he rumors.
Daily she prayed for him, with conscious and tender effusion,
That the Lord would convert him. But when her father forbade him
Unto her thought, she denied him, and likewise held him for outcast,
Turned her eyes when they met, and would not speak, though her heart
broke.

Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned from wrong unto error:
"This is their praying and singing," he said, "that makes you reject
me,--
You that were kind to me once. But I think my fathers' religion,
With a light heart in the breast, and a friendly priest to absolve one,
Better than all these conversions that only bewilder and vex me,
And that have made man so hard and woman fickle and cruel.
Well, then, pray for my soul, since you would not have spoken to save
me,--
Yes,--for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the
sinners."
Spake and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,--
Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting,
Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow.
Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom
Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless incredulous mocking.
Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle,
Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her
father,
With his hollow looks, and never moved from his silence.

Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners,
Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle,
And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for
them.
Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports.
Then the preachers spake and painted the terrors of Judgment,
And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting.
Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded:
But when the fervent voice of the while-haired exhorter was lifted,
Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection.
"Lord, let this soul be saved!" cried the fervent voice of the old man;
"For that the shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered,
And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not."

Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit,
Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow,
Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy,
Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly praye