would have
shuddered could they have foreseen the manner of delivery; but it was
vastly impressive to the audience, who concluded that Mirandy Sawyer
must be making her way uncommonly fast to mansions in the skies, else
what meant this abrupt change of heart?

Mr. Burch bowed courteously, accepted the invitation "in the same
spirit in which it was offered," and asked Brother Milliken to lead in
prayer.

If the Eternal Ear could ever tire it would have ceased long ere this
to listen to Deacon Milliken, who had wafted to the throne of grace the
same prayer, with very slight variations, for forty years. Mrs. Perkins
followed; she had several petitions at her command, good sincere ones
too, but a little cut and dried, made of scripture texts laboriously
woven together. Rebecca wondered why she always ended, at the most
peaceful seasons, with the form, "Do Thou be with us, God of Battles,
while we strive onward like Christian soldiers marching as to war;" but
everything sounded real to her to-day, she was in a devout mood, and
many things Mr. Burch had said had moved her strangely. As she lifted
her head the minister looked directly at her and said, "Will our young
sister close the service by leading us in prayer?"

Every drop of blood in Rebecca's body seemed to stand still, and her
heart almost stopped beating. Mrs. Cobb's excited breathing could be
heard distinctly in the silence. There was nothing extraordinary in Mr.
Burch's request. In his journeyings among country congregations he was
constantly in the habit of meeting young members who had "experienced
religion" and joined the church when nine or ten years old. Rebecca was
now thirteen; she had played the melodeon, led the singing, delivered
her aunts' invitation with an air of great worldly wisdom, and he,
concluding that she must be a youthful pillar of the church, called
upon her with the utmost simplicity.

Rebecca's plight was pathetic. How could she refuse; how could she
explain she was not a "member;" how could she pray before all those
elderly women! John Rogers at the stake hardly suffered more than this
poor child for the moment as she rose to her feet, forgetting that
ladies prayed sitting, while deacons stood in prayer. Her mind was a
maze of pictures that the Rev. Mr. Burch had flung on the screen. She
knew the conventional phraseology, of course; what New England child,
accustomed to Wednesday evening meetings, does not? But her own secret
prayers