hands
to mould them like wax; and her intimate knowledge of their conditions and
needs made it impossible for her to refrain from sometimes speaking the
words she knew they ought to hear. Whenever she did so at any length, she
laid her manuscript on the table, that they might know the truth. Her
sense of honesty would not let her do otherwise. It was long before
anybody but Angy Plummer understood the meaning of these intervals. The
rest supposed she knew parts of the sermon by heart.

But at last came a day when her soul was so stirred within her, that she
rose up boldly before her people and said,--

"I have not brought any sermon of Mr. Kinney's to read to you to-day. I am
going to speak to you myself. I am so grieved, so shocked at events which
have taken place in this village, the past week, that I cannot help
speaking about them. And I find among Mr. Kinney's sermons no one which
meets this state of things."

The circumstances to which Draxy alluded had been some disgraceful scenes
of excitement in connection with the Presidential election. Party spirit
had been growing higher and higher in Clairvend for some years; and when,
on the reckoning of the returns on this occasion, the victorious party
proved to have a majority of but three, sharp quarreling had at once
broken out. Accusations of cheating and lying were freely bandied, and
Deacon Plummer and George Thayer had nearly come to blows on the steps of
the Town House, at high noon, just as the school-children were going home.
Later in the afternoon there had been a renewal of the contest in the
village store, and it had culminated in a fight, part of which Draxy
herself had chanced to see. Long and anxiously she pondered, that night,
the question of her duty. She dared not keep silent.

"It would be just hypocrisy and nothing less," she exclaimed to herself,
"for me to stand up there and read them one of Seth's sermons, when I am
burning to tell them how shamefully they have behaved. But I suppose it
will be the last time I shall speak to them. They'll never want to hear me
again."

She did not tell her father of her resolution till they were near the
church. Reuben started, but in a moment he said, deliberately,--

"You're quite right, daughter; may the Lord bless you!"

At Draxy's first words, a thrill of astonishment ran over the whole
congregation. Everybody knew what was coming. George Thayer colored
scarlet to the roots of his hair, and the color n