a humble old man.
An example to me, William! I am pretty arrogant once in a while. I
have to be, with such men as you in my congregation. No; the real
trouble in that household is that girl of his. It isn't right for a
young thing to live in such an atmosphere."

William agreed sleepily. "Pretty creature. Wish I had a daughter just
like her," he said, and took himself off to make up for a broken
night's rest. But Dr. Lavendar and Danny still sat in front of the
lilac-filled fireplace, and thought of old Henry Roberts listening for
the Voice of God, and of his Philippa. The father and daughter had
lately taken a house on a road that wandered over the hills between
elderberry-bushes and under sycamores, from Old Chester to Perryville.
They were about half-way between the two little towns, and they did not
seem to belong to either. Perryville's small manufacturing bustle
repelled the silent old man whom Dr. Lavendar called an "Irvingite";
and Old Chester's dignity and dull aloofness repelled young Philippa.
The result was that the Robertses and their one woman servant, Hannah,
had been living on the Perryville pike for some months before anybody
in either village was quite aware of their existence. Then one day in
May, Dr. Lavendar's sagging old buggy pulled up at their gate, and the
old minister called over the garden wall to Philippa: "Won't you give
me some of your apple blossoms?"

That was the beginning of Old Chester's knowledge of the Roberts
family. A little later Perryville came to know them, too: the Rev. John
Fenn, pastor of the Perryville Presbyterian Church, got off his big,
raw-boned Kentucky horse at the same little white gate in the brick
wall at which Goliath had stopped, and walked solemnly--not noticing
the apple blossoms--up to the porch. Henry Roberts was sitting there
in the hot twilight, with a curious listening look in his face--a look
of waiting expectation; it was so marked, that the caller involuntarily
glanced over his shoulder to see if any other visitor was approaching;
but there was nothing to be seen in the dusk but the roan nibbling at
the hitching-post. Mr. Fenn said that he had called to inquire whether
Mr. Roberts was a regular attendant at any place of worship. To which
the old man replied gently that every place was a place of worship, and
his own house was the House of God. John Fenn was honestly dismayed at
such sentiments--dismayed, and a little indignant; and yet, somehow