had no mother, for then she would be wholly ours, and we could
keep her always. Listen, she is singing Schubert's '_Ave Maria_'."

After a moment's silence Mrs. Lindsay rose, and, passing her arm
around her son's neck, leaned her cheek against his head, as he sat
near his uncle, and looking through the open door at the slowly
approaching figure.

"Bishop, if I were an artist, I would paint her as a priestess at
Ephesus, chanting a hymn to Diana; and instead of Hero and the
pigeons, place brown deer and spotted fawns on mossy banks in the
background."

"Pooh! What a hopeless pagan you are, Elise? If I were a sculptor I
would chisel a statue of purity, and give it her countenance."

And Mr. Lindsay smiled in his mother's face, and said only for her
ear:

"Do not her eyes entitle her to be called Glaukopis?"

CHAPTER IX.

The long sultry August day was drawing to a close, and those who had
found the intense heat almost unendurable watched with delight the
slow hands of the clock, whose lagging fingers finally pointed to
five. The sky seemed brass, the atmosphere a blast from Tophet; and
the sun, still standing at some distance above the horizon, glared
mercilessly down over the panting parched: earth, as if a recent and
unusually copious shower of "meteoric cosmical matter" had fallen
into the solar furnace, and prompted it by increased incandescence to
hotly deny the truth of Helmholtz's assertion: "The inexorable laws
of mechanics show that the store of heat in the sun must be finally
exhausted." Certainly to those who had fanned themselves through the
tedious torture long remembered as the "hot Sunday," the
science-predicted period of returning glaciers and polar snows where
palms and lemons now hold sway, seemed even more distant than the
epoch suggested by the speculative. In proportion to the elevation of
the mercurial vein which mounted to and poisoned itself at 100
degrees, the religious, the devotional, pulse sank lower, almost to
zero; consequently, although circumstances of unusual interest
attracted the congregation to the church, where Mr. Lindsay intended
to preach his farewell sermon, only a limited number had braved the
heat to shake hands with the young minister, who ere another sunrise
would have started on his long journey to the pagan East.

At the parsonage it had been a sad day, sad despite the grave
serenity of Mr. Hargrove, the quiet fortitude of Mr. Lindsay, and the
desperate at