nd his voice was so gentle that I could not rebuke him, though
I feared that his heart was in a dark, unregenerate state, if he cared
so much more for me than for Elder Crane's sermons.

"You won't care to have an old woman tell any more of her love-story.
Now-a-days these things are all written in novels, and I should think
the bloom of a girl's delicacy must be long gone before she hears such
words said to herself. Then it was different. I had never dreamed of
anything so beautiful.

"The woods were very still all around us, only once in a while a bird
would sing out, and then the silence fall again all the sweeter for the
song. When the woods opened we caught glimpses of the green grain-fields
and orchards in blossom. A chipmonk darted across the path, and,
scampering up into a beech-tree, clung to the great brown hole, and
looked down at us, perking his head so mischievously that I could not
help thinking he knew our secret. And so on and on. I've often thought
that walk was like the life we lived together, and a prophecy of
it,--bright, and full of songs and flowers and sweetness, leading
sometimes through shady places, but never losing sight of God's sweet
heaven, never missing the warm winds of its inspiration and its hope.

"But before this a dark time was to come.

"We must have been a good while going home, for when we came in sight of
the house there was mother standing in the door, shading her eyes with
her hand, and watching for us, and all at once I remembered that she
must have been anxious; there were bears in those woods, and the next
winter one was killed in the very path where we walked.

"When mother saw us coming, she smiled, and came down to the road to
meet us, and shook hands with Ephraim in such a friendly way that my
heart danced; I had been thinking what if father and mother should not
approve of him.

"Father was friendly too, and while they sat in the fore-room, and
talked, mother made some of her cream biscuits for tea. Now I knew by
this that Ephraim would find favor in her eyes, because in our house
all unnecessary labor was forbidden on the Sabbath, and no small thing
could have tempted mother to break over this rule. When I went to call
them to supper, I knew that Ephraim had been speaking to father, and
that he was kindly disposed towards Ephraim. Father named me in asking
the blessing, and Ephraim also, speaking of him so tenderly that it
brought the tears to my eyes.

"All th