The Foe in the Household

CHAPTER IV.

TOO gracious to utter in any ear her thoughts, Mrs. Holcombe felt as little gladness as her girls had expressed, when her prophetic eyes beheld all to which the neighborhood was exposed by reason of the return of Father Trost.

But the people whom this son of Thunder had come to serve in the district of Swatara and the regions adjoining were entering, at the very time of her secret discomfiture, on a season of rejoicing. The old warrior had already sounded his trumpet, and the faithful in Zion, rallying thereat, congratulated each other that they had once more a leader.

“ Give me a year to work in, and the dry bones shall live,” he said, as he strode about among the mountains. “ Give me a year to work in,” he had said, whatever field he entered ; and wherever he went promise and prophecy were made good. He did succeed in kindling a fire, and in compelling a rush. There was always inflammable material to be collected ; no lack of combustibles; noise, smoke, and flame appeared as often as he entered fairly on his work. The assurance and the vanity of the man never experienced a rebuke or a rebuff which could seem to him equivalent to a failure. Men like Father Trost never fail.

The year he asked for in Swatara was vouchsafed. He did not spare himself. He was everywhere announcing and denouncing, proscribing and prescribing ; physically he seemed incapable of exhaustion. He had all the brain power and all the energy of will in his seventieth year of life that had marked his prime.

The year of himself which he asked for Swatara passed, the prayer for another was renewed, with an expectation amounting almost to certainty that it would be granted. Friend Holcombe likewise had outlived the year, and Delia had outlived it.

It was midsummer again, and Mr. Holcombe sat in the schoolroom, which was also the Mennonite meeting-house, one Saturday afternoon. He was in a thoughtful, prayerful mood; despondent, too. It was not release from labor that he craved, It was strength to labor more abundantly, — the strength of the right arm of the Almighty. But how weak he was ; and how great was the need of his people. O for the power of Peter or of Paul, or for even the serpent’s wisdom ! He was distressed when he thought of the wide field in the midst of which he was placed, and of the neglect which portions of it must suffer because he was only mortal. God knew he did not ask for rest. God, his witness, knew it was not because Father Trost was working so mightily among the people that he was stirred to dissatisfaction : it was not an unholy ambition that fired him ; but if— A knock at the door startled him.

Rising from the bench which stood upon the platform, he walked down between the benches and opened the door.

Sometimes an act like this had proved most kindly ; the minister had received visitors on Saturdays in that room to whom the opening of the door proved a most difficult and painful proceeding. It was because he was aware of the fact, that he walked to the door and opened it.

Deacon Ent awaited admission. Mr. Holcombe was greatly relieved when his eyes met those of the young man. Here was one who brought no vexed or difficult question for the preacher’s solution. August walked in a broad, smooth path, and no stumbling-blocks were to be removed out of his way.

Swatara folk knew that the preacher spent his Saturday afternoons in the school-house, and that any man or woman, or any child, who had need of his counsel would find him there, and nowhere truer sympathy; often the troubled mind or the tempted spirit sought him, — he was always waiting and expecting ; but at this hour it was a relief to him, as I have said, to receive his friend and coadjutor, instead of a burdened soul, Even Dr. Detwiler, that tower of strength, would not have received so cordial a welcome as did this brother in the Lord.

The tall and rugged form of Deacon Ent had been thirty years in attaining to its present height. He was a lighthaired, blue-eyed model of integrity and vigor. A great stickler for church doctrine and law, having a gift of speech esteemed by some equal to that of the preacher himself, he was regarded by Mr. Holcombe as his right-hand man.

He entered the room, evidently heated by his long walk, for he had come down on foot from the highlands.

“ God bless you ! I ’m glad to see you,” said Mr. Holcombe ; and they sat down and talked about the pleasant day, and the probabilities of wind and rain, and the prospects of all growing things. To pass from a survey of the season, and of the crops in general, to the detail of his own farming experiences, to in-door life, and from the interests of many to the interests of one, that one himself, was a process so natural and easy, that its difficulties proved to be not impediments.

Here then this young man stood, as it were, at his own door, and he had but to lift the latch !

His attention became fixed, and then in a moment riveted on the preacher, with that instinct which in a moment of peril lifts the brave spirit above the shrinking body’s apprehensions, and sets it to a steady fronting of the danger.

“Mr. Holcombe,” said he, with his eyes on that good man, just because he would have preferred to look elsewhere at the moment, “did you ever think, sir, that some of our regulations are perhaps over-strict, and hard for human nature, and hinder, I might say prevent, our growing as a body ? ”

Mr. Holcombe did not answer the deacon at once. It is no exaggeration to say that his soul was shaken within him by the question. Were his foes about to prove of his own household ? The work of disintegration must have commenced among the foundation-stones since this strong pillar was shaken! He did not hasten to speak, but when he spoke, said : —

“ All laws are difficult to obey, if the spirit of obedience is wanting ; and even then,” — this kindest of shepherds would manifest the utmost charity consistent with principle, — “even then it’ is not always easy for the will of the deceitful heart to yield to the persuasions of the mind.”

“ It’s the heart, sir, that Scripture speaks of mostly. Couldn’t the heart teach the mind something ? ” asked the young man, gravely contemplating, as it were, the question he had raised. “ Ain’t you preaching a good deal lately about the pride of intellect ? Maybe it’s that very thing sets us on to think our laws could n’t be mended or improved. Ain’t it possible that we could ’a’ made some mistakes in our regulations ? Is n’t it setting up of ourselves and seeking to put down others by such severe laws in religion as we would not and could not submit to in state government ? ”

“ What has brought you here to say this?” asked Mr. Holcombe, turning abruptly upon the young man. “ I should have expected such doubts of myself as soon. Is it your heart, August, which Scripture says is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, that has brought you into this strait?”

