of only one subject; they asked each other one question--"Will
any of them be at meeting?" The Unitarian church was nearly deserted
that Sunday, for Parson Fair's former parishioners returned to their
old gathering place, under stronger pressure, for the time, than
religious tenets.

It was a burning day for May--as hot as midsummer. The flowers were
blossoming visibly under the eyes of the people, but they did not
notice. They flocked into the meeting-house and looked about them,
all with the same expression in their eyes.

When Burr Gordon and his mother entered, a thrill seemed to pass
through the whole congregation. Nobody had thought they would come.
Mrs. Gordon, gliding with even pace, softly murmurous in her Sunday
silk, followed her son, who walked with brave front, although he was
undeniably pale, up the aisle to their pew. He stood about to let his
mother enter, meeting the eyes of the people as he did so; then sat
down himself, and a long glance and a long nudge of shoulders passed
over the meeting-house. Burr and his mother both knew it, but she sat
in undisturbed serenity of pallor, and he stirred not a muscle,
though a red spot blazed out on each cheek.

Madelon Hautville sat in the singing seats, but he never looked at
her nor she at him. There were curious eyes upon her also, for people
wondered if Burr would turn to her now Dorothy Fair had jilted him;
but she did not know it. She heeded nobody but Burr, though she did
not look at him, and when she stood up in the midst of her brothers
and sang, she sang neither to the Lord nor to the people, but to this
one weak and humiliated man whom she loved. The people thought that
she had never sung so before, recognizing, though ignorantly, that
she struck that great chord of the heart whose capability of sound
was in them also. For the time she stood before and led all the
actors in that small drama of human life which was on the village
stage, and in which she took involuntary part; and the audience saw
and heard nobody but her.

Burr, stiff as a soldier, at the end of his pew, felt his heart leap
to hope and resolve through the sound of this woman's voice in the
old orthodox hymns, and laid hold unknowingly, by means of it, of the
love and force which are at the roots of things for the strengthening
of the world. With weak and false starts and tardy retrogrades he had
woven around his feet a labyrinth of crossing paths of life, but now,
of a sudden, he