John Ward, Preacher

Almost before Elder Dean had left the threshold Helen stood at the bolted door. She turned the knob gently while she knocked.

"John," she said anxiously,—"John, dear!" But there was no answer.

"John!" she said again, a thread of fear in her voice. "What is the matter? Are you ill, dearest? Please let me in!"

Only the rustle of the wind outside and the flickering shadows across the hall answered her. She shook the door slightly, and then listened. "John, John!" she called again, and as she heard a long breath inside the closed room she leaned against the wall, faint with a fright she had not realized. She heard a slow footstep upon the floor, that stopped on the other side of the door.

"Helen," her husband said, in a voice she scarcely knew, "I want to be alone. I am not ill, but I must be—undisturbed. Will you go away, please?"

"Let me in just one moment, darling," she pleaded, still nervously turning the knob. "I won't disturb you, but it terrifies me to be shut out in this way. Please let me just see you, and then I will go right away."

"No," he answered, "I cannot see you. I do not want to see you, Helen. I must be alone just now."

"You are sure you are not ill?" she insisted.

"Quite sure."

"Well," she said reluctantly, "I'll go, but call me just as soon as I can come, will you?"

"Yes," he answered, "but do not come until I do call you."

She heard him walk back to his study table, and then silence seemed to fall like a shadow on her heart. She was more bewildered than before. John was in trouble, and she could not help him. Nevertheless, she did not speak again; she was one of those unusual women who are content to wait until the moment it is needed, to give their sympathy or tenderness. So she went to her own room, and sat wistfully looking out at the sweet spring day; she could not read while this anxiety filled her mind, and her hands were idle in her lap. She did not even summon John to luncheon, knowing he would come if he saw fit; for herself, she could not eat. It was almost five, when she heard John push his chair back (she was sitting on the lowest step of the staircase, which ended at the study door, leaning her head against the frame), and again her ear caught the heavy, long-drawn sigh. Her suspense was to end.

She rose, her hands pressed hard together to check their trembling; she bit her lip lest she might speak and disturb him one moment before he was ready to hear her.

He pushed back the bolt, and slowly opened the door and looked at her. All the words of love and anxiety died on her lips.

"John," she whispered,—"oh, my dear, what is it?"

He came out, and, putting his hands on her shoulders, looked down at her with terrible, unsmiling eyes. "Helen," he said, "I am grieved to have distressed you so, but it had to be. I had to be alone. I am in much trouble. No," laying his hand gently on her lips; "listen to me, dearest. I am in great distress of soul; and just now, just for a few days, I must bear it alone."

Helen felt a momentary sense of relief. Distress of soul?—that meant some spiritual anxiety, and it had not the awfulness to her which a more tangible trouble, such as sickness, would have.

"What is it, John? Tell me," she said, looking at him with overflowing love, but without an understanding sympathy; it was more that feeling which belongs to strong women, of maternal tenderness for the men they love, quite apart from an intellectual appreciation of their trouble.

John shook his head. "I must bear it alone, Helen. Do not ask me what it is; I cannot tell you yet."

"You cannot tell me? Oh, John, your sorrow belongs to me; don't shut me out; tell me, dear, and let me help you."

"You cannot help me," he answered wearily; "only trust me when I say it is best for me not to tell you now; you shall know all there is to know, later. Be patient just a few days,—until after the Sabbath. Oh, bear with me,—I am in great sorrow, Helen; help me with silence."

She put her arms around him, and in her caressing voice, with that deep note in it, she said, "It shall be just as you say, darling. I won't ask you another question, but I'm ready to hear whenever you want to tell me."

He looked at her with haggard eyes, but did not answer. Then she drew him out into the fresh coolness of the garden, and tried to bring some brightness into his face by talking of small household happenings, and how she had missed him during his two weeks' absence, and what plans she had for the next week. But no smile touched his white lips, or banished the absent look in his eyes. After tea, during which his silence had not been broken, he turned to go into his study.

"Oh, you are not going to work to-night?" Helen cried. "Don't leave me alone again!"

He looked at her with sudden wistfulness. "I—I must," he said, his voice so changed it gave her a shock of pain. "I must work on my sermon."

"I thought you had written it," she said; "and you are so tired—do wait until to-morrow."

"I am not going to use the sermon I prepared," he answered. "I have decided to preach more directly on foreign missions. You know I exchange with Mr. Grier, of Chester, on the Sabbath; and he will preach to our church on the attitude of Assembly towards missions. I had intended to give a more general sermon to his people, but—I have decided otherwise."

Helen was surprised at so long an explanation; John's sermons were generally ignored by both, but for different reasons. She followed him into the study, and when she had lighted his lamp he kissed her, saying softly, "May God bless you, Helen," and then he shut her gently from the room.

"Don't lock the door, John," she had said. "I won't come in, but don't lock it." Her lip almost trembled as she spoke.

"No,—no," he said tenderly. "Oh, Helen, I have made you suffer!"

She was quick to protect him. "No, I was only lonely; but you won't lock it?"

