looked-for haven, she set all her pennons flying. This call from Mrs. Hanks, who was the sister of the first Mrs. Adams, seemed to her very significant. She became more complacent than ever before. If Mrs. Hanks thought the orange ribbon a little too bright, Miss Moore said, "very likely, indeed." If Mrs. Hanks thought the blue just the thing, Miss Moore was again impressed and said, "very likely." But when Mrs. Hanks said that on the whole the blue would not do, Miss Moore thought so, too.

At last Mrs. Hanks pushed back her sun-bonnet, fingered the rolls of ribbon absently, and approached the point of attack.

"Well, Miss Moore, they do say you're not going to be Miss Moore always."

The milliner smiled and blushed and bridled a little, and then gave way and tittered. For when a woman's courtship comes late, the omitted emotions of her girlhood are all interpolated farther on, and it is no affectation for her to act like a young girl. Young girl she is in all the fluttering emotions of a young girl. Only the fluttering does not seem to us so pretty and fitting as it might have been twenty years earlier.

66

Well, I suppose Roxy wont trouble you long.'

Miss Moore looked mysterious.

"Very likely, indeed," she replied, and then added with a blush, "I've heard she has a beau." Miss Moore had heard only of Mark's attentions, but the suspicious Mrs. Hanks was now on the track of Whittaker.

"Mr. Whittaker?" she queried.

"Very likely." This was said partly from habit and partly to cover her real surprise at hearing the name of Whittaker. But this mechanical assent did not satisfy the inquisitive lady.

"Now do you know anything about it, Miss Moore ? Don't say 'very likely' but tell me plainly."

Miss Moore was cornered. She did not want to tell a lie, for Miss Moore was as truthful as a person of her mild temper could be. But she was very loth to confess her ignorance and thus lose something of her importance in the eyes of Mrs. Hanks.

"Well, being's it's you, Mrs. Hanks-being's it's you"-Miss Moore spoke as though she were going to sell a bonnet under price -“I don't mind telling you the plain truth without any double-and-twisting. I tell

you plainly 't I shouldn't be surprised 'f there was something in that, now I come to think of it. Very likely, indeed.”

With this Mrs. Hanks had to be content, for to all further inquiries Miss Moore returned only her stereotyped assent.

At last Mrs. Hanks turned away from the ribbons without buying and said: "Well, I must be going."

"Very likely," said Miss Moore from sheer habit. And then, too, she was turning over in her mind the intelligence Mrs. Hanks had given her, and what a nice morsel it would be to tell the wife of the ruling elder in Mr. Whittaker's church.

CHAPTER XV.

MARK'S MISSION.

"You don't say so." It was Sheriff Lathers who spoke, as he did so, putting his boots up on the mantel-piece, leaning back in his chair and spitting in the fireplace-expectorating by way of facilitating the expression of his ideas. He never could say anything of great importance without stopping to spit, and his little clique of hangers-on knew that when Major Tom Lathers thus loosened his mental machinery he was about to say something quite oracular. It was the signal for general silence and intense attention on the part of the bottle-nosed deputy and other interested disciples of the eminent and astute political philosopher whose misfortune it was that he must repose his boots on the poplar mantel-piece in the sheriff's office in Luzerne, rather than on the sofas in the United States Senate Chamber, for which last position of repose nature had clearly intended him. But while I have thus digressed the philosopher has run his sharp gray eyes in a scrutinizing way around the circle of admiring loafers, has rammed his fists into his pockets, corrugated his intellectual brow, resumed his meditative stare at the fire-place, in which there are the charred relics of the last fire it contained, destined to remain until the next fire shall be lighted in the fall. And now he is ready to speak.

'Well, I'll be swinged!" Here he paused. Pauses of this sort whet people's appetites. He looked about him once more to be sure that he had now fairly arrested the whole-hearted attention of his devout followers.

"I didn't believe on ways, as Mark Bon

amy would go, and he wouldn't a gone a step ef the ole man hadn't a threatened. Mark's one of this 'ere kind: you can coax him and tole him with a yer of corn, but jist try to drive him and he wont. Git up,' says you, 'I wont,' says he; Git up there,' says you, I'll be dogged ef I do,' says he, and lets his heels fly and you keel over backward. I tried drivin' and tolin' last summer and he kicked up every time I tried the spurs onto him. But he's goin' to Texas shore enough, they say. That'll wear out soon and he'll be back here, like the prodigal son, eatin' swine's flesh with the rest of us."

Here he gave a knowing look at each of his auditors and received a significant blink in return.

Just at this point Mark Bonamy himself came in to attend to some business with the sheriff's deputy.

"Good morning, Major," he said, halfconscious at once that he had interrupted some conversation about himself.

