to
his idols.'"

"How have you decided to deal with him, Daniel?"

"It is his first offense since he cast in his lot with us; we must
rebuke, chastise, and forgive."

"Yee, yee, I agree to that; but how if he makes us the laughing-stock of
the community and drags our sacred banner in the dust? We can't afford
to have one of our order picked up in the streets by the world's
people."

"Have the world's people found an infallible way to keep those of
_their_ order out of the gutters?" asked Elder Gray. "Ephraim seems
repentant; if he is willing to try again, we must be willing to do as
much."

"Yee, Daniel, you are right. Another matter that causes me anxiety is
Susanna. I never yearned for a soul as I yearn for hers! She has had the
advantage of more education and more reading than most of us have ever
enjoyed; she's gifted in teaching and she wins the children. She's
discreet and spiritually minded; her life in the world, even with the
influence of her dissipated husband, hasn't really stained, only humbled
her; she would make such a Shaker, if she was once 'convinced,' as we
haven't gathered in for years and years; but I fear she's slipping,
slipping away, Daniel!"

"What makes you feel so now, particularly?"

"She's diff'rent as time goes on. She's had more letters from that place
where her boy is; she cries nights, and though she doesn't relax a mite
with her work, she drags about sometimes like a bird with one wing."

Elder Daniel took off his broad-brimmed hat to cool his forehead and
hair, lifting his eyes to the first pale stars that were trembling in
the sky, hesitating in silver and then quietly deepening into gold.

Brother Ansel was a Believer because he had no particular love for the
world and no great susceptibility to its temptations; but what had drawn
Daniel Gray from the open sea into this quiet little backwater of a
Shaker Settlement?

After an adventurous early life, in which, as if youth-intoxicated, he
had plunged from danger to danger, experience to experience, he suddenly
found himself in a society of which he had never so much as heard, a
company of celibate brothers and sisters holding all goods and
possessions in common, and trying to live the "angelic life" on earth.
Illness detained him for a month against his will, but at the end of
that time he had joined the Community; and although it had been
twenty-five years since his gathering in, he was still steadfast in the
faith.

H