He did not, but poor Helen wandered forlornly about the darkened house, an indefinable dread chasing away the relief which had come when her husband spoke of spiritual trouble; she was glad, for the mere humanness of it, to hear Thaddeus and Alfaretta talking in the kitchen.

The next day, and the next, dragged slowly by. When John was not at his writing-table, he was making those pastoral calls which took so much time and strength, and which Helen always felt were unnecessary. Once, seeing her standing leaning her forehead against the window and looking out sadly into the rainy garden, he came up to her and took her in his arms, holding her silently to his heart. That cheered and lightened her, and somehow, when Sunday morning dawned, full of the freshness of the past rain and the present wind and sunshine, she felt the gloom of the last three days lifting a little. True, there was the unknown sorrow in her heart, but love was there, too. She was almost happy, without knowing it.

They were to go on horseback, for Chester was eight miles off, and the thought of a ride in this sparkling mountain air brought a glow to her cheek, which had been pale the last few days. They started early. The sun seemed to tip the great green bowl of the valley, and make every leaf shine and glisten; the road wound among the circling hills, which were dark with sombre pines, lightened here and there by the fresh greenness of ash or chestnuts; in some places the horse's hoofs made a velvety sound on the fallen catkins. A brook followed their path, whispering and chattering, or hiding away under overhanging bushes, and then laughing sharply out into the sunshine again. The wind was fresh and fickle; sometimes twisting the weeds and flowers at the wayside, or sending a dash of last night's raindrops into their faces from the low branches of the trees, and all the while making cloud shadows scud over the fresh-ploughed fields, and up and across the blue, distant hills.

John rested his hand on her bridle, as she stroked her horse's mane. "How the wind has blown your hair from under your hat!" he said.

She put her gauntleted hand up to smooth it.

"Don't," he said, "it's so pretty; it looks like little tendrils that have caught the sun."

Helen laughed, and then looked at him anxiously; the sunshine brought out the worn lines in his face. "You work too hard, dearest; it worries me."

"I have never worked at all!" he cried, with a sudden passion of pain in his voice. "Oh, my wasted life, Helen,—my life that has wronged and cheated you!"

"John!" she said, almost frightened. Yet it was characteristic that she should think this was only a symptom of overwork and bodily weariness. And when at last they reached the church in Chester, and John lifted her from her saddle, the anxiety had come again, and all the joy of the summer morning had left her face. They fastened their horses to one of the big chestnuts which stood in a stately row in front of the little white church, and then Helen went inside, and found a seat by one of the open windows; she secretly pushed the long inside shutter, with its drab slats turned down, half-way open, so that she might look out across the burying-ground, where the high blossoming grass nodded and waved over the sunken graves.

John had followed her, and folded a coat over the back of the pew. He gave her a long, yearning look, but did not speak. Then he turned, and walked slowly up the aisle, with reverently bent head.

At the first hymn the congregation turned and faced the choir. Helen, with the shadows of the leaves playing across her hymn-book, leaned against the high back of the pew behind her, and sang in a strong, sweet voice, rejoicing in the rolling old tune of "Greenland's icy mountains." She could see the distant line of the hills, and now and then between the branches of the trees would come the flash and ripple of the brown river; and through the open door, which made a frame for the leaves and sky, she caught sight of the row of horses pounding and switching under the chestnuts, and those backsliders outside, who found it necessary to "see to the beasts" rather than attend their religious privileges. But there were not very many of these, for Mr. Ward's fame as a preacher had spread through all the villages near Lockhaven.

Helen, watching John while he read the chapter from the Bible, thought anxiously how tired and worn his face looked, and so thinking, and looking out into the dancing leaves, the short prayer, and the long prayer, and the hymn before the sermon passed, and she scarcely heard them. Then came the rustle of preparation for listening. The men shuffled about in their seats, and crossed their legs; the women settled their bonnet-strings, and gave the little children a peppermint drop, and the larger children a hymn-book to read. There were the usual rustling and whispering in the choir, and the creaking footsteps of the one or two who entered shamefacedly, as though they would explain that the horses had detained them. Then the church was very still.

John Ward rose, and spread his manuscript out upon the velvet cushion of the white pulpit.

"You will find my text," he said, "in the sixth chapter of Romans, the twenty-first verse: 'The end of those things is death.'"

It had been announced that his sermon was to be upon foreign missions, and the people waited patiently while the preacher briefly told them what had been accomplished by the Presbyterian Church during the last year, and, describing its methods of work, showed what it proposed to do in the future.

"That's just a-tunin' up,—he'll set the heathen dancin' pretty soon; you see!" some one whispered behind Helen; and then there was a giggle and "hush-sh," as Mr. Ward began to say that foreign missions were inevitable wherever the sentiment of pity found room in a human heart, because the guilt of those in the darkness of unbelief, without God, without hope, would certainly doom them to eternal misery; and this was a thought so dark and awful, men could not go their way, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise, and leave them to perish.