"Howdy, Mark? Goin' to Texas, shore as shootin', so they say?"

"Yes." This with some hesitation, as of a man who would fain make an avowal with reserve lest he should want to creep out of it.

"Well, Mark," here Lathers paused, placed his feet on the mantel-piece again and again performed the preliminary rite of expectoration, "I do say that they aint many folks that gives up more'n you do in goin' away on a fool mission to convert the heathen. Now, Mark, it mayn't be a bad move after all. Texas is a small republic, and you may come to be president there, like Joseph did in the land of Canaan. Hey? And Texas may be hitched on behind Uncle Sam's steamboat some day as a sort of yawl. In which case look out for Mark Bonamy, United States Senator. It's better to be capt'in of a yawl than deck-hand on board the General Pike.' I don't know whether you're such a fool after all. Joseph didn't go down into Egypt for nothing. He had his eye on the

sensitive vanity, prone to change color with every change of surrounding.

Mark Bonamy was not yet a licensed preacher, nor even an exhorter, for his probation of six months had not expired. He exhorted in meeting by general consent, but as a layman. A glowing account of his abilities and of his missionary enthusiasm had been sent to Bishop Hedding, who immediately booked him in his mind as suited to some dangerous and difficult rôle; for Hedding looked on men as a chessplayer does upon his pieces, he weighed well the difference between a knight and a rook, and especially between a piece with great powers and a mere pawn. The death of Dr. Martin Ruter had weakened the Texan mission. In Mark, as described to him, he saw a man of force who might in time prove of the utmost value to the church in that new republic. So he wrote to Mark, asking if he would proceed in the autumn to Texas and take a place as second man on a circuit of some five hundred miles around, with forty-seven preaching-places. The letter came at the right moment, for Bonamy had just returned from the great camp-meeting in Moore's Woods, with all his religious enthusiasm and missionary zeal at white heat. He had renewed for the tenth time in six months his solemn consecration of himself to some great work, had made a public and penitent confession of his backslidings, and resolved to grow cold no more. And of all his spiritual leaders none were wise enough to know and point out to him that this keying himself higher than his impulsive nature would bear, was one of his chief perils. Reactions were inevitable while he continued to be Mark Bonamy.

But while he was thus, as Cartwright would have said, "under a shouting latitude," there came the letter from the great bishop like the voice of God telling him to leave his father's house, and to get him out into the wilderness to seek the lost sheep. Many a man gets committed to some high and heroic course in his best moment, often wondering afterward by what inspiration he was thus raised above himself. Happy is he whose opportunity of decision finds him at high-water mark. Happy, if he have stability enough to stand by his decision after it is made.

Mark was not without debate and hesitation. He might even now have faltered but for two things. The influence of Roxy and of his father alike impelled him to accept. As soon as the word came to Colonel

Bonamy that Mark had received such a letter, he did his best, unwittingly, to confirm him in his purpose by threatening him again with disinheritance. It only needed to awaken the son's combativeness to give his resolution strength and consistency. Even the religious devotion of a martyr may gain tone from inborn oppugnancy.

Then there was the influence of Roxy. Her relation to Mark was only that of a confidential religious friend: He had had occasion to consult her rather frequently, sometimes when meeting her on the street, sometimes calling at her house. But how often does one have to remark that mere friendship between a young man and a young woman is quite impossible for any considerable time. There is no King Knud who can say to the tide of human affection, "thus far and no farther." Mark's love for Roxy had ceased to be Platonic-he was not quite Plato. But how should he even confess to himself that he loved Roxy. For loving Roxy and going on a mission to the Brazos River were quite inconsistent. A man was not supposed to want a wife to help him fight Indians, rattlesnakes, Mexican desperadoes and starvation. And to give up the mission for Roxy's sake would have been to give up Roxy also. He knew dimly that it was only in the light of a selfsacrificing hero that she admired him. Perhaps he unconsciously recognized also that this admiration of him on her part had served to keep his purpose alive.

CHAPTER XVI.

AFTER THE MEETING.

ON the Wednesday evening following Mark's reception of his call to go to Texas and his talk with Lathers, he would fain see Roxy. It was the evening of the prayermeeting, and if he had been prone to neglect it, he would have found Roxy nowhere else. But he had no inclination in his present state of feeling to go away from the meeting.

