ghborhood. These honest and good-hearted creatures indeed
called ceaseless attention to her superiority by their deference and
open-mouthed admiration, and treated it as the most natural thing in the
world that their young minister should be visibly "taken" with her.

Theron Ware, in truth, left this first pastorate of his the following
spring, in a transfiguring halo of romance. His new appointment was
to Tyre--a somewhat distant village of traditional local pride and
substance--and he was to be married only a day or so before entering
upon his pastoral duties there. The good people among whom he had begun
his ministry took kindly credit to themselves that he had met his bride
while she was "visiting round" their countryside. In part by jocose
inquiries addressed to the expectant groom, in part by the confidences
of the postmaster at the corners concerning the bulk and frequency of
the correspondence passing between Theron and the now remote Alice--they
had followed the progress of the courtship through the autumn and
winter with friendly zest. When he returned from the Conference, to say
good-bye and confess the happiness that awaited him, they gave him a
"donation"--quite as if he were a married pastor with a home of his
own, instead of a shy young bachelor, who received his guests and their
contributions in the house where he boarded.

He went away with tears of mingled regret and proud joy in his eyes,
thinking a good deal upon their predictions of a distinguished career
before him, feeling infinitely strengthened and upborne by the hearty
fervor of their God-speed, and taking with him nearly two wagon-loads of
vegetables, apples, canned preserves, assorted furniture, glass dishes,
cheeses, pieced bedquilts, honey, feathers, and kitchen utensils.

Of the three years' term in Tyre, it was pleasantest to dwell upon the
beginning.

The young couple--after being married out at Alice's home in an
adjoining county, under the depressing conditions of a hopelessly
bedridden mother, and a father and brothers whose perceptions were
obviously closed to the advantages of a matrimonial connection with
Methodism--came straight to the house which their new congregation
rented as a parsonage. The impulse of reaction from the rather grim
cheerlessness of their wedding lent fresh gayety to their lighthearted,
whimsical start at housekeeping. They had never laughed so much in all
their lives as they did now in these first months--