The simple and unquestioning conviction with which the preacher began to prove to his congregation that the heathen were guilty, because Adam, their federal head and representative, had sinned, perhaps hid from them the cruelty with which he credited the Deity. No one thought of disputing his statement that the wrath of God rested upon all unconverted souls, and that it would, unless they burst from their darkness into the glorious light of revealed truth, sink them to hell.

Some of the older Christians nodded their heads comfortably at this, and looked keenly at the sinners of their own families, trusting that they would be awakened to their danger by these trumpet bursts of doctrine. To such hearers, it was unnecessary that John Ward should insist upon the worthlessness of natural religion, begging them remember that for these heathen, as well as for more favored souls, Christ's was the only name given under heaven whereby men might be saved, and appealing to God's people, as custodians of the mercies of Christ, to stretch their hands out into the darkness to these blind, stumbling, doomed brothers. He bade them be quick to answer that cry of "Come and help us!" and to listen for that deeper voice beneath the wail of despair, which said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

The possibility of being saved without a knowledge of Christ remained, he said, after eighteen hundred years, a possibility illustrated by no example; and we could only stand in the shadow of this terrible fact, knowing that millions and millions of souls were living without the gospel, the only source of life, and dying without hope, and pray God for the spirit and the means to help them.

Link by link he lengthened the chain of logic till it reached to the deepest hell. He showed how blasphemous was the cry that men must be saved, if for lack of opportunity they knew not Christ; that God would not damn the soul that had had no chance to accept salvation. It had had the chance of salvation in Adam, and had lost it, and was therefore condemned. To the preacher this punishment of the helpless heathen seemed only just.

"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" he cried, and he stopped to suppose, for the sake of argument, that Adam had not sinned: surely no one would have disputed the justice of receiving the blessings which his godliness would have entailed. Then he began to prove the right of the potter over the clay. He had forgotten his congregation; the horror of the damnation of the heathen was lost in the fear that one soul should perish. He saw only Helen; she was in danger, she was far from God, but yet the price of admission to heaven could not be altered, though his heart broke for longing that she should be saved; the requirements of the gospel had not softened, the decrees of Omnipotence were as unchangeable as the eternal past.

His words, glowing with his love and grief, were only for her. The thunders of God's justice shook his soul, while he offered her the infinite mercy of Christ. But he did not shrink from acknowledging that that mercy was only for those who would accept it, nor presume to dictate to God that all sinners should be saved, forced into salvation, without accepting his conditions.

"What right," he said, "have we to expect that mercy should exist at all? What madness, then, to think He will depart from the course He has laid out for himself, and save without condition those who are justly condemned? Yet justice is satisfied, for Christ has died. O Soul, accept that sacrifice!" He had come to the edge of the pulpit, one pale hand clinched upon the heavy cover of the Bible, and the other stretched tremblingly out; his anxious, grieving eyes looked over the solemn, upturned faces of his listeners, and sought Helen, sitting in the dusky shadow by the open window, her face a little averted, and her firm, sweet lips set in a line which was almost stern.

Some of the women were crying: an exaltation purely hysterical made them feel themselves lost sinners; they thrilled at John's voice, as though his words touched some strained chord in their placid and virtuous lives.

"Come," he said, "stand with me to-day under the pierced hands and bleeding side of Infinite Mercy; look up into that face of divine compassion and ineffable tenderness, and know that this blood-stained cross proclaims to all the centuries death suffered for the sin of the world,—for your sin and mine. Can you turn and go away to outer darkness, to wander through the shadows of eternity, away from God, away from hope, away from love? Oh, come, while still those arms are open to you; come, before the day of grace has darkened into night; come, before relentless Justice bars the way with a flaming sword. O Soul, Christ waits!"

He stood a moment, leaning forward, his hands clasped upon the big Bible, and his face full of trembling and passionate pleading. Then he said, with a long, indrawn breath, "Let us pray!"

The people rose, and stood with bowed heads through the short, eager, earnest prayer. Then the preacher gave out the hymn, and there was the rustle of turning to face the choir. The quaint, doleful tune of Windham wailed and sobbed through the words,—

The choir sang with cheerful heartiness; it was a relief from the tension of the sermon, a reaction to life, and hope, and healthy humanness after these shadows of death. It all seemed part of a dream to Helen: the two happy-faced girls standing in the choir, with bunches of apple-blossoms in the belts of their fresh calico dresses, and the three young farmers who held the green singing-books open, all singing heartily together,—

Helen watched them with fascinated curiosity; she wondered if they could believe what they had just heard. Surely not; or how could they know a moment's happiness, or even live!

After the benediction had been pronounced she walked absently down the aisle, and went at once to her horse under the flickering shadows of the chestnuts. Here she waited for John, one hand twisted in the gray's mane, and with the other switching at the tall grass with her riding-whip. Only a few of the people knew her, but these came to speak of the sermon. One woman peered at her curiously from under her big shaker bonnet. The stories of Mr. Ward's wife's unbelief had traveled out from Lockhaven. "Wonderful how some folks could stand against such doctrine!" she said; "and yet they must know it's a sin not to believe in everlasting punishment. I believe it's a mortal sin, don't you, Mrs. Ward?"

