't done without such a corresponding amount of sympathy in every
good word and work as makes a community take long leaps in Christian
progress. Barton could not help improving morally and mentally while her
sons were doing the country's work of regeneration; and her daughters
forgot their round tires like the moon, their braidings of hair, and
their tinkling ornaments, while they devoted themselves to all that was
highest and noblest both in thought and action. I was proud of Barton
girls, when I saw them on the hills, in their sun-bonnets, gathering the
fruit that was to be for the healing of the nations.

Soon after Colonel Lunt's return, he told me one day, in one of his
cautious whispers, that he and Mrs. Lunt proposed to take me over to
Swampy Hollow, if it would be agreeable to me. Of course it was; but I
was surprised, when we were fairly shut up in the carriage, to find no
Percy with us.

"We left her at home purposely," said Colonel Lunt, in a mysterious way,
which he was fond of, and which always enraged me.

I don't like mysteries or whisperings, and yet, from an unfortunate
"receptivity" in my nature, I am the unwilling depositary of half the
secrets of Barton. I knew now that I was to hear poor Percy's story over
again, with the Colonel's emendations and illustrations. I was in the
carriage, and there was no getting out of it. Mrs. Lunt was used to him,
and, I do believe, would like nothing better than to hear his old
stories over and over, from January to December. But I wasn't of a
patient make.

Colonel Lunt was a gentleman of the old school, which means, according
to my experience, a person who likes to spend a long time getting at a
joke or telling a story. He was a long time telling this, with the aid
of Mrs. Lunt, who put in her corrections now and then, in a gentle,
wifely way all her own, and which helped, instead of hindering him.

"And now, may I ask, my dear Colonel," said I, when he had finished,
"why don't you, or rather why didn't you tell Percy the whole story?"

The Colonel pulled the check-string. "Thomas! drive slowly home now, and
go round by the Devil's Dishful."

This is one of the loveliest drives about Barton. I knew that the
Colonel's mind was easy.

"What need is there, or was there, to cloud Percy's life with such
knowledge? Why, my dear Miss Elliott, if we all knew what other people
know about us, we should be wretched! No! the mysteries of life are as
merciful as the re