The brethren had heard of the call to the mission, and most touching prayers were offered for his welfare and success. Mark himself prayed with deep and genuine pathos. Toward the last the minister called on Roxy to pray, and she who had been born full of the missionary spirit, who would have rejoiced to lay down her life for the lost sheep in the wilderness, who had been the source of most of Mark's inspiration, began to pray, not with her ac

customed directness and fervor, but with a faltering voice. Twonnet's fortune-telling had awakened in Roxy a sense of the strength of her own feeling for Mark, and with this came a maidenly delicacy. She faltered, hesitated, picked her words, prayed in platitudes, until at last, after mentioning Mark only in the most general way, she proceeded to pray for those to whom he was sent. All the force of her strong nature found utterance in the cry of the lost, and when she ceased everybody was weeping. And when the brethren and sisters rose from their knees, the old schoolmaster in the amen corner started to sing:

"From Greenland's icy mountains; ' and as everybody sang it with feeling, Mark felt ashamed that he should ever have thought of any other life than that of a missionary. It were better to die of malarial fever among the rowdies and rattlesnakes of the Brazos River, than to live a thousand years in ease and plenty. And when at the close of the meeting the military notes of "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" resounded through the old meeting-house, Mark regretted that so much time would intervene before he could reach the field of battle.

In this state of enthusiasm he walked home with Roxy. And this enthusiasm lifted him almost to the height of Roxy's perpetual exaltation. They talked of that in which they both were interested, and is it strange that they were drawn the one to the other by their community of feeling? Mark did not even now distrust himself; he did not once imagine that there was any difference between his flush of zeal, and the life-long glow of eager unselfishness and devoutness that was the very essence of the character of Roxy. He could not distinguish between himself-thin comet that he was, renewing his ever-waning heat, first by the fire of this sun and then by the radiance of that-and Roxy, the ever-burning fixed star whose fire of worship and charity was within herself. But taking himself at the estimate she put upon him, he rejoiced in having a friend worthy to sympathize with him, and when he parted with her, he pressed Roxy's hand and said:

"Oh, Roxy! if you were only going with me! You make me brave. I am better when I am with you. Think of the good we might do together. Some day I shall come back for you if you'll let me."

He held her hand in both of his, and he could feel her trembling.

His voice was full of pleading, and Roxy was in a flutter of mingled admiration, pity, and love. That this brave servant of the Lord, taking his life in hand, casting ambition, friends, and property behind him should appeal to her! She dared not speak and she could not pray. In a moment Bonamy had kissed her hand. A maidenly recoil seized her, she withdrew her hand, opened the gate and ran up the walk between the rows of pretty-by-nights and touch-me-nots. It was not until she stood in the door with her hand on the latch-string, that she turned toward her companion and said softly, in a voice suffused with emotion: "Good-night, Mark!"

And then she went into the house with her soul in chaos. Zeal, duty, and love, neither contended nor agreed. The scrupulous girl could understand nothing, see nothing. Pitying thoughts of Whittaker strove with her thoughts of Mark.

And that night she dreamed that she had set out to find the lost sheep that had left the ninety-and-nine and strayed in the wilderness, and Mark had set out with her. But ever they became more and more separated in the thorn-thickets of Texas, until at last Mark left her to travel on alone while he gave over the search. And the thickets grew higher and more dense, her feet were pierced with thorns, and her body exhausted with weariness. She saw panthers and catamounts and rattlesnakes and alligators and indescribable creatures of terror about her; they hissed at her and rushed upon her, so that she shuddered as she pushed on and on through the dense brake, wondering whether the poor lost sheep were not already devoured. But at last she came upon the object of her search environed with wild beasts. Trembling with terror she broke through and laid hold on the far-wandering sheep,-the monsters fled before her and the impregnable fold all at once inclosed her and the lost one. Then she discovered that the lost whom she had saved, was, by some transformation, Mark himself. And even while the Shepherd was commending her, the trembling girl awoke.

CHAPTER XVII.

A REMONSTRANCE.

AFTER her visit to the millinery and mantua-makery of Miss Moore, Mrs. Hanks debated with herself what to do. She could not consult Jemima, for Jemima be

longed to the enemy. But upon_debating various plans she resolved to see Roxy herself. She was Roxy's aunt, and the aunt ought to have some influence with the motherless niece, she reasoned. She was a little ashamed to go to Roxy now, it was so long since she had entered the old loghouse which had sheltered her childhood in the days when wandering Indians still traversed at intervals the streets of the new village of Luzerne. But then she had been so busy with her own children, Roxy ought to make allowance for that.

These explanations she made to Roxy when she made her call on the next day after the prayer-meeting. She couldn't come before. And then Roxy was so steady that she didn't need looking after. It wasn't every girl that could keep a house so clean and do so much for her father. All this talk troubled Roxy. She was simpleminded and direct, and the lurking suspicion of ulterior purpose in her aunt's words, and the consciousness of having something to conceal, disturbed her.

"I understand, Roxy," she said at last, "that you've had one or two beaus lately. Now you know that I'm in the place of a mother to you, and I hope you wont do anything about marrying without consulting me."

Roxy bent over her sewing and grew red in the face. Mrs. Hanks interpreted this flush of indignation as a blush.