"No," Helen said quietly.

They rode quite silently to the house of the minister with whom John had exchanged, where they were to dine; after that, the preacher was to go back to the church for the afternoon sermon.

Mrs. Grier, a spare, anxious-looking woman, with a tight friz of hair about her temples which were thin and shining, met them at the door. She had hurried home to "see to things," and be ready to welcome her guests. John she ushered at once into her husband's study, a poor little room, with even fewer books than Mr. Ward's own, while Helen she took to the spare chamber, where she had thoughtfully provided a cambric dress for her, for the day had grown very warm, and the riding-habit was heavy.

She sat down in a splint rocking-chair, and watched her guest brush out her length of shining bronze hair, and twist it in a firm coil low on her neck.

"It was a good gathering," she said; "people came from a distance to hear Mr. Ward. The folks at Lockhaven are favored to listen to such preaching."

"No doubt they feel favored to have Mr. Grier with them to-day," Helen answered, courteously; but there was an absent look in her eyes, and she did not listen closely.

"Well, people like a change once in a while," Mrs. Grier admitted, rocking hard. "Mr. Grier's discourse was to be on the same subject as your husband's, foreign missions. It is one that moves the preachers, and the people seem to like it, I notice, though I don't know that it makes much difference in the collections. But I think they like to get all harrowed up. You'll find there won't be such an attendance in the afternoon. It is ways and means, then, you know. Yes, seems as if sermons on hell made them shiver, and they enjoyed it. I've sometimes thought—I don't know as I'm right—they get the same kind of pleasure out of it that worldly people do out of a play. Not that I know much about such things, I'm sure."

Helen smiled, which rather shocked Mrs. Grier; but though the guest scarcely listened, the little sharp babble of talk was kept up, until they went down to dinner.

There had been no chance for the husband and wife to speak to each other. John looked at Helen steadily a moment, but her eyes veiled any thought. In the midst of Mrs. Grier's chatter, she had gone into the solitude of her own heart, and slowly and silently light was beginning to shine into the mysterious darkness of the last few days. John's grief must have had something to do with this terrible sermon. She felt her heart leap up from the past anxiety like a bird from a net, and the brooding sadness began to fade from her face. The preacher had come down from the pulpit with a certain exhilaration, as of duty done. He was inspired to hope, and even certainty, by the greatness of the theme. Helen should see the truth, his silence should no longer mislead her, she should believe in the justice of God. He had forgotten his sin of cowardice in the onward-sweeping wave of his convictions; he seemed to yield himself up to the grasp of truth, and lost even personal remorse in the contemplation of its majesty.

Mrs. Grier had four noisy children, who all spoke at once, and needed their mother's constant care and attention, so John and Helen could at least be silent; yet it was hard to sit through the dinner when their hearts were impatient for each other.

In a little breathing space at the end of the meal, when two of the children had clambered down from their high chairs and been dismissed, Mrs. Grier began to speak of the sermon.

"It was a wonderful discourse, sir," she said; "seems as if nobody could stand against such doctrine as you gave us. I could have wished, though, you'd have told us your thoughts about infants being lost. There is a difference of opinion between Mr. Grier and two of our elders."

"What does Brother Grier hold?" asked the preacher.

"Well," Mrs. Grier answered, shaking her head, "he does say they are all saved. But the elders, they say that the confession of faith teaches that elect infants are saved, and of course it follows that those not elect are lost. My father, Mr. Ward, was a real old-fashioned Christian, and I must say that was what I was taught to believe, and I hold by it. There now, Ellen, you take your little sister and go out into the garden, like a good girl."

She lifted the baby down from her chair, and put her hand into that of her elder sister.

"Mrs. Grier," Helen said, speaking quickly, "you say you believe it, but if you had ever lost a child, I am sure you could not."

"I have, ma'am,"—Mrs. Grier's thin lip quivered, and her eyes reddened a little,—"but that can't make any difference in truth; besides, we have the blessed hope that she was an elect infant."

It would have been cruel to press the reason for this hope, and Helen listened instead with a breath of relief to what John was saying,—he, at least, did not hold this horrible doctrine.

"No, I agree with your husband," he said. "True, all children are born in sin, and are despised and abhorred as sinners by God. Jonathan Edwards, you know, calls them 'vipers,' which of course was a crude and cruel way of stating the truth, that they are sinners. Yet, through the infinite mercy, they are saved because Christ died, not of themselves; in other words, all infants who die, are elect."

Mrs. Grier shook her head. "I'm for holding to the catechism," she said; and then, with a sharp, thin laugh, she added, "But you're sound on the heathen, I must say."

Helen shivered, and it did not escape her hostess, who turned and looked at her with interested curiosity. She, too, had heard the Lockhaven rumors.

