side o' the pulpit and on the organ. Some o' the
young folks had hung branches o' pine and cedar around the walls and
over the winders, and you could hear the hickory wood cracklin' and
poppin' in the stove at the back o' the church, and there was all the
Goshen folks sittin' in their pews: Sam and Milly, and Hannah and
Miles, and Maria and Silas, and Uncle Jim and Sally Ann, and Parson
Page down in front o' the pulpit leanin' back in his chair with his
chin restin' on his hand and his other hand proppin' up his elbow. The
young folks of course was in the back part o' the church, where they
could talk and laugh without bein' seen by their parents; and little
Sam Amos and two or three more o' the Goshen boys, along with Martin
Luther Wilson, was sittin' down on the pulpit steps, where they could
see everything that was to be seen and hear everything that was to be
heard."

Aunt Jane began to laugh gently, and the knitting dropped from her
hands. Another moment and she would have slipped away to the
watch-meeting of forty years ago, leaving me alone in the quiet
shadow-haunted room; but I called her back.

"How did Martin Luther happen to be at Goshen?" I asked. It was an
idle question, but it served my purpose.

"Why, don't you ricollect?" said Aunt Jane brightly. "Brother Wilson
preached in town, but after Squire Schuyler give him that house for a
weddin' fee he lived there. That was betwixt and between the town and
the country. Martin Luther loved the country jest like his father did,
and there never was a watch-meetin' or a May-meetin' that Martin
Luther wasn't on hand; but I'm bound to say that most o' the time it
wasn't for any good.

"Well, by nine o'clock everything was ready for the watch-meetin' to
begin, and Parson Page set the clock on the floor back o' the
pulpit--it sounds a heap solemner at a watch-meetin', child, to hear
the clock strike when you can't see it--and then he give out the first
hymn:

"'A few more years shall roll,
A few more seasons come,
And we shall be with those that rest,
Asleep within the tomb.

"'A few more suns shall set
O'er these dark hills of time,
And we shall be where suns are not,
A far serener clime.'"

To me there seemed nothing joy-inspiring in the old hymn, but Aunt
Jane smiled radiantly as she chanted the melancholy words that held in
their cadences the voices of the choir and the music of the organ in
the old country chu