there was a slight stir and
moving back of chairs to make way for him. He made his way straight to
the coffin. When he reached it and looked down, he started. Perhaps the
sight of the white dress with its simple girlish frills and homelike
prettiness brought back to him some memory of happier days when he had
seen it worn before.

The pure, childlike face had settled into utter calm, and across the
breast and in the hands were long, slender branches of the thickly
flowering wild white clematis. Half an hour before Tom had gone into the
woods and returned with these branches, which he gave to one of the
younger women.

"Put them on her," he said, awkwardly; "there ought to be some flowers
about her."

For a few moments there reigned in the room a dead silence. All eyes were
fixed upon the man who stood at the coffin side. He simply looked down at
the fair dead face. He bestowed no caresses upon it, and shed no tears,
though now and then there was to be seen a muscular contraction of his
throat.

At length he turned towards those surrounding him and raised his hand,
speaking in a low voice.

"Let us pray."

It was the manner of a man trained to rigid religious observances, and
when the words were uttered, something like an electric shock passed
through his hearers. The circuit-riders who stopped once or twice a month
at the log churches on the roadside were seldom within reach on such an
occasion as this, and at such times it was their custom to depend on any
good soul who was considered to have the gift of prayer. Perhaps some of
them had been wondering who would speak the last words now, as there was
no such person on the spot; but the trained manner and gesture, even
while it startled them by its unexpectedness, set their minds at rest.

They settled themselves in the conventional posture, the women retiring
into their bonnets, the men hanging their heads, and the prayer began.

It was a strange appeal--one which only one man among them could grasp
the meaning of, though all regarded its outpouring words with wonder and
admiration. It was an outcry full of passion, dread, and anguish which
was like despair. It was a prayer for mercy--mercy for those who
suffered, for the innocent who might suffer--for loving hearts too tender
to bear the bitter blows of life.

"The loving hearts, O God!" he cried, "the loving hearts who
wait--who----"

More than one woman looked up from under her bonnet; his body began to