"But then," she proceeded, "I don't see how a parson can help being sound on that, though it is surprising what people will doubt, even the things that are plainest to other people. I've many a time heard my father say that the proper holding of the doctrine of reprobation was necessary to eternal life. I suppose you believe that, Mr. Ward," she added, with a little toss of her head, "even if you don't go all the way with the confession, about infants?"

"Yes," John said sadly, "I must; because not to believe in reprobation is to say that the sacrifice of the cross was a useless offering."

"And of course," Mrs. Grier went on, an edge of sarcasm cutting into her voice, "Mrs. Ward thinks so, too? Of course she thinks that a belief in hell is necessary to get to heaven?"

The preacher looked at his wife with a growing anxiety in his face.

"No," Helen said, "I do not think so, Mrs. Grier."

Mrs. Grier flung up her little thin hands, which looked like bird-claws. "You don't!" she cried shrilly. "Well, now, I do say! And what do you think about the heathen, then? Do you think they'll be damned?"

"No," Helen said again.

Mrs. Grier gave a gurgle of astonishment, and looked at Mr. Ward, but he did not speak.

"Well," she exclaimed, "if I didn't think the heathen would be lost, I wouldn't see the use of the plan of salvation! Why, they've got to be!"

"If they had to be," cried Helen, with sudden passion, "I should want to be a heathen. I should be ashamed to be saved, if there were so many lost." She stopped; the anguish in John's face silenced her.

"Well," Mrs. Grier said again, really enjoying the scene, "I'm surprised; I wouldn't a' believed it!"

She folded her hands across her waist, and looked at Mrs. Ward with keen interest. Helen's face flushed under the contemptuous curiosity in the woman's eyes; she turned appealingly to John.

"Mrs. Ward does not think quite as we do, yet," he said gently; "you know she has not been a Presbyterian as long as we have."

He rose as he spoke, and came and stood by Helen's chair, and then walked at her side into the parlor.

Mrs. Grier had followed them, and heard Helen say in a low voice, "I would rather not go to church this afternoon, dearest. May I wait for you here?"

"Well," she broke in, "I shouldn't suppose you would care to go, so long as it's just about the ways and means of sending the gospel to the heathen, and you think they're all going right to heaven, any way."

"I do not know where they are going, Mrs. Grier," Helen said wearily; "for all I know, there is no heaven, either. I only know that God—if there is a God who has any personal care for us—could not be so wicked and cruel as to punish people for what they could not help."

"Good land!" cried Mrs. Grier, really frightened at such words, and looking about as though she expected a judgment as immediate as the bears which devoured the scoffing children.

"If you would rather not go," John answered, "if you are tired, wait for me here. I am sure Mrs. Grier will let you lie down and rest until it is time to start for home?"

"Oh, of course," responded Mrs. Grier, foreseeing a chance for further investigation, for she, too, was to be at home.

But Helen did not invite her to come into the spare room, when she went to lie down, after John's departure for church. She wanted to be alone. She had much to think of, much to reconcile and explain, to protect herself from the unhappiness which John's sermon might have caused her. She had had an unmistakable shock of pain and distress as she realized her husband's belief, and to feel even that seemed unloving and disloyal. To Helen's mind, if she disapproved of her husband's opinions on what to her was an unimportant subject, her first duty was to banish the thought, and forget that she had ever had it. She sat now by the open window, looking out over the bright garden to the distant peaceful hills, and by degrees the pain of it began to fade from her mind, in thoughts of John himself, his goodness, and their love. Yes, they loved one another,—that was enough.

"What does it matter what his belief is?" she said. "I love him!"

So, by and by, the content of mere existence unfolded in her heart, and John's belief was no more to her than a dress of the mind; his character was unchanged. There was a momentary pang that the characters of others might be hurt by this teaching of the expediency of virtue, but she forced the thought back. John, whose whole life was a lesson in the beauty of holiness—John could not injure any one. The possibility that he might be right in his creed simply never presented itself to her.

Helen's face had relaxed into a happy smile; again the day was fair and the wind sweet. The garden below her was fragrant with growing things and the smell of damp earth; and while she sat, drinking in its sweetness, a sudden burst of children's voices reached her ear, and Ellen and the two little boys came around the corner of the house, and settled down under the window. A group of lilacs, with feathery purple blossoms, made a deep, cool shade, where the children sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac stars floating in the water.

This was evidently a favorite playground with the children, for under the frame of the grindstone were some corn-cob houses, and a little row of broken bits of china, which their simple imagination transformed into "dishes." But to-day the corn-cob houses and the dishes were untouched.

"Now, children," Ellen said, "you sit right down, and I'll hear your catechism."

"Who'll hear yours?" Bobby asked discontentedly. "When we play school, you're always teacher, and it's no fun."

"This isn't playing school," Ellen answered, skillfully evading the first question. "Don't you know it's wicked to play on the Sabbath? Now sit right down."

There was a good deal of her mother's sharpness in the way she said this, and plucked Bobby by the strings of his pinafore, until he took an uncomfortable seat upon an inverted flower-pot.

Ellen opened a little yellow-covered book, and began.

