pets in 'em, though. I don' know what them other things
is."

"Cymbals?" said Lois. "They are round, thin plates of metal, Mr. Sears,
with handles on one side to hold them by; and the player clashes them
together, at certain parts of the music--as you would slap the palms of
your hands."

"Doos, hey? I want to know! And what doos they sound like?"

"I can't tell," said Lois. "They sound shrill, and sweet, and gay."

"But that's cur'ous sort o' church music!" said the farmer.

"Now, Miss Lothrop,--you must let us hear the figurative cymbals," Mr.
Lenox reminded her.

"Do!" said Mrs. Barclay.

"There cannot be much of it," opined Mrs. Lenox.

"On the contrary," said Lois; "there is so much of it that I am at a
loss where to begin.

'I love yon pale blue sky; it is the floor
Of that glad home where I shall shortly be;
A home from which I shall go out no more,
From toil and grief and vanity set free.

'I gaze upon yon everlasting arch,
Up which the bright stars wander as they shine;
And, as I mark them in their nightly march,
I think how soon that journey shall be mine!

'Yon silver drift of silent cloud, far up
In the still heaven--through you my pathway lies:
Yon rugged mountain peak--how soon your top
Shall I behold beneath me, as I rise!

'Not many more of life's slow-pacing hours,
Shaded with sorrow's melancholy hue;
Oh what a glad ascending shall be ours,
Oh what a pathway up yon starry blue!

'A journey like Elijah's, swift and bright,
Caught gently upward to an early crown,
In heaven's own chariot of all-blazing light,
With death untasted and the grave unknown.'"

"That's not like any hymn I ever heard," remarked Mrs. Lenox, after a
pause had followed the last words.

"That is a hymn of Dr. Bonar's," said Lois. "I took it merely because
it came first into my head. Long ago somebody else wrote something very
like it--

'Ye stars are but the shining dust
Of my divine abode;
The pavement of those heavenly courts
Where I shall see my God.

'The Father of unnumbered lights
Shall there his beams display;
_And not one moment's darkness mix
With that unvaried day_.'

Do you hear the cymbals, Mrs. Lenox?"

There came here a long breath, it sounded like a breath of satisfaction
or rest; it was breathed by Mrs. Armadale. In the stillness of their
progress, the slowly revolving wheels making no no