ed and astonished by the accounts
which reach us of your continued indifference to religious duties, and
your reckless extravagance. Let me implore you to be frugal and
virtuous. If you learn to save now, the habit will be of very great
service when you come to take your stand on the arena of life. I am
aware that the temptations of a great city are almost innumerable; but I
need hardly inform you that you will greatly consult your own interests
and mitigate our harassment of feeling by practising a strict economy
with your funds, and by attending regularly at church. You will excuse
all errors in my writing, since I indite this by the sick-bed of Adele."

Adele, then, is sick; and upon that point alone in the Aunt's letter the
thought of Reuben fastens. Adele is sick! He knows where she must be
lying,--in that little room at the parsonage looking out upon the
orchard; there are white hangings to the bed; careful steps go up and
down the stairway. There had never been much illness in the parson's
home, indeed, but certain early awful days Reuben just remembers; there
were white bed-curtains, (he recalls those,) and a face as white lying
beneath; the nurse, too, lifting a warning finger at him with a low
"hist!" the knocker tied over thickly with a great muffler of cloth,
lest the sound might come into the chamber; and then, awful stillness.
On a morning later, all the windows are suddenly thrown open, and
strange men bring a red coffin into the house, which, after a day or
two, goes out borne by different people, who tread uneasily and
awkwardly under the weight, but very softly; and after this a weary,
weary loneliness. All which drifting over the mind of Reuben, and
stirring his sensibilities with a quick rush of vague, boyish griefs,
induces a train of melancholy religious musings, which, if they do no
good, can hardly, it would seem, work harm. Under their influence,
indeed, (which lasted for several days,) he astonished his Aunt Mabel,
on the next Sunday, by declaring his intention to attend church.

It is not the ponderous Dr. Mowry, fortunately or unfortunately, that he
is called upon to listen to; but a younger man, of ripe age, indeed, but
full of fervor and earnestness, and with a piercing magnetic quality of
voice that electrifies from the beginning. And Reuben listens to his
reading of the hymn,

"Return, O wanderer! now return!"

with parted lips, and with an exaltation of feeling that is wholly
str