"Now answer, Jim! How many kinds of sin are there?"

"Two," responded little Jim.

"What are these two kinds, Bob?"

"Original and actual," Bob answered.

"What is original sin?" asked Ellen, raising one little forefinger to keep Bobby quiet. This was too hard a question for Jim, and with some stumbling Bobby succeeded in saying,—

"It is that sin in which I was conceived and born."

"Now, Jim," said Ellen, "you can answer this question, 'cause it's only one word, and begins with 'y.'"

"No fair!" cried Bob; "that's telling."

But Ellen proceeded to give the question: "Doth original sin wholly defile you, and is it sufficient to send you to hell, though you had no other sin?"

"Yes!" roared Jim, pleased at being certainly right.

"What are you then by nature?" Ellen went on rather carelessly, for she was growing tired of the lesson.

"I am an enemy to God, a child of Satan, and an heir of hell," answered Bobby promptly.

"What will become of the wicked?" asked the little catechist.

Bobby yawned, and then said contemptuously, "Oh, skip that,—cast into hell, of course."

"You ought to answer right," Ellen said reprovingly, but she was glad to give the last question, "What will the wicked do forever in hell?"

"They will roar, curse, and blaspheme God," said little Jim cheerfully; while Bobby, to show his joy that the lesson was done, leaned over on his flower-pot, and tried to stand on his head, making all the time an unearthly noise.

"I'm roarin'!" he cried gayly.

Ellen, freed from the responsibility of teaching, put the little yellow book quickly in her pocket, and said mysteriously, "Boys, if you won't ever tell, I'll tell you something."

"I won't," said Jim, while Bobby responded briefly, "G'on."

"Well, you know when the circus came,—you know the pictures on the fences?"

"Yes!" said the little boys together.

"'Member the beautiful lady, ridin' on a horse, and standin' on one foot?"

"Yes!" the others cried, breathlessly.

"Well," said Ellen slowly and solemnly, "when I get to be a big girl, that's what I'm going to be. I'm tired of catechism, and church, and those long blessings father asks, but most of catechism, so I'm going to run away, and be a circus."

"Father'll catch you," said Jim; but Bobby, with envious depreciation, added,—

"How do you know but what circuses have catechism?"

Ellen did not notice the lack of sympathy. "And I'm going to begin to practice now," she said.

Then, while her brothers watched her, deeply interested, she took off her shoes, and in her well-darned little red stockings climbed deliberately upon the grindstone.

"This is my horse," she said, balancing herself, with outstretched arms, on the stone, and making it revolve in a queer, jerky fashion by pressing her feet on it as though it were a treadmill, "and it is bare-backed!"

The iron handle came down with a thud, and Ellen lurched to keep from falling; the boys unwisely broke into cheers.

It made a pretty picture, the sunbeams sifting through the lilacs on the little fair heads, and dancing over Ellen's white apron and rosy face; but Mrs. Grier, who had come to the door at the noise of the cheers, did not stop to notice it.

"Oh, you naughty children!" she cried. "Don't you know it is wicked to play on the Sabbath? Ellen's playing circus, do you say, Bobby? You naughty, naughty girl! Don't you know circus people are all wicked, and don't go to heaven when they die? I should think you'd be ashamed! Go right up-stairs, Ellen, and go to bed; and you boys can each learn a psalm, and you'll have no supper, either,—do you hear?"

The children began to cry, but Mrs. Grier was firm; and when, a little later, Helen came down-stairs, ready for her ride, the house was strangely quiet. Mrs. Grier, really troubled at her children's sinfulness, confided their misdeeds to Helen, and was not soothed by the smile that flashed across her face.

"They were such good children to study their catechism first," she interceded, "and making a horse out of a grindstone shows an imagination which might excuse the playing."

But Mrs. Grier was not comforted, and only felt the more convinced of the lost condition of Mrs. Ward's soul. The conviction of other people's sin is sometimes a very pleasing emotion, so she bade her guest good-by with much cordiality and even pulled the skirt of her habit straight, and gave the gray a lump of sugar.

Helen told John of the scene under the lilacs, as they trotted down the lane to the highway, but his mood was too grave to see any humor in it. Indeed, his frame of mind had changed after he left his wife for his second sermon. The exhilaration and triumph had gone, and the reaction had come. He brooded over his sin, and the harassed, distressed look of the last few days settled down again on his face. But Helen had regained her sweet serenity and content; she felt so certain that the darkness since Thursday had been the shadow in which his sermon had been conceived that her relief brought a joy which obscured any thought of regret that he should hold such views.

John's head was bent, and his hands were clasped upon his saddle-bow, while the reins fell loosely from between his listless fingers.

"You are so tired, John," Helen said regretfully.

He sighed, as though rousing himself from thought. "A little, dearest," and then his sorrowful eyes smiled. "You look so fresh and rested, Helen. It was wise for you to lie down this afternoon."

"Oh, but I didn't," she said quickly. "I was busy thinking."

