surprising or unusual in His calling this untutored farmer's lad to do his work, than that he had called the sons of Zebedee, the fisherman. It was the awe of a great and indisputable fact that fell upon them, as of the rushing mighty wind on the day of Pentecost.

From that day to this Simeon Craig had never doubted the reality of his call. As a licensed exhorter, he had begun on that very day the work the Lord had given him to do, and at the same time had taken up the task of preparing himself for preaching. He did not ask himself if he were fit. That was God's business, not his. His only part was obedience. Failure, ridicule, opprobrium he feared nothing, save disobedience. And to-day he had been ordained, with the laying on of hands, as was Matthias of old, and there had been given to his charge the church at Padanaram. He had been faithful to God; he had no question that God would keep his covenant with him, and at all times put in his mouth the words he was to speak.

There was no doubt, no question, with him as he sat watching and praying in this upper chamber, only the awe inspired by a great and terrible fact.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST BREAKFAST

ADANARAM awoke on the morrow of the great

PAD

day to a sense of departing glory, and the weariness which follows dissipation, however holy its purpose. In a community where every hour from dawn to dark brought its task, the loss of a whole day in the middle of the week left heavy arrears to be made good, and these were increased by the idle hours given to departing guests, who were many of them slow with dragging sleep which kept them in bed until the earlier sun was fairly over the hills. The doctors of divinity were the tardiest, and it was after seven o'clock before they were on their way to the ten miles distant railway, grumbling with non-clerical worldliness of the urgency which doomed them to hours of uncomfortable waiting at the country station for the train which passed at noonday. While Padanaram had carried itself with credit through the day of the ordination, its thriftiness revolted against paying the price of a second day.

At sunrise, Simeon Craig was striding across the fields from a morning plunge in the river. Four hours of sleep and the tonic of the cold bath had set every vein in his body a-tingle with the tide of abundant health, till he felt that he could carry the burden of a kingdom, where he was only called on to bear that of the tiniest of parishes. Deacon Buffington, who was driving his slow ox-team through the great farm gates, hailed him with cheerful deference.

"Good mornin', pahson. You been't a sluggard who turns on his pillar, I see."

"I was a farmer's lad too many years to be able to sleep after sunup," the young clergyman answered, shaking hands with his deacon and turning to walk beside him, with clear understanding that he would begrudge even five minutes' delay in getting to his work.

"Wall, you must larn now to take it easy. The crops hain't a drivin' you as they used to do."

"The Master's harvest is ripe for the reaping," Craig answered solemnly. "It's no time for His servants to take their ease."

"I know, pahson; but it's mostly Sundays and the Thursday night prar-meetin's where you've got the harvestin' to do, an' thar 's lots o' spare time between."

"I hope to find it filled with the Master's work. I'd be sorry to feel that I was fit only for a few hours' work, where all others work so steadily."

"But thet 's dif'runt. Ye can't do nothin' on a farm 'ithout bein' at it arly an' late. Jest loaf a bit, an' the weeds do grow as ef the' ol' Nick was in 'em."

"And so in the garden of the Lord, the Devil don't take any rest, and until he does, the Master's labourers will find no time to loaf."

“Wall, pahson, 'tain't fur me to say, but I du hope you'll give us some good old-fashioned preachin'. Ol' Pahson Fletcher was a good man, but he got sorter easy to'ard the eend an' thar was more o' the beauties of heaven in his sarmonts than thar was o' the pains of hell. It don't du even a old church member like me no harm to be taken by the nap o' the neck once in a while an' held over the pit to see what 's thar."

The clergyman's face glowed with the deep enthusiasm

that was always quickened when the duties of his high calling were under discussion. Then his voice was the voice of the God he served rather than his own, and he spoke as one having authority.

"I am come not to bring peace, but a sword,” he answered. "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."

The older farmer watched the young clergyman striding homeward, and felt a new doubt which had had birth before. The words were orthodox, to suit the most exacting, but had the man force to live up to them? He had not eaten well, and he repeated to himself that a man or a horse was little to be depended on when off his feed. He could well wish that the man had begun differently.

Mrs. Marlow was standing by the kitchen stove, when Craig came in, watching the clock, the coffee pot and the oven. After thirty years of widowhood, the responsibility of cooking for a man, and that man the parson, came as a burden to be dreaded. Her soul was oppressed by the fear that the soda biscuit would be heavy or the coffee weak. She was a tall, gaunt woman, with smoothly brushed iron-gray hair, a face that long years of sorrow and longer years of toil had marked with many lines, and a heart that hungered for love, only to be cheated in wifehood and robbed of motherhood.

"Ah," she gave a sigh of relief on seeing the clergyman. "You be to the minute. Mostly men folks think the fire an' the bakin' 'll wait fur 'em."

The plate of smoking hot rolls that was drawn from the oven brought a cloud to the clergyman's face.

"Mrs. Marlow," he said, sternly and coldly, "you are breaking our agreement the very first morning.'

"These?" she asked, looking at the offending dish. "It's only so'thin' I fixed, it bein' the fust breakfast." "First or second has nothing to do with it," he said firmly. "Breakfast was to be an egg, or piece of bacon or ham, johnny-cake or brown bread, cold, and a glass of milk. It was to be that, and that it is to be."

"But ef I be a mind to add a bit of coffee or a hot biscuit once in a while?"

"You're to add nothing," he said. "I want the breakfast I agreed for: that or nothing."

It came to her suddenly that the clergyman was actually in earnest, and the dream that had beguiled her morning task was gone. She looked at the rolls and then at him.

"An' you won't eat 'em?" she asked.

"No; I will not," he said.

She set the pan on the dresser, tears of disappointment rolling down her withered cheeks. To eat one of the rolls after that would have choked her. She was old enough to be his mother, and it had seemed to her, in the days since he hired her loft and arranged with her for his meals, as if she touched life at a new point, which gave her more to care for than had been hers for many a long year. She had planned in a hundred ways to do and care for him, not simply because he was her boarder or her clergyman, but because here was offered something that filled a need of her very being. And this was the end of it all. He repulsed her first act of thoughtfulness, and insisted upon the cold letter of their agreement. She brought the johnny-cake and milk and poured herself a cup of coffee, more from habit than because she had further desire therefor.

If the clergyman noted or measured her grief, his attitude was that of either indifference or brutality.