d, Reuben," (more tenderly,) "I have
promised solemnly to live as you thought a little while ago that you
would live. And if I were to break my promise, Reuben, I know that you
would never renew yours."

"I believe you are speaking God's truth, Adele," said he.

The summer months passed by, and for Adele the little table at the
parsonage had become as bleak and cheerless as the autumn. Miss Johns
maintained the rigid severity of manner, with which she had undertaken
to treat the outcast child, with a constancy that would have done credit
to a worthier intent. Even the good Doctor was unconsciously oppressed
by it, and by the spinster's insistence upon the due proprieties was
weaned away from his old tenderness of speech; but every morning and
every evening his voice trembled with emotion as he prayed for God's
grace and mercy to descend upon all sinners and outcasts.

He had written to Maverick, advising him of the great grief which his
confession had caused him, and imploring him to make what reparation he
yet might do, by uniting in the holy bonds of matrimony with the erring
mother of his child. He had further advised him that his apprehensions
with regard to Reuben were, so far as was known, groundless. He further
wrote,--"Upon consultation with Miss Johns, who is still at the head of
our little household, I am constrained to ask that you take as early a
time as may be convenient to relieve her of the further care of your
daughter. Age is beginning to tell somewhat upon my sister; and the
embarrassment of her position with respect to Adele is a source, I
believe, of great mental distress."

All which the good Doctor honestly believed,--upon Miss Eliza's
averment,--and in his own honest way he assured his friend, that, though
his sins were as scarlet, he should still implore Heaven in his favor,
and should part from Adele--whenever the parting might come--with real
grief, and with an outpouring of his heart.

As for Reuben, a wanton levity had come over him in those latter days of
summer that galled the poor Doctor to the quick, and that strangely
perplexed the observant spinster. It was not the mischievous spirit of
his boyhood revived again, but a cold, passionless, determined levity,
such as men wear who have secret griefs to conceal. He talked in a free
and easy way about the Doctor's Sunday discourses, that fairly shocked
the old people of the parish; rumor said that he had passed some
unhallowed jokes with