ilights, for walking down Lonely Lake Road, that jolted over logs and
across gullies and stopped abruptly at the water's edge. She had to pass
Lewis's house on the way, and if he saw her he would call out to her,
cheerfully,

"Hullo, 'Thalia! how are you, dear?"

And she, with prim intensity, would reply, "Good-evening, BROTHER
Lewis."

If one of the sisters was with her, they would stop and speak to him;
otherwise she passed him by in such an eager consciousness of her part
that he smiled--and then sighed. When she had a companion, Lewis and the
other Shakeress would gossip about the weather or the haying, and Lewis
would have the chance to say: "You're not overworking, 'Thalia? You're
not tired?" While Athalia, in her net cap and her gray shoulder cape
buttoned close up to her chin, would dismiss the anxious affection
with a peremptory "Of course not! I have bread to eat you know not of,
Brother Lewis." Then she would add, didactically, some word of dogma or
admonition.

But she had not much time to give to Brother Lewis's salvation--she was
so busy in adjusting herself to her new life. Its picturesque details
fascinated her--the cap, the brevity of speech, the small mannerisms,
the occasional and very reserved mysticism, absorbed her so that she
thought very little of her husband. She saw him occasionally on those
walks down to the lake, or when, after a day in the fields with the
three old Shaker men, Brother Nathan brought him home to supper.

"We Shakers are given to hospitality," he said; "we're always looking
for the angel we are going to entertain unawares. Come along home with
us, Lewis." And Lewis would plod up the hill and take his turn at the
tin washbasin, and then file down the men's side of the stairs to the
dining-room, where he and the three old brothers sat at one table, and
Athalia and the eight sisters sat at the other table. After supper he
had the chance to see Athalia and to make sure that she was not looking
tired. "You didn't take cold yesterday, 'Thalia? I saw you were out in
the rain," he would say. And she, always a little embarrassed at such
personal interest, would reply, primly, "I am not at all tired, Brother
Lewis." Nathan used to walk home with his guest, and sometimes they
talked of work that must be done, and sometimes touched on more
unpractical things--those spiritual manifestations which at rare
intervals centred in Brother William and were the hope of the whole
community. F