mblems longed for it then.

After the services, were ended, just as Elder Williams was about to
pronounce the benediction, Elder Kinney rose from his seat, and walking
rapidly to the communion table said,--

"My dear friends, I know you don't look for any words from me to-day; but
there are some of you I never before saw at this blessed feast of our
Lord, and I must say one word to you from Him." Then pausing, he looked
round upon them all, and, with an unutterable yearning in the gesture,
stretched out both his arms and said: "O my people, my people! like as a
hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, He would have gathered you long
ago, but ye would not." Then, still holding out his arms towards them, he
pronounced the benediction.

Silently and solemnly the little congregation dispersed. A few lingered,
and looked longingly at Draxy, as if they would go back and speak to her.
But she stood with her eyes fixed on the Elder's face, utterly unconscious
of the presence of any other human being. Even her father dared not break
the spell of holy beatitude which rested on her countenance.

"No, no, ma," he said to Jane, who proposed that they should go back to
the pew and walk home with her. "This ain't like any other wedding that
was ever seen on this earth, unless, maybe, that one in Cana. And I don't
believe the Lord was any nearer to that bridegroom than He is to this
one."

So Jane and Reuben walked home from church alone, for the first time since
they came to Clairvend, and Draxy and her husband followed slowly behind.
The village people who watched them were bewildered by their manner, and
interpreted it variously according to their own temperaments.

"You'd ha' thought now they'd been married years an' years to look at
'em," said Eben Hill; "they didn't speak a word, nor look at each other
any more 'n old Deacon Plummer 'n his wife, who was joggin' along jest
afore 'em."

Old Ike--poor, ignorant, loving old Ike, whose tender instinct was like
the wistful sagacity of a faithful dog--read their faces better. He had
hurried out of church and hid himself in the edge of a little pine grove
which the Elder and Draxy must pass.

"I'd jest like to see 'em a little longer," he said to himself half
apologetically. As they walked silently by, old Ike's face saddened, and
at last became convulsed with grief. Creeping out from beneath the pines,
he slowly followed them up the hill, muttering to himself, in the fashion