th hearty voice, sounding:

"Careful now! Don't hurry!"

Mattie took one arm, and so he entered the church. Everything repainted!
Everything warm and bright and cozy!

The significance of it came to him like a wave of light, and he took his
seat in the pulpit chair and stared at them all with a look on his pale
face which moved them more than words. He was like a man transfigured by
an inward glow. His eyes for an instant flamed with this marvellous
fire, then darkened, softened with tears, and his voice came back in a
sob of joy, and he could only say:

"Friends--brethren!"

Marsden, after much coughing, said:

"We all united on this. We wanted to have you come to the church
and--Well, we couldn't bear to have you see it again the way it was."

He understood it now. It was the sign of a united community. It set the
seal of Christ's victory over evil passions, and the young preacher's
head bowed in prayer, and they all knelt, while his weak voice returned
thanks to the Lord for his gifts.

Then they all rose and shook off the oppressive solemnity, and he had
time to look around at all the changes. At last he turned to Mattie and
reached out his hand--he had the boldness of a man in the shadow of some
mighty event which makes false modesty and conventions shadowy things of
little importance. His sharpened interior sense read her clear soul, and
he knew she was his, therefore he reached her his hand, and she came to
him with a flush on her face, which died out as she stood proudly by his
side, while he said:

"And Martha shall help me."

Therefore, this good thing happened--that in the midst of his fervor and
his consecration to God's work, the love of woman found a place.

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AN AFTERWORD: OF WINDS, SNOWS, AND THE STARS

O witchery of the winter night
(With broad moon shouldering to the west)

In the city streets the west wind sweeps
Before my feet in rustling flight;
The midnight snows in untracked heaps
Lie cold and desolate and white.
I stand and wait with upturned eyes,
Awed with the splendor of the skies
And star-trained progress of the moon.

The city walls dissolve like smoke
Beneath the magic of the moon,
And age falls from me like a cloak;
I hear sweet girlish voices ring
Clear as some softly stricken string--
(The moon is sailing to the west.)
The sleigh-bells clash in homeward flight;