she did
not thereby exclude all thoughts of the outer and lower world. Perhaps
the Being for whose worship they were assembled was no more displeased
with the innocent reveries and fancies which floated through that young
heart than with the soft air and sweet song of birds that played through
the open windows of the church on some warm June Sunday morning.

But when the shrill-voiced leader of the choir sounded the key-note of
the hymn-tune through his nose, and the growling bass-viol joined in
unison, while the congregation rose, and Dr. Peewee surveyed his people
to mark who had staid away from service, then Hope Wayne looked at the
choir as if her whole soul were singing; and young Gabriel Bennet,
younger than Hope, had a choking feeling as he gazed at her--an
involuntary sense of unworthiness and shame before such purity and grace.
He counted every line of the hymn grudgingly, and loved the tunes that
went back and repeated and prolonged--the tunes endlessly _da capo_--and
the hymns that he heard as he looked at her he never forgot.

But there were other eyes than Gabriel Bennet's that watched Hope Wayne,
and for many months had watched her--the flashing black eyes of Abel
Newt. Handsome, strong, graceful, he was one of the oldest boys, and a
leader at Mr. Gray's school. Like every handsome, bold boy or young man,
for he was fully eighteen, and seemed much older, Abel Newt had plenty of
allies at school--they could hardly be called friends. There was many a
boy who thought with the one nicknamed Little Malacca, although, more
prudently than he, he might not say it: "Abe gives me gingerbread; but I
guess I don't like him!" If a boy interfered with Abe he was always
punished. The laugh was turned on him; there was ceaseless ridicule and
taunting. Then if it grew insupportable, and came to fighting, Abel Newt
was strong in muscle and furious in wrath, and the recusant was generally
pommeled.

Reposing upon his easy, conscious superiority, Abel had long worshiped
Hope Wayne. They were nearly of the same age--she a few months the
younger. But as the regulations of the school confined every boy, without
especial permission of absence, to the school grounds, and as Abel had no
acquaintance with Mr. Burt and no excuse for calling, his worship had
been silent and distant. He was the more satisfied that it should be so,
because it had never occurred to him that any of the other boys could be
a serious rival for her regard.