of bonds and joys for which he was
made. From these simple words of a loving woman's heart had flashed a
great light into Mercy's comprehension of God. She was silent for some
moments; then she said solemnly,--

"That was a great thought you had then, Lizzy. I never saw it in that
light before. I shall never forget it. Perhaps you are right about the
Parson, too. I wonder if there is any thing he does long for? If there is,
I would die to give it to him,--I know that."

It was very near Lizzy's lips to say, "If you would live to give it to
him, it would be more to the purpose, perhaps;" but she wisely forbore and
they parted in silence, Mercy absorbed in thinking of this new view of
God's relation to man, and Lizzy hoping that Mercy was thinking of Parson
Dorrance's need of a greater happiness than he possessed.

As Mercy's circle of friends widened, and her interests enlarged and
deepened, her relation to Stephen became at once easier and harder:
easier, because she no longer spent so many hours alone in perplexed
meditation as to the possible wrong in it; harder, because he was
frequently unreasonable, jealous of the pleasure that he saw she found in
others, jealous of the pleasure she gave to others,--jealous, in short, of
every thing in which he was not her centre. Mercy was very patient with
him. She loved him unutterably. She never forgot for an instant the quiet
heroism with which he bore his hard life. As the months had gone on, she
had gradually established a certain kindly familiarity with his mother;
going in often to see her, taking her little gifts of flowers or fruit,
and telling her of all little incidents which might amuse her. She seemed
to herself in this way to be doing a little towards sharing Stephen's
burden; and she also felt a certain bond to the woman who, being Stephen's
mother, ought to have been hers by adoption. The more she saw of Mrs.
White's tyrannical, exacting nature, the more she yearned over Stephen.
Her first feeling of impatience with him, of resentment at the seeming
want of manliness in such subjection, had long ago worn away. She saw that
there were but two courses for him,--either to leave the house, or to buy
a semblance of peace at any cost.

"Flesh and blood can't stand up agin Mis' White," said Marty one day, in
an irrepressible confidence to Mercy. "An' the queerest thing is, that
she'll never let go on you. There ain't nothin' to hender my goin' away
any day, an' there