olently down again, the boy's head striking a corner of the bench
as he fell.

Then he took the girl tenderly up and faced about upon the father,
actually foaming with wrath.

'This comes of psalm singing,' he cried. 'Clear the way there!' and he
bore the still unconscious maiden toward his own house.

Then a sudden and strange revulsion came over Deacon Fletcher. For the
first time, perhaps, in twenty-one years, the father's heart triumphed
over the Deacon's prejudices. As he saw his son--his only son--lying
pale and bleeding on the ground, all recollection of his offense, all
thought of sinfulness or godliness in connection with his conduct,
vanished, and he only considered whether this pride of his, this strong
and beautiful son, were to die there, or to live and bless him. He
stooped, sobbing, over the boy, reconciled, at last, to humanity, and
conscious of a strong human love.

Not more tenderly was poor Hannah Lee borne to the house of Peter
Hopkins than the father carried the son he had only just received into
his own dwelling. There were no thoughts of husks now, but only a
sorrowful joy that one so long dead to him was at length alive, that a
new heart, full of human instincts, had found birth within his bosom.
But mingled with this joy was the fear that he had only, at length,
possessed his son to lose him.

While Jason Fletcher lay tossing, week after week, through the fever
that followed the scene of violence in the arbor, poor Hannah went sadly
but patiently about the light duties that farmer Hopkins and his wife
allowed her to perform.

Thoroughly convinced, through his wife's communications with Hannah, of
the innocence of the pair, Peter Hopkins had gone to Deacon Fletcher and
remonstrated with him on his outrageous conduct.

'Your son is a fine lad,' he said, 'and Hannah is fit to be queen
anywhere; and if you don't give her a fitting out when he's well enough
to marry her, hang me if _I_ won't! I owe the boy something for the ill
trick I played him in my hot-headedness, and he shall have it, too! Say,
now, that they shall be man and wife!'

Deacon Fletcher astonished the hot-hearted man beyond measure by quietly
telling him that, God willing, his dear son should marry Hannah as soon
as the visitation that now kept him on a bed of raving illness was taken
away. He added meekly that he hoped God would forgive him if he had
abused the trust placed in him, and, misled by a vanity of holiness, had