struggle with the curdling blood that gorged
every vein and air-cell with the hurried rush of death,--did I go out of
this life red with the sin of murder? Did I commit suicide?

Who knows?

* * * * *

THE MINISTER'S WOOING.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE DOCTOR.

It is seldom that man and woman come together in intimate association,
unless influences are at work more subtile and mysterious than the
subjects of them dream. Even in cases where the strongest ruling force
of the two sexes seems out of the question, there is still something
peculiar and insidious in their relationship. A fatherly old gentleman,
who undertakes the care of a sprightly young girl, finds, to his
astonishment, that little Miss spins all sorts of cobwebs round him.
Grave professors and teachers cannot give lessons to their female pupils
just as they give them to the coarser sex, and more than once has the
fable of "Cadenus and Vanessa" been acted over by the most unlikely
performers.

The Doctor was a philosopher, a metaphysician, a philanthropist, and in
the highest and most earnest sense a minister of good on earth. The
New England clergy had no sentimental affectation of sanctity that
segregated them from wholesome human relations; and consequently our
good Doctor had always resolved, in a grave and thoughtful spirit, at a
suitable time in his worldly affairs, to choose unto himself a helpmeet.
Love, as treated of in romances, he held to be a foolish and profane
matter, unworthy the attention of a serious and reasonable creature. All
the language of poetry on this subject was to him an unknown tongue. He
contemplated the entrance on married life somewhat in this wise:--That
at a time and place suiting, he should look out unto himself a woman of
a pleasant countenance and of good repute, a zealous, earnest Christian,
and well skilled in the items of household management, whom accosting as
a stranger and pilgrim to a better life, he should loyally and lovingly
entreat, as Isaac did Rebekah, to come under the shadow of his tent and
be a helpmeet unto him in what yet remained of this mortal journey. But
straitened circumstances, and the unsettled times of the Revolution, in
which he had taken an earnest and zealous part, had delayed to a late
bachelorhood the fulfilment of this resolution.

When once received under the shadow of Mrs. Scudder's roof, and within
the provident sphere of her unfailing