nity?"--She could not say,--"burned."

But Mr. Hewland answered in one word,--"Gone."

That word answered so many questions on which life and love hung,
that fearful night!

Mr. Hewland was wet and cold. He went up to his room and changed
his clothing. When the daylight, pale and scared, was creeping in,
he came down again.

"Would you not like to go down and see?" he said to Bel.

"Can I?"

"Yes. There is no danger. The streets are comparatively clear. I
will go with you."

Bel asked Miss Smalley.

"Will you come? Auntie will be sure to sleep, I think."

Miss Smalley had scarcely heart either to go or stay. Of the two, it
was easier to go. To do--to see--something.

Mr. Sparrow came in. He met them at the door, and turned directly
back with them.

He, too, was a free-seat worshipper at Old Trinity. He and the
music-mistress--they were both of English birth, hence of the same
national faith--had been used to go from the same dwelling,
separately, to the same house of worship, and sit in opposite
galleries. But their hearts had gone up together in the holy old
words that their lips breathed in the murmur of the congregation.
These links between them, of country and religion, which they had
never spoken of, were the real links.

As they went forth this Sunday morning, in company for the first
time, toward the church in which they should never kneel again, they
felt another,--the link that Eve and Adam felt when the sword of
flame swept Paradise.

Plain old souls!--Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and
"todillating"--as Bel expressed the little spinster's gait--along
together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before
the sight of God.

Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other. They had never walked
together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the
unusualness. The time broke down distinctions; nothing looked
strange, when everything was so.

They went along by the Common fence. In the street, a continuous
line of wagons passed them, moving southward. Gentlemen sat on
cart-fronts beside the teamsters, accompanying their fragments of
property to places of bestowal. Inside the inclosure, in the malls,
along under the trees, upon the grass, away back to the pond, were
heaps of merchandise. Boxes, bales, hastily collected and unpacked
goods of all kinds, from carpets to cotton-spools, were thrown in
piles, which men and boys were guarding, the police passing to and
fro among th