eps, took a flatiron from an oil-stove, and opening the ancient books,
pressed out the well-thumbed leaves one by one with infinite care. After
replacing the volumes in their accustomed place, she first extinguished
the flame of her stove, which she tucked out of sight, and then blew out
the lamp and the candle. The church was still light enough for objects
to be seen in a shadowy way, like the objects in a dream, and Justin did
not realize that he was a man in the flesh, looking at a woman; spying,
it might be, upon her privacy. He was one part of a dream and she
another, and he stood as if waiting, and fearing, to be awakened.

Nancy, having done all, came out of the pew, and standing in the aisle,
looked back at the scene of her labors with pride and content. And as
she looked, some desire to stay a little longer in the dear old place
must have come over her, or some dread of going back to her lonely
cottage, for she sat down in Justin's corner of the pew with folded
hands, her eyes fixed dreamily on the pulpit and her ears hearing:--

Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
which we had from the beginning.

Justin's grasp on the latch tightened as he prepared to close the door
and leave the place, but his instinct did not warn him quickly enough,
after all, for, obeying some uncontrollable impulse, Nancy suddenly fell
on her knees in the pew and buried her face in the cushions. The dream
broke, and in an instant Justin was a man--worse than that, he was
an eavesdropper, ashamed of his unsuspected presence. He felt himself
standing, with covered head and feet shod, in the holy temple of a
woman's heart.

But his involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it.
The glimpse and the revelation wrought their miracles silently and
irresistibly, not by the slow processes of growth which Nature demands
for her enterprises, but with the sudden swiftness of the spirit. In
an instant changes had taken place in Justin's soul which his so-called
"experiencing religion" twenty-five years back had been powerless to
effect. He had indeed been baptized then, but the recording angel could
have borne witness that this second baptism fructified the first, and
became the real herald of the new birth and the new creature.

VII. Justin Peabody silently closed the inner door, and stood in the
entry with his head bent and his heart in a whirl until he should hear
Nancy rise to her feet. He mu