ad resting on the
strong arm of him who owned her, and drew her in gentle pride to
his beating heart--the two together looking out in all the joy of
purity and all the unconscious ease of nature on the sun-flooded
moors.

'It's grand, lass, isn't it?'

'Yi, Matt, it is forsure.'

'And them hills--they're awlus slumberin', am't they? Doesto know,
I sometimes wish I could be as quiet as they are. They fret noan;
weet or fine, it's all th' same to them.'

'They're a bit o'er quiet for me, lad. I'd rather hev a tree
misel. It tosses, thaa knows, and tews i' th' tempest, and laughs
i' th' sunleet, and fades i' autumn. It's some like a human bein'
is a tree.'

'An' aw sometimes think there's summat very like th' Almeety i'
th' hills.'

'Doesto, Matt? Ey, aw shouldn't like to think He were so far off
as they are, nor as cowd (cold) noather.'

'Nay, lass, they're noan so far off. Didn't owd David say, "As th'
mountens are raand abaat Jerusalem, so th' Lord is raand abaat His
people"?'

'He did, forsure. But didn't he say that a good man were like a
tree planted by th' brookside?'

'Yi; and he said summat else abaat a good woman, didn't he,
Miriam?'

'What were that, lad?'

'Why, didn't th' owd songster say, "Thy wife shall be as a
fruitful vine by th' sides o' thine house, and thi childer like
olive plants raand abaat thy table"?'

Miriam blushed, and held up her lips to be kissed; nor did Matt
faintly warm them with his caresses.

* * * * *

That afternoon, as Matt and Miriam walked down the field-path
towards the Rehoboth shrine, they wondered how it was that so much
praise was rendered to the Almighty outside the temple made with
hands. Both of them had been taught to locate God in a house.
Rehoboth chapel was His dwelling-place--not the earth with the
fulness thereof, and the heavens with their declaration of glory.
Yet, somehow or other, they felt to-day that moor and meadow were
sacred--that their feet trod paths as holy as the worn stone aisle
of the conventicle below. The airs of spring swept round them,
carrying notes from near and far--whisperings from the foliage of
trees, and cadences from moors through whose herbage the wind
lisped, and from doughs down which it moaned. Early flowers vied
with the early greenery carpeting the fields, and the grass was
long enough to wave in shadow and intermingle its countless
glistening blades. Then their hearts went out toward