an came up and joined them when
the wider openings permitted.

Two persons just in front were commenting upon the sermon.

"Very fair for a country parson," said a tall, elegant-looking man,
whose broad, intellectual brow was touched by dark hair slightly
frosted, and whose lip had the curve that betokens self-reliance and
strong decision,--"very fair. All the better for not flying too high.
Narrow, of course. He seems to think the Almighty has nothing grander to
do than to finger every little cog of the tremendous machinery of the
universe,--that he measures out the ocean of his purposes as we drop a
liquid from a phial. To me it seems belittling the Infinite."

"I don't know whether it is littleness or greatness, Robert, that must
escape minutiae," said his companion, apparently his wife. "If we could
reach to the particles, perhaps we might move the mountains."

"We never agree upon this, Margie. We won't begin again. To my mind, the
grand plan of things was settled ages ago,--the impulses generated that
must needs work on. Foreknowledge and intention, doubtless; in that
sense the hairs _were_ numbered. But that there is a special direction
and interference to-day for you and me--well, we won't argue, as I said;
but I never can conceive it so; and I think a wider look at the world
brings a question to all such primitive faith."

The speakers turned down a side way with this, leaving the ledge path
and their subject to our friends. Only to their thoughts at first; but
presently Cousin Delight said, in a quiet tone, to Leslie, "That doesn't
account for the steps, does it?"

"I am glad it _can't_," said Leslie.

Dakie Thayne turned a look toward Leslie, as if he would gladly know of
what she spoke,--a look in which a kind of gentle reverence was
strangely mingled with the open friendliness. I cannot easily indicate
to you the sort of feeling with which the boy had come to regard this
young girl, just above him in years and thought and in the attitude
which true womanhood, young or old, takes toward man. He had no sisters;
he had been intimately associated with no girl-companions; he had lived
with his brother and an uncle and a young aunt, Rose. Leslie
Goldthwaite's kindness had drawn him into the sphere of a new and
powerful influence,--something different in thought and purpose from the
apparent unthought of the present little world about her; and this
lifted her up in his regard and enshrined her with a sort o