spiritual processes, the conception of a demand that did not express itself in words was impossible. He had actually heard the call that summoned him from the plow to the pulpit, and it would as soon have entered his mind to question the voice that spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus, as that which he had heard in the ploughed field.

"Unless I should become suddenly blind or deaf," he replied scornfully, and Barnaby, who perceived his inability to understand, let the matter pass.

In turn he hinted at certain tag ends of Ashgrave's story which had been caught by him, and sought the thread that would bring them into fit relation one to another. But Craig was an inverse gossip. He absorbed, but never gave, and Barnaby gained nothing for his pains.

So, to escape the afternoon preaching, with a possible second sermon addressed to his supposed need, he slipped away and wandered into the hills, taking, without particular thought, the direction of the Seagrave farm. There was a touch of defiance, even for him, in a Sunday afternoon walk that gave it a charm of its own; and when at last he was stretched on the warm earth, just out of the sun, where through the heavy trees he could catch glimpses of the river, while below him was the peaceful farm, he had a sense of the goodness of life that survives even doctrinal sermons, informed of good intentions and unconquerable stupidity.

There was a rustle behind him, and looking up, upon a point of rock that jutted from the very top of the hill he saw Miss Seagrave, outlined against the background of the sky. She evidently imagined herself alone, and Barnaby was divided between the chance of disturbing her by revealing himself and the indelicacy of watching

her unseen. He knew enough of the Sabbatical demands of such a community as Padanaram to understand that there was something almost epochal in her presence there during sermon-time. Sharply the thought flashed upon him that she was there to meet Ashgrave, who, he well understood, would easily set at defiance rules that scarcely another would venture to question. It surprised him that he should care if such a meeting was to take place, but he admitted that he did care, and then he felt a sense of resentment against Ashgrave for proposing it, which did not prevent his being angered at Miss Seagrave for consenting.

For he had no doubt that Ashgrave had proposed it and that Miss Seagrave's part was consent merely, the more as he had caught in the morning no note of recognition between them. More than he had in the morning, he felt the effectual holding of Ashgrave at a distance which had signalised his treatment at the meeting, and he asked himself why it was that with this before her Miss Seagrave should adopt an opposite mood and meet him thus secretly.

The girl settled all questions for Barnaby by seating herself on the rock, with the manifest purpose of remaining. If she had a tryst, it was here, and there was nothing for Barnaby but to reveal himself, as he must, if he attempted to leave.

She greeted him with that rare smile, which he had already learned to look for as something noteworthy. Youth and health rebel under sorrow, and will have none of it, save on compulsion. There has been so little, in comparison with all there is to be, that even the greatest wrong may hope for compensation.

"I thought I was the only one who had dodged the sermon," Barnaby said, standing for her dismissal.

"One of the horses was sick, so we could n't go," she explained.

"I used to play sick, when I was a youngster," he said. "I don't suppose the horse was up to that trick?"

'What for? He would n't have had to hear the sermon."

"There was n't the flavour this morning I expected," he ventured, watching for any sign that he had overstepped.

The thought of what she had failed to find in the sermon came back and clouded her brow. She felt again the hot air of the crowded church, and looked off to the cross seats near the pulpit, where she saw Ashgrave, with his clouded, sullen face, gazing straight ahead of him. She knew again what he was remembering. As great as was her pity for herself, she had some to spare for him, and it centred on the discovery she had made that she did not love and never had loved him. He had so little in life, it seemed a double pity to rob him of even so poor a thing as her love. Suddenly she brought herself back to the fact that Barnaby was saying "good-bye."

"You'll find it a pleasanter walk when the sun is lower," she said, almost without feeling the meaning of the words.

He, however, caught it, and stopped in pleasant surprise. It could scarcely be that she was expecting Ashgrave, or she would not have checked his going.

"May I?" he asked, indicating his wish to throw himself on the soft moss that made an inviting couch.

So they chatted on, and again she forgot the great barrier that divided her life and closed the past. She told him of the single year when she left the farm behind, and the great pleasure of life as she found it in the little

academy town, which she bore in her memory in the proportions due to the widest experience that had fallen to her lot. She had come back to her year of teaching at Padanaram, and now she was again at the farm.

"It is closed!" she said, and he smiled at the halftragic tone, guessing nothing of the double meaning of the words.

Then she drew from him his confession; his quarrel with his father; his resolve to become a clergyman; his dawning consciousness that he had yielded to a whim and had no depth of purpose; his final sudden revolt against his own folly, and his reconciliation with his father.

"He's a pretty jolly old fellow," he assured her, "if you only let him have his own way."

She listened with her eyes intent upon him, her elbow on her knee and her chin resting in her hand. Suddenly she asked:

"Ought we always to obey others?"

He thought not, but at least one ought to know his purpose, ought to have it clearly defined, have considered it thoroughly, and determined it as his rule of life, before he ventured to break from parental authority. "Do you think it no disgrace to own yourself mistaken in an important in the most important matter of life?"

He thought her still dwelling on the story he had told, and he turned the query aside. One would have his whims, and find them whims; 't would be a jolly tough thing to have to keep on just because you 'd got started.

He walked with her down to the farm, where his association with the clergyman was warrant to secure him an invitation to supper. His presence at the meal kept the two tow-headed boys and their mother in

fidgety silence, while the farmer discoursed to him on the equivalence in the original Greek of "baptism" and "immersion."

"Then you do not consider sprinkling baptism," Barnaby said, feeling that there was a little too much of assertion and not enough of variety for discussion.

"It's no consequence what I consider," the farmer declared positively. "It's facts thet matters; it's truth thet tells. If I consider a hoss an ox, it don't make it one. Thar are folks who consider the Pope a Christian; but he hain't, all the same."

Barnaby felt that he had the flavour of the old farmer's dictatorship, and wondered if the daughter could not have told a tale of stunted individuality which had helped write into her face that something that at first glance seemed to him so full of sadness. Then he recalled something else she had said to him as curious, which now had a new meaning:

"Mr. Ashgrave is never mentioned in our house."

He saw clearly that here was a man who would not let sentiment interfere with the rule of his household; a man who would rule for the love of ruling, yet cover his rule with the mantle of duty. Before he could check himself, his imagination had galloped with him far beyond his starting point and suddenly brought him up, hard and fast, against the query of what were the relations between Miss Seagrave and Ashgrave. He saw the visit to the other farmhouse in a new light, that pleased him no more than its old aspect. Finally, all the consolation he drew out of the matter was the indisputable fact that she evidently was not expecting Ashgrave on the hills that afternoon, and that she had been at pains to let him know that he was not to run away..

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