Reuben knew where
the grief lay, but wore a composed face; and as he supported the old
gentleman home after service, he said, (but not so loudly that Adele
could hear, who was tripping closely behind,)--

"Father, I grieve for you,--upon my soul I do; but it's fate."

"Fate, Reuben?" said the Doctor, but with a less guarded voice,--"fate?
God only is fate!"

The Doctor was too much mortified by this revelation of Reuben's present
state of feeling to make it the subject of conversation, even with Miss
Eliza, and much less with the elders of his flock. To Squire Elderkin,
indeed, whose shrewd common-sense he had learned to value even in its
bearings upon the "weightier matters of the law," he had dropped some
desponding reflections in regard to the wilful impetuosity of his poor
son Reuben, from which the shrewd Squire at once suspected the
difficulty.

"It's the blood of the old Major," he said. "Let it work, Doctor, let it
work!"

From which observation, it must be