here he used to stand absorbed in reading, or where
he walked back and forth, thinking out his dark and threatening sermons.
For before his marriage John preached the law rather than the gospel.

"So I am going to hear you preach on Sunday?" Helen said, the Saturday
morning after their return. "It's odd that I've never heard you, and we
have known each other more than a year."

He was at his desk, and she rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. He
put down his pen, and turned to look up into her face. "Perhaps you will
not like my sermons;" there was a little wistfulness in his dark eyes as
he spoke.

"Oh, yes, I shall," she said, with smiling certainty. "Sermons are pretty
much alike, don't you think? I know some of uncle Archie's almost by
heart. Really, there is only one thing to say, and you have to keep
saying it over and over."

"We cannot say it too often," John answered. "The choice between eternal
life and eternal death should sound in the ears of unconverted men every
day of their lives."

Helen shook her head. "I didn't mean that, John. I was thinking of the
beauty of holiness." And then she added, with a smile, "I hope you don't
preach any awful doctrines?"

"Sometimes the truth is terrible, dear," he said gently.

But when she had left him to write his sermon, he sat a long while
thinking. Surely she was not ready yet to hear such words as he had meant
to speak. He would put this sermon away for some future Sunday, when the
truth would be less of a shock to her. "She must come to the knowledge of
God slowly," he thought. "It must not burst upon her; it might only drive
her further from the light to hear of justice as well as mercy. She is
not able to bear it yet."

So he took some fresh paper, and wrote, instead of his lurid text from
Hebrews, "Ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

But when Helen went out of the study, she thought very little of sermons
or doctrines. John filled her mind, and she had no room for wondering
about his beliefs; he could believe anything he chose; he was hers,--that
was enough.

She went into her small kitchen, the smile still lingering upon her lips,
and through its open doorway saw her little maid, Alfaretta, out in the
sunny garden at the back of the house. She had an armful of fresh white
tea-towels, which had been put out to dry on the row of gooseberry bushes
at the end of the garden, and was coming up the path, singing cheerily,
with a