or who could tell when the old man's incoherent muttering
would break into the clear speech of one of those Heavenly Visitants
who, in the early days, had descended upon the Shakers, and then, for
some divine and deeply mysterious reason, withdrawn from such pure
channels of communication, and manifested themselves in the world,--but
through base and sordid natures. Poor, vague Brother William, who saw
visions and dreamed dreams, was, in this community, the torch that held
a smouldering spark of the divine fire, and when, in a cataleptic
state, his faint intelligence fluttered back into some dim depths of
personality, and he moaned and muttered, using awful names with babbling
freedom, Brother Nathan and the rest listened with pathetic eagerness
for a _"thus saith the Lord,"_ which should enflame the gray embers of
Shakerism and give light to the whole world! When Nathan talked of these
things he would add, with a sigh, that he hoped some day William would
be inspired to tell them something more of Sister Lydia: "Once William
said, 'Coming, coming.' _I_ think it meant Lydia; but Eldress thought
it was Athalia; it was just before she came." Brother Nathan sighed. "I
wish it had meant Lydy," he said, simply.

If Lewis wished it had meant Lydy, he did not say so. And, indeed,
he said very little upon any subject; Brother Nathan did most of the
talking.

"I fled from the City of Destruction when I was thirty," he told Lewis;
"that was just a year before Sister Lydy left us. Poor Lydy! poor Lydy!"
he said. "Oh, yee, _I_ know the world. I know it, my boy! Do you?"

"Why, after a fashion," Lewis said; and then he asked, suddenly, "Why
did you turn Shaker, Nathan?"

"Well, I got hold of a Shaker book that set me thinking. Sister Lydia
gave it to me. I met Sister Lydia when she had come down to the place I
lived to sell baskets. And she was interested in my salvation, and
gave me the book. Then I got to figuring out the Prophecies, and I saw
Shakerism fulfilled them; and then I began to see that when you don't
own anything yourself you can't worry about your property; well, that
clinched me, I guess. Poor Sister Lydia, she didn't abide in grace
herself," he ended, sadly.

"I should have thought you would have been sorry then, that you--" Lewis
began, but checked himself. "How about"--he said, and stopped to clear
his voice, which broke huskily;--"how about love between man and woman?
Husband and wife?"

"Marriage is honor