ities, or between the imperceptible foldings of its hills,--only
carrying way-passengers for the centuries,--went plunging on its
track, around and around, and swept them all, a score of times,
through its summer and its winter solstices.

IV.

AFTERWARDS IS A LONG TIME.

Old Mr. Marmaduke Wharne had come down from Outledge, in the
mountains, on his way home to New York. He had stopped in Boston to
attend to some affairs of his own,--if one can call them so, since
Marmaduke Wharne never had any "own" affairs that did not chiefly
concern, to their advantage, somebody else,--in which his friend Mr.
Titus Oldways was interested, not personally, but Wharne fashion.
Now, reader, you know something about Mr. Titus Oldways, which up to
this moment, only God, and Marmaduke Wharne, and Rachel Froke, who
kept Mr. Oldways' house, and wore a Friend's drab dress and white
cap, and said "Titus," and "Marmaduke" to the two old gentlemen, and
"thee" and "thou" to everybody,--have ever known. In a general way
and relation, I mean; separate persons knew particular things; but
each separate person thought the particular thing he knew to be a
whimsical exception.

Mr. Oldways did not belong to any church: but he had an English
Prayer-book under his Bible on his study table, and Baxter and
Fenelon and a Kempis and "Wesley's Hymns," and Swedenborg's "Heaven
and Hell" and "Arcana Celestia," and Lowell's "Sir Launfal," and
Dickens's "Christmas Carol," all on the same set of shelves,--that
held, he told Marmaduke, his religion; or as much of it as he could
get together. And he had this woman, who was a Friend, and who
walked by the Inner Light, and in outer charity, if ever a woman
did, to keep his house. "For," said he, "the blessed truth is, that
the Word of God is in the world. Alive in it. When you know that,
and wherever you can get hold of his souls, then and there you've
got your religion,--a piece at a time. To prove and sort your
pieces, and to straighten the tangle you might otherwise get into,
there's _this_," and he laid his hand down on the Four Gospels,
bound in white morocco, with a silver cross upon the cover,--a
volume that no earthly creature, again, knew of, save Titus and
Marmaduke and Rachel Froke, who laid it into a drawer when she swept
and dusted, and placed it between the crimson folds of its quilted
silken wrapper when she had finished, burnishing the silver cross
gently with a scrap of chamois leather cu