where would he be? she asked
in exultation. Human meanness is never so pitiful as when it tries to
seize on God's judgments as weapons with which to gratify its own
spites. I trust this remark will not be considered as applying only to
Mrs. Anderson.

But Mrs. Anderson fired off all the heavenly small-shot she could find
in the teeth and eyes of Andrew, and then, to prevent a rejoinder, she
told him it was time for her to go to secret prayer, and she only
stopped upon the threshold to send back one Parthian arrow in the shape
of a warning to "watch and be ready."

I wonder if a certain class of religious people have ever thought how
much their exclusiveness and Pharisaism have to do with the unhappy
fruitlessness of all their appeals! Had Mrs. Anderson been as blameless
as an angel, such exhortations would have driven a weaker than Andrew to
hate the name of religion.

But I must not moralize, for Mr. Humphreys has already divulged his plan
of disposing of the property. He has a friend, one Thomas A. Parkins,
who has money, and who will buy the farm at two hundred dollars. He
could procure the money in advance any day by going to the village of
Bethany, the county-seat, and drawing on Mr. Parkins, and cashing the
draft. It was a matter of indifference to him, he said, only that he
would like to oblige so good a friend.

This arrangement, by which the Anderson farm was to be sold for a song
to some distant stranger, pleased Mrs. Abigail. She could not bear that
one of her unbelieving neighbors should even for a fortnight rejoice in
a supposed good bargain at her expense. To sell to Mr. Humphreys's
friend in Louisville was just the thing. When pressed by some of her
neighbors who had not received the Adventist gospel, to tell on what
principle she could justify her sale of the farm at all, she answered
that if the farm would not be of any account after the end of the world,
neither would the money.

Mr. Humphreys went down to the town of Bethany and came back, affecting
to have cashed a draft on his friend for two hundred dollars. The deeds
were drawn, and a justice of the peace was to come the next morning and
take the acknowledgment of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.

This was what Jonas learned as he sat in the kitchen talking to Cynthy
Ann. He had come to bring some message from the convalescent August, and
had been detained by the attraction of adhesion.

"I told you it was fox-and-geese. Didn't I? And so Thomas A. P