as! even in that moment he
suddenly drew her toward him, and kissed her as only a lover could!

The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with the
dusty decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned to
Tasajara. He came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who, having for
the twelfth time added to the population of the settlement, was not
"doing as well" as everybody--except, possibly, Dr. Duchesne--expected.
After he had made this hollow-eyed, over-burdened, undernourished woman
as comfortable as he could in her rude, neglected surroundings, to
change the dreary chronicle of suffering, he turned to the husband,
and said, "And what has become of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in
your--vocation?" A long groan came from the deacon.

"Hallo! I hope he has not had a relapse," said the doctor, earnestly. "I
thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I beg your pardon--I
mean," he added, hurriedly, "he wrote to me only a few weeks ago that he
was picking up his strength again and doing well!"

"In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt," returned the Deacon,
scornfully, "and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who value
the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost
to eternal life forever. Not," he continued in sanctimonious
vindictiveness, "but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's
steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery and song."

"But what has he done?" persisted Dr. Duchesne.

"Done! He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!"

"Dear me!" said the doctor, "so soon? Is it anybody you knew here?--not
anybody's wife? Eh?"

"He has entered the Church of Rome," said the Deacon, indignantly, "he
has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the idolaters; he
is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!"

"But are you SURE?" said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern than
before.

"Sure," returned the Deacon angrily, "didn't Brother Bulkley, on account
of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking teamster, make
a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to inquire and spy out its
wickedness? Didn't he find Stephen Masterton steeped in the iniquity of
practicing on an organ--he that scorned even a violin or harmonium in
the tents of the Lord--in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female
Papist for a teacher? Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a
Jesuit priest, visiting the schools of the Mission w