He looked at her eagerly. "Yes," she continued, "I think I know what has distressed you so these last few days, dear. It is this thought of the suffering of mankind. If you have felt that all the heathen who have died are in hell, I don't wonder at your sorrow. It would be dreadful, and I wish you did not think it. But we will not talk about it,—of course you would rather not talk about it, even to me, but I understand."

She bent forward, and smiled brightly, as she looked at him. But his face was full of grief.

"It was not that, Helen," he said; "it was something nearer than that. It was remorse, because of late, for nearly a year, I have neglected my people. I have not admonished them and warned them as I ought. And nearer still, because I have neglected you."

"Me!" she cried, too much astonished to say more.

"Yes," he answered, his head bent again upon his breast, "you, my dearest, my best beloved,—you, who are dearer than my life to me, dearer than my happiness. I have known that you have been far from truth, that you have not believed, and yet I—I have been silent."

Helen looked at him, and the sudden awful thought flashed into her mind that he did not know what he was saying, and then she said with a gasp: "Oh, John, is that all? Have you been so unhappy just because of that? Oh, you poor fellow!"

She brought her horse close beside his, and laid her hand on his arm. "Dear, what does it matter what I believe or do not believe? We love each other. And where is your tolerance, John?" She laughed, but the look of terrible concern in his face frightened her.

"Ah, Helen," he said, "such tolerance as you would have me show would be indifference."

"Oh, John!" she said, and then began resolutely to speak of other things.

But soon they fell into silence, Helen longing to get home and brush this useless and foolish anxiety from her husband's heart, and he agonizing for his sin towards her and towards his people.

The late afternoon sunshine gilded the tender green of the fields, and slanting deep into the darkness of the woods, touched the rough trunks of the trees with gold. Long shadows stretched across the road, and the fragrance which steals out with the evening dews began to come from unseen blossoms, and early clover; and a breath of the uncertain night wind brought hints of apple orchards or the pungent sweetness of cherry-blossoms. They had gone more than half-way home when they drew rein to water their horses, under a whispering pine by the roadside. The trough, overflowing with sparkling water, was green with moss and lichen, and was so old and soft that a bunch of ferns had found a home on its side. The horses thrust their noses down into it, blowing and sputtering with sheer delight in the coolness. John made a cup of a big beech leaf, and filled it for his wife. As he handed it to her, they heard steps, and in a moment more Mr. Grier came around the curve of the road. His horse, too, was thirsty, and he let the reins fall on its neck while he greeted them both with formal and ministerial dignity, saying he "wished they might have tarried until he came home, and perhaps he could have persuaded them to stay the night."

The horses pounded and splashed in the pools about their feet, and were impatient to be off, but Mr. Grier delayed. He spoke of church matters, and General Assembly, and their respective congregations; and then, with a little hesitation, he said:—

"I had almost hoped, Mrs. Ward, that you would have been in Brother Ward's church to-day, even though Mrs. Grier had much pleasure in seeing you under our roof. I had you in my mind in the preparation of my sermon."

Mr. Grier was a tall, thin man, with watery blue eyes, and a sparse sandy beard growing like a fringe under his chin from ear to ear. He moved his jaws nervously as he waited for her answer, and plucked at his beard with long, lean fingers.

Helen smiled. "Did you think I should be a large contributor to foreign missions, Mr. Grier?"

"No, ma'am," he answered solemnly, "I was not thinking of any benefit to the heathen. I had somewhat to say which I felt might be for the good of your own soul."

Helen flushed, and flung her head back with a haughty look. "Ah,—you are very good, I'm sure," she said, "but"—

Mr. Grier interrupted her, wagging his head up and down upon his breast: "Brother Ward will forgive me for saying so, ma'am, but I had your welfare at heart. Brother Ward, you have my prayers for your dear wife."

"I—I thank you," John said, "but you must not feel that my wife is far from the Lord. Have you been told that the truth is not clear to her eyes? Yet it will be!"

"I hope so,—I hope so," responded Mr. Grier, but with very little hope in his voice; and then, shaking the reins, he jogged on down the shadowy road.

"What does he mean?" cried Helen, her voice trembling with anger, and careless whether the retreating minister overheard her. John gave her a long, tender look.

"Dearest," he said, "I am sorry he should have spoken as he did, but the prayers of a good man"—

"I don't want his prayers," she interrupted, bewildered; "it seems to me simply impertinence!"

"Helen," he said, "it cannot be impertinence to pray for a soul in danger, as yours is, my darling. I cannot tell how he knew it, but it is so. It is my sin which has kept you blind and hidden the truth from you, and how can I be angry if another man joins his prayers to mine for your eternal salvation?"

"You say this because I do not believe in eternal punishment, John?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered gently, "first because of that, and then because of all the errors of belief to which that leads."

"It all seems so unimportant," she said, sighing; "certainly nothing which could make me claim the prayers of a stranger. Ah, well, no doubt he means it kindly, but don't let us speak of it any more, dearest."

