each other well from a little distance off, unless thoroughly well
known.

Eleanor felt there was very little danger indeed that anybody should
recognize her identity, in Jane's bonnet and cloak. That was so much
comfort. Another comfort was, that the night was mild. It was not like
November. A happy circumstance for everybody there; but most of all for
the convalescent preacher, whose appearance Eleanor looked for now with
a kind of fearful anxiety. If he should have been hindered from coming,
after all! Her heart beat hard. She stood far back behind most of the
people, near the door by which she had entered. A few benches and
chairs were in the floor, given up to the use of the women and the aged
people. Eleanor marvelled much to see that there were some quite old
people among the company. The barn was getting very full.

"There is a seat yonder," said some one touching her on the elbow.
"Won't you have it?"

Eleanor shook her head.

"You had better," he said kindly; "there's a seat with nobody in it;
there's plenty of room up there. Come this way."

Eleanor was unwilling to go further forward, yet did not like to trust
her voice to speak, nor choose to draw attention to herself in any way.
She was needlessly afraid. However, she yielded to the instance of her
kind neighbour and followed him among the crowd to the spot he had
picked out for her. She would have resisted further, if she had known
where this spot was; for it was far forward in the barn, more than half
way between the door and the candle-lighted table, and in the very
midst of the assembly. There was no help for it now; she could not go
back; and Eleanor was thankful for the support the seat gave her. She
was trembling all over. A vague queer feeling of her being about
something wrong, not merely in the circumstances of her getting there,
but in the occasion itself, haunted her with a sort of superstition.
Could such an assembly be rightfully gathered for such a purpose in
such a place? Could it be right, to speak publicly of sacred things
with such an absence of any public recognition of their sacredness? In
a bare barn? an unconsecrated building, with no beauty or dignity of
observance to give homage to the work and the occasion? Eleanor was a
compound of strange feelings; till she suddenly became conscious of a
stir in the gathered throng, and then heard on the plank floor a step
that she intuitively knew. As the step and the tall figure that it