the sweet, wide spaces within.
Justin was sitting in the end of the Peabody pew, and Nancy Wentworth was
beside him; Nancy, cool and restful in her white dress; dark-haired Nancy
under the shadow of her shirred muslin hat.

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace.

The melodeon gave the tune, and Nancy and he stood to sing, taking the
book between them. His hand touched hers, and as the music of the hymn
rose and fell, the future unrolled itself before his eyes; a future in
which Nancy was his wedded wife; and the happy years stretched on and on
in front of them until there was a row of little heads in the old Peabody
pew, and mother and father could look proudly along the line at the young
things they were bringing into the house of the Lord.

The recalling of that vision worked like magic in Justin's blood. His
soul rose and stretched its wings and "traced its better portion"
vividly, as he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the bedroom
floor. He would get a few days' leave and go back to Edgewood for
Christmas, to join, with all the old neighbours, in the service at the
meeting-house; and in pursuance of this resolve, he shook his fist in the
face of the landlady's husband on the mantelpiece and dared him to
prevent.

He had a salary of fifty dollars a month, with some very slight prospect
of an increase after January. He did not see how two persons could eat,
and drink, and lodge, and dress on it in Detroit, but he proposed to give
Nancy Wentworth the refusal of that magnificent future, that brilliant
and tempting offer. He had exactly one hundred dollars in the bank, and
sixty or seventy of them would be spent in the journeys, counting two
happy, blessed fares back from Edgewood to Detroit; and if he paid only
his own fare back, he would throw the price of the other into the pond
behind the Wentworth house. He would drop another ten dollars into the
plate on Christmas Day toward the repairs on the church; if he starved,
he would do that. He was a failure. Everything his hand touched turned
to naught. He looked himself full in the face, recognizing his weakness,
and in this supremest moment of recognition he was a stronger man than he
had been an hour before. His drooping shoulders had straightened; the
restless look had gone from his eyes; his sombre face had something of
repose in it, the repose of a settled purpose. He was a failure, but
perhaps if he took the ri