Their horses were so close, that, glancing shyly about for a moment into the twilight, Helen laid her head against his arm, and looked tenderly into his face.

He started, and then put a quick arm about her to keep her from falling. "No," he said, "no, I will not forget." It was as though he answered some voice in his soul, and Helen looked at him in troubled wonder.

The rest of the ride was very silent. Once, when he stopped to tighten her saddle-girth for her, she bent his head back, and smiled down into his eyes. He only answered her by a look, but it was enough.

Gifford Woodhouse was not quite honest with himself when he said that he felt it was time to go back to Ashurst to make his aunts a visit. He had been restless and absent-minded very often since that flying trip in the early spring. In spite of his sternest reasoning, hope was beginning to grow up in his heart again. Dick Forsythe had not come to Ashurst, and Helen said plainly that she knew Lois was not engaged to him. So why should not Gifford himself be on the spot?

"Not that I would bother Lois," he argued in his own mind, "but just to know if"—And besides, he really ought to see the two little ladies.

He left Lockhaven a few days after John Ward had preached his sermon on foreign missions at Chester. It was reported to have been "powerful," and Elder Dean said he wished "our own people could have been benefited by it."

"I thought the heathen were expected to be benefited by such sermons," Gifford said, twisting a cigarette between his fingers, as he leaned over the half-door of the elder's shop, lazily watching a long white shaving curl up under his plane. "I thought the object was a large contribution."

The elder looked up solemnly, and opened his lips with vast deliberation. "Lawyer Woodhouse," he said, "that's your mistake. They're fer the purpose of instructing us that the heathen is damned, so that we will rejoice in our own salvation, and make haste to accept it if we are unconverted."

He looked hard at the young man as he spoke, for every one knew Lawyer Woodhouse did not go regularly to church, and so, presumably, was not a Christian.

Then Mr. Dean, while he pulled the shavings out of his plane, and threw them on the fragrant heap at his feet, said one or two things which made Gifford stop lounging and forget his cigarette while he listened with a grave face. "Unbelief in the church," "the example for our youth," "the heresy of the preacher's wife."

This was not the first time Gifford had heard such comments, but there was a threat in Mr. Dean's voice, though he did not put it into words, which made the young man carry a growing anxiety about Helen away with him. He could not forget it, even in the rejoicings of his home-coming, and he gave guarded answers about her which were unlike his usual frankness.

Lois noticed it, and wondered a little, but was perhaps more annoyed than troubled by it.

The shyness of her welcome Gifford quite misunderstood.

"After all," he thought, "what was the use of coming? Whatever Forsythe's chances are, there is one thing sure,—she does not care for me. She used to have that old friendly way, at least; but even that is gone, now. I might have known it. I was a fool to run into the fire again. Thank Heaven, that cad isn't here. When he comes, I'll go!"

And so he wandered forlornly about, his hands in his pockets, and a disconsolate look on his face which greatly distressed his aunts. Somehow, too, the big fellow's presence for any length of time embarrassed them. They had been so long without a man in the house, they realized suddenly that he took up a great deal of room, and that their small subjects of conversation could not interest him.

"Perhaps," said Miss Ruth shrewdly, "he has found some nice girl in Lockhaven, and misses her. What do you think, sister?"

"It is not impossible," answered Miss Deborah; "but, dear me, sister, if only Helen Jeffrey had not married so young! I always felt that Providence pointed to her for dear Giff."

"Well," said Miss Ruth, a little color creeping into her cheek, "I think Providence does arrange such things, and as Helen seems much attached to Mr. Ward, no doubt that was meant. It is gratifying to think such things always are meant. I have even thought that when a person no longer very young, even quite advanced in life, remains unmarried, it was because the other, appointed by Heaven, died, no doubt in infancy."

Miss Deborah sniffed. "I should be sorry to think all marriages were planned by Providence," she said, "for it would seem that Providence showed very poor judgment sometimes. Look at Henry Dale. I'm sure there were—others, who would have made him happier, and been quite as good housekeepers, too."

Miss Ruth mentioned her suspicion of the "nice girl in Lockhaven" to Lois, while Miss Deborah added that it was really no pleasure to cook for dear Giff; he was so out of spirits he didn't seem to care for anything; he did not even eat the whigs, and Lois knew how fond he was of whigs. Very likely dear Ruth was right.

This made Lois's interest in Gifford still deeper, though she said, tossing her head with airy impatience, that she did not believe there were any nice girls in Lockhaven; there were only working people there. Then she thought of that talk with Gifford at the stone bench, and recalled the promise she had made, and how she had sealed it. Her cheeks burned till they hurt her.

"He has forgotten it all, long ago," she said to herself; "men never remember such things. Well, he sha'n't think I remember!"

But how often Gifford remembered!

One afternoon he walked over to the stone bench, and sat down on the very same sunken step from which he had looked up into Lois's face that June evening. He saw a bunch of violets growing just where her foot must have rested, and what was more natural—for Gifford was still young—than that pencil and note-book should appear, and, with a long-drawn sigh, he should write hastily,—