as a dream, and I know just what led to it. You told me Polly
Reed's story, and the little quail bird had such a charm for Sue that
I've repeated it to her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to see a
mother quail with a little one beside her. The two were always together,
happily flying or hopping about under the trees; but every now and then
I heard a sad little note, as of a deserted bird somewhere in the wood.
I walked a short distance, and parting the branches, saw on the open
ground another parent bird and a young one by its side darting hither
and thither, as if lost; they seemed to be restlessly searching for
something, and always they uttered the soft, sad note, as if the nest
had disappeared and they had been parted from the little flock. Of
course my brain had changed the very meaning of the Shaker story and
translated it into different terms, but when I woke this morning, I
could think of nothing but my husband and my boy. The two of them seemed
to me to be needing me, searching for me in the dangerous open country,
while I was hidden away in the safe shelter of the wood--I and the other
little quail bird I had taken out of the nest."

"Do you think you could persuade your husband to unite with us?" asked
Abby, wiping her eyes.

The tension of the situation was too tightly drawn for mirth, or Susanna
could have smiled, but she answered soberly, "No; if John could develop
the best in himself, he could be a good husband and father, a good
neighbor and citizen, and an upright business man, but never a Shaker."

"Did n't he insult your wifely honor and disgrace your home?" "Yes, in
the last few weeks before I left him. All his earlier offenses were more
against himself than me, in a sense. I forgave him many a time, but I am
not certain it was the seventy times seven that the Bible bids us. I
am not free from blame myself. I was hard the last year, for I had lost
hope and my pride was trailing in the dust. I left him a bitter letter,
one without any love or hope or faith in it, just because at the moment
I believed I ought, once in my life, to let him know how I felt toward
him."

"How can you go back and live under his roof with that feeling? It's
degradation."

"It has changed. I was morbid then, and so wounded and weak that I could
not fight any longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck has come back,
and my strength. I've learned a good deal here about casting out my own
devils; now I am going home a