e that threw heavy weight in
the scale of his son's chances. And Madam Rushleigh, as she began to be
called, since Mrs. Philip had entered the family, petted her in the old,
graceful, gracious fashion; and Margaret loved her, simply, and from her
heart.

With Paul himself, it had not been as in the days of bouquets, and
"Germans," and bridal association in Mishaumok. They were all living and
enjoying together a beautiful idyl. Nothing seemed special--nothing was
embarrassing.

Faith thought, in these days, that she was very happy.

Mr. Armstrong relinquished her, almost imperceptibly, to her younger
friends. In the pleasant twilights, though, when her day's pleasures and
occupations were ended, he would often come over, as of old, and sit
with them in the summer parlor, or under the elms.

Or Faith would go up the beautiful Ridge walk with him; and he would
have a thought for her that was higher than any she could reach, by
herself, or with the help of any other human soul.

And the minister? How did his world look to him? Perhaps, as if clouds
that had parted, sending a sunbeam across from the west upon the dark
sorrow of the morning, had shut again, inexorably, leaving him still to
tread the nightward path under the old, leaden sky.

A day came, that set him thinking of all this--of the years that were
past, of those that might be to come.

Mr. Armstrong was not quite so old as he had been represented. A man
cannot go through plague and anguish, as he had, and "keep," as Nurse
Sampson had said, long ago, of women, "the baby face on." There were
lines about brow and mouth, and gleams in the hair, that seldom come so
early.

This day he completed one-and-thirty years.

The same day, last month, had been Faith's birthday. She was nineteen.

Roger Armstrong thought of the two together.

He thought of these twelve years that lay between them. Of the love--the
loss--the stern and bitter struggle--the divine amends and holy hope
that they had brought to him; and then of the innocent girl life she had
been living in them; then, how the two paths had met so, in these last
few, beautiful months.

Whither, and how far apart, trended they now?

He could not see. He waited--leaving the end with God.

A few weeks went by, in this careless, holiday fashion, with Faith and
her friends; and then came the hour when she must face the truth for
herself and for another, and speak the word of destiny for both.

She had m