"I suppose you are already engaged," she said, with an air of offense. "I don't think you ought to treat your mother's sister in that way. I was told that you were engaged to Mr. Whittaker. I must say I don't think it the best you can do."

"I am not engaged to Mr. Whittaker or to anybody else," said Roxy, giving way to her rising anger, and breaking her needle. "I wish people would mind their own business."

"Well, Roxy, I must say that is not a nice way to treat me when I come to give you advice. If I can't talk to you, who can ?"

Roxy's sense of injury and neglect which she thought she had conquered by prayer all revived now, and she bit her lip.

"I tell you plainly, Roxy, that if you marry Mr. Whittaker you'll get a cold Presbyterian that does not believe in real heart religion. They educate their ministers without asking whether they have a real divine call or not. Some of them, I expect, are not soundly converted. And

you know how you'll suffer for the means of grace if you join the Presbyterians. They wont have any praying or speaking by women. They don't have any class-meetings, and I don't think they have that deep depth of godliness you know that we Methodists believe in. And they don't allow shouting or crying, and that's a quenching of the spirit. So I say. For David says in the Psalms to shout and to cry aloud, and to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Now, I do hope you wont marry a cold-blooded Presbyterian that believes in predestination and that a certain number was born to be damned. And little children, too, for the Confession of Faith says that children not a span long are in hell, and ——_—___”

,,

"The Confession of Faith don't say that," said Roxy.

"Oh! you've been reading it, have you. I didn't know you'd gone so far. Now, I say that there's some good Christians in the Presbyterian church, but a Methodist that leaves her own church to join the Presbyterians has generally backslid beforehand. And a girl that changes her religion to get a husband.

"Who said I meant to change my religion to get a husband?" Roxy was now fiercely angry. "If you're going to talk that way, I will not stay and listen," and the girl drew herself up proudly, but her sensitive conscience smote her in a moment for her anger, and she sat down again, irresolute.

You

"Well, Roxy, you've got your father's temper along with your mother's religion. Though for that matter I think a temper's a good thing. But when you've got a chance to marry such a Methodist as Mark Bonamy, now, I don't see why you should take a poor Presbyterian preacher that hasn't got a roof to cover his head. Mark'll get over his mission soon. Missionary fever with young Christians is like wild oats with young sinners-it's soon over. can cool Mark down if you try. Show him how much good he can do if he'll stay here and inherit his father's wealth. But Mark 'll get his share anyway. The old man wont leave him out. And now, Roxy, you'll get over your freaks as I have got over mine, and if you miss your chance you'll be sorry for it. It isn't every day a girl whose father's poor shoe-maker and who lives in a log-house, gets a man with a good farm and a brick house, and a chance of going to Congress or getting to be a bishop

"Oh! Aunt Henrietta, hush!"

Roxy

was on her feet now. "I've got nothing to do with Mr. Whittaker or Mark, and if I had, you've no business talking that way. If you don't hush I'll say something awful."

"Well, I declare! For a girl as religious as you, that's a pretty how-do-ye-do, aint it, now?"

Here Roxy left the room to keep herself from saying from saying "something awful," leaving Mrs. Henrietta Hanks to gather her cape about her shoulders, put on her sun-bonnet and depart with the comfortable feeling that she "had cleared her skirts anyhow." The faithful discharge of a duty disagreeable to others maketh the heart of the righteous to rejoice.

CHAPTER XVIII.

GOSSIP AND GIGGLING.

MISS MOORE was a gossip of the goodnatured kind. She never told anything for the sake of harming anybody. She was as innocent in her gossip as she was in her habit of plucking out her front hair with tweezers to make her forehead intellectual. The milliner's shop in a village is in some sort a news-dépôt. People bring hither their items of news and carry away whatever has been left here by others. It is a fair exchange. The milliner has the start of everybody else; for who should know so well as she whether Mrs. Greathouse will wear cherry ribbon or brown? Who knows the premonitory symptoms of a wedding so well as the skillful woman who trims the bonnet? And shall we condemn gossip? Only where it is thoughtless or malicious. For without the ventilating currents of gossip the village would be a stagnant pool. We are all gossips. The man who reads the daily paper may despise the "tattle" of the town, but he devours the tattle of the reporter who gets his livelihood by gossip. Whether we talk about a big world or a little one, it is the gossip about others that saves us from becoming eremites in the wilderness of our own egotism.

But did the red-bird that sang under Miss Moore's window that morning ask whether his notes were a delight to any one's ears? Or did he just whistle because whistling is a necessity of red-birdism? Miss Moore for her part did not ask whether her function was of use to the community or not. It was not her place to philosophize about gossips, but to gossip,—an employment in which she received the moral support of