my self," Mr. Simlins said
considerately.

"You may be sure I will. And will you let me pray with you now, before
I go?"

The farmer hesitated--or was silent--one instant, then with a sort of
subdued abruptness said,

"I'm ready!"--

They knelt there in the sunlight; but when the prayer was over Mr.
Simlins felt half puzzled to know for whose sake it had been proposed.
For with the telling of his doubts and hindrances and wants--things
which he had told to no one, there mingled so much of the speaker's own
interest,--which could not be content to leave him but in Christ's
hands.

There was not a word spoken after that for a minute,--Mr. Linden stood
by the low mantelpiece resting his face on his hand. The farmer, busy
with the feelings which the prayer had raised, sat with downcast eyes.
And Faith was motionless with a deep and manifold sense of happiness,
the labyrinth of which herself could not soon have threaded out. The
silence and stillness of his two companions drew the farmer's eyes up;
he read first, with an eager eye that nobody saw, the sweet gravity on
one half hidden face, and the deep pure joy written in all the lines of
the other; and secret and strong, though half unknown to himself, the
whole tide of his heart turned that way. If not before, then at least,
something like Ruth's resolution came up within him;--"thy people shall
be my people, and thy God my God!" Mr. Linden was the first one that
moved.

"Are you ready, dear child?"

The farmer's eyes were on her too, even while he wrung Mr. Linden's
hand. But he only said before he let it go,--"Give a glass of wine to
her when she gets home."

Out in the sweet afternoon air, and driving through the gate which
opened on the highway, with Jem Waters on hand to shut it, Mr. Linden
brought Faith's face round towards him and scanned it earnestly.

"My child, how tired you are! I wish I knew whether it would do you
most good to go straight home, or to breathe this air a little longer."

"I hope you won't conclude to take me home," said Faith. "I have been
looking for this all day."

"Do you think you deserve to have it?" said Mr. Linden, turning Jerry's
head however the way that was _not_ straight home. "Why didn't you
sleep, and wait for me to bring you down here?"

"One reason was, Endy, that I half guessed Mr. Simlins wanted to talk
to me and that it might be better for him to see one than two.

"I could have left you there for a while."