"Land o' Goshen! Hain't ye got no sense? Would I let a trollop come here thet hed a fatherless baby? Would I let Tom marry the critter? Be ye a fool?"

"I don't know but what I am," said the girl helplessly. "Sol Green asked me last month to marry him."

"He's got a mighty good farm," said the woman; "an' I heerd tell he 'd ben buyin' a big lot of sheep an' payin' cash. You must n't be tu hard on young fellers, ef they du overstep sometimes not ef they repent. Did ye think o' takin' him?"

"I had n't," said the girl "but there might be something in it." She knew her mother would not catch the meaning she threw into the words, but there was a sense of daring in uttering them that brought solace to the sharp pain that kept stabbing her since her mother's reference to Barnaby. Until that reference she had not even guessed what her sin meant.

"Yer father 'd be mighty pleased," declared Mrs. Seagrave.

"And when Tom gets big enough, he might marry the girl up at the Poor Farm."

"Be ye gone clean starin' crazy?" demanded the mother. "Here I be a tryin' to du my duty by you as a mother, an' you a sayin' sech nasty things 'bout your brother. Ef you can't use your tongue no better 'n thet, ye'd better keep your mouth shet, 'cept when you 're chewin' your vittles!"

When the heavy work of the day was done, there came an hour or two before supper, when the girl could take her sewing or a rare book and steal away to herself and the soft dreams of maturing girlhood. Every nook and bower of the hills about the farm was consecrated to one such gentle dream that seemed to lay in wait for her in the velvet of the moss, the blue of the violets, the droop

of the columbine, the spirals of the princess pine. But the sweetest of all these dreams, the little white-decked chamber under the sloping roof had known. She had scant means and few models for its conversion into a maiden's home, but a woman's deft fingers and a maiden's pure heart found in simplicity the beauty of fitness, and a taste purer than her experience taught her its completeness. The ivory white of soft drapings, just lightened by the pink that gave tone to the cheap but pretty paper with which her own hands had covered the walls, gave an attractive setting that many a more pretentious chamber failed to offer.

When she

And because this bower had known her most secret thoughts and deepest yearnings, she carried thither today the bit of sewing that was excuse for idleness. As uneventful as this day had seemed beside other days that were as epochs, she knew now that it stood above all others, save one, in the story of her life. These two they were the days that must be eternal. had given herself to Ashgrave, it was to him to whom she believed love had already given her, and in spite of her maidenhood, this love seemed to cast over the sin some breath of sanctity. To-day, a word, and she awoke to know the bitterness of the dream with which she had deceived herself. She had lost the right to be loved, save by one man, and he one whom she never had loved; whom she never would love.

She sat with her hands idle in her lap, looking away to the summer hills from the far blue beyond which so many and many a day had come, a white-winged argosy of joy, bearing her its rich lading and taking in exchange the dreams and fancies of a pure heart that, outleaping the narrowness of rude life, had striven thus, at least, to touch the great heart of the world and be part of that

broader living which distance and ignorance robbed of all sordid details. She had known here the passionate hours when her soul cried aloud for companionship such as these dwarfed beings about her could not give; hours when it seemed, if this cry was not to be heeded, she had a right to blame God for giving her desires and tastes that must sink seedless into nothingness; but mostly she had looked on life with the healthful hopefulness of a pure heart, and had found it good.

Why had this man come to end all this? She had lived her life thus far and, but for him, she could have continued to live it. It was he who made it impossible. Ashgrave she had accepted in the full belief of love for him; and, in spite of all she knew of his selfishness, his brutality, his grossness, she could have endured - but for this. To marry him was to offend her father, to take upon herself the doubtful position he held in the community; but what would this have been, save for the other?

And now? Now that the other one had come, and come too late? Suppose she should dare to yield to love if he should chance to love her and marry him? She had known him barely three weeks, but she saw that there was scarce a day he did not devise some means of seeing her; and why else did he stay? Oh she had been blind; blind to what her mother had seen; to what others must have seen! If at last God had sent her this man to love her, when it was too late, would she have courage to refuse; would she have strength not to sin, where sin would be so easy and so safe?

This question, touching as it did the very root of her love for Barnaby, cleaving the dead body of her sin from the living purity of this sacred passion, filled her with fear. Even as she asked it, her whole being cried out

that, whatever might be the sin of marrying Barnaby now, the sin of killing this great love would be greater still. If Barnaby loved and from the moment the veil was rent and she knew her own heart, she never doubted his it would be with a love that meant to him all that it meant to her. Before the justice of God, they stood equal, but for this. Had she a right to bring death to his heart because she could not come to him in full purity?

Had she not the right, born of the equality of love, to judge herself by her answer to the question, what would she have him do were his the sin? She had answered to-day with sarcasm when the question had been pressed, but there was no love there to set against the sin. Her mother had given her the world's answer, with its separate code of morals for man and woman; but there had been no question of love there to set against cold-blooded judgment. Here, the great central fact was love, and there could be no answer that did not give it its full weight.

She knew no shame in thus weighing an answer to a love that had not yet spoken. She had been lifted above or sunk below that. It was too insignificant to ask which. She had got to know her answer when the question came, and sin would be no excuse for the greater sin that might be hers, if she came to the answer unprepared. It seemed to her as if in this certainty that, in one or the other way, she must sin against love, was given her the punishment that God had meant her to bear because of her fall from purity.

Reaching to the little shelf above her head, she took down the well-worn Bible that had been her companion from earliest girlhood and opened it mechanically. She was not consciously seeking guidance from its sacred

pages, but it was so much a part of her life, so interwoven with her days and nights, that it was the most natural thing to do in her momentous struggle for light. Her eyes fell on the printed page, and she read:

He said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin

no more.

It was never absent from the Hebrew or the New England consciousness that God talks directly with man and concerns Himself in his most personal and, seemingly, trivial thoughts and acts. How then should it be that at this crisis in the life of one of His children, when perhaps Eternity itself hung for her in her decision, He should not speak and speak through His inspired word? It was He who had put it into her mind to look in His word; it was He who had opened the Book and turned her eyes to the printed word. It was He who thus gave her specific directions as to her conduct in this matter. If the words had been equivocal; if, even, she had consciously sought to have direction, she might have questioned. But here, at the supreme crisis of her life, without conscious purpose, her hand had sought the Book and turned to words so clearly addressed to the actual circumstances of the crisis that to doubt would have been the unforgivable sin.

She came from her chamber as from a Holy of Holies. She had spoken face to face with God; her sin was forgiven her. The beauty of a great awe was in her heart and face. Her sin lost none of its hideousness to her, but the purity of a great love and great forgiveness enveloped her with the heavenly injunction, "Sin no more."