The suddenness of this question did not appear to disturb the young man as much as did his endeavor to agree with the minister. But he need not range heaven and earth for testimony that was lodged within himself!

“ It seems to me, sir, it I understand our laws, that they require too much. They do not make allowance enough for human nature. How are we ever to grow, if we bind ourselves hand and foot? Father Trost is carrying all before him. We get no converts.”

“We must grow from within, as we always have done. We do not expect a Pentecostal gathering-in.”

“ But why should we shut our doors up in such a way that these new people, who are coming into the country all the time, cannot even hear our invitation ? ”

“ Do I preach with closed doors, and only to my own flock ? ” asked Mr. Holcombe, more and more surprised and displeased. “ Is n’t this house filled with people who come from everywhere ?”

“ That is because they like the minister. We, the church, don’t get any converts.”

The minister walked from the platform down into the aisle, across the room and back, before he answered ; his arms were crossed on his breast, his head bent. When he looked up again as he came near the desk, there was a glow of feeling on his noble face. August had said, he must have known, a true thing when he attributed the preacher’s successes to his personal popularity ; but nothing like vanity was in the preacher’s handling of that fact.

“There have been a goodly number converted out of a bad condition into a better,” he said. “ But you know, though I cannot claim it as done under my teaching altogether, I could have said as much as this two years ago. The people are improving. And they began to improve long before this Methodist revival. Are you jealous of the direction that is taking ? I am not. A great many influences are at work here beside the preacher’s. I am happy to know that I enjoy the confidence of these miners so that they come to consult me in ways which show that they consider me a friend. What would you have me do, August ? If I hold by the faith and doctrine of the Council, good. If I wish to renounce these, I suppose there is nothing to hinder. But, thank God ! I do not wish to renounce these. The testimony of a lifetime is worth a great deal to me. We are rich in the testimony which would make any Christian peoples’ annals rich.”

The voice of Mr. Holcombe was not the least efficient of the preacher’s aids, — it was the voice of one accustomed to leadership, but of one who chose to lead by love. He had often controlled by his sympathy, when a hard show of power would have failed to command.

It bad probably not entered Deacon Ent’s mind to defy, or even resist, his superior in office. He had come to confer with him, as he had long been in the habit of conferring on all matters of vital importance, Whether of private or of public nature. The confidence which was expressed in this confession of doubt spoke well for Mr. Holcombe, and well for himself. But he was going further ; the difficulty he had already experienced in speech did not so much embarrass him as to change his purpose ; the thing he had come to say must be thoroughly spoken.

“But, taking everything into consideration,” he said, “ would n’t it be wiser if our people were allowed to marry among other Christian folk, if they had a leading that way? Other denominations have a large liberty in this particular, and they thrive on it. I have been looking into it, and I see it don’t stand to reason that we should set up laws like this, and make them authority for all kinds of folks. It seems to me like saying that a man should n’t look into his neighbor’s fields, but just keep to his own. If he does that, he ’ll be likely to turn out a poor farmer.”

“Ent,” said Mr. Holcombe: there he stopped. He dreaded to ask the question which he must ask ; but after a second he looked the young man in the face, stepped nearer to him, and laid his hand on his shoulder; “what has happened to you?”

“ Nothing that I ’m ashamed to own, sir ”; and he returned the minister’s serious, anxious, but most friendly gaze with one of perfect candor.

“ You must remember when you promised obedience to the laws of our society, as your father and your grandfather did before you, you did it in the belief that by keeping those laws you could best honor our Lord. You took office in the church knowing what you did. You have not allowed yourself to tamper with those laws ? ”

“ No, sir ! ”

“ Then you know the confession. There is no other liberty allowed to believers under the New Testament dispensation than to marry amongst the ‘ chosen generation, or the spiritual kindred of Christ, that is, to such and none others as are already previous to their marriage united to the church in heart and soul.’ What other union with the church is worth anything, August ? They must ‘have received the same baptism, belong to the same church, be of the same faith and doctrines, and lead the same course of life.’ You know why. A house divided against itself will fall. And if there is any meaning or force in our doctrines, any reason why we should ever have subscribed to them, it must still hold good when we have fallen into ‘divers temptations.’ Then is the time to test their worth. How often have you yourself said that the faith is worth little for which we are not willing to make sacrifices. Perhaps God will test your sincerity. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”

“ I know, sir, — I know, — I have considered all that,” said the young man ; “ but it comes to this, sir, for the sake of a set of arbitrary laws must I give up what I hold dearest ? That is the simple question. To give up a regulation of men is not to give up Christian truth.”

“ August, what is it you hold so dear ? What are consistency, influence ? ”

“Reeds in the wind, sir.”

“ My dear brother— ”

“ I am trying to find out what my duty is,” said Ent; and having gone thus far, Mr. Holcombe’s wrath even had been of little moment to him. “ Should our custom, which is n’t of vital moment, and cannot be proved so, have a feather’s weight in deciding a question which concerns the happiness of two persons ? I ask you, sir, because I have answered myself. I might have acted on the answer I made, but I knew that my minister trusted me.”

“ That is like yourself, August,” exclaimed Mr. Holcombe, greatly relieved. “ In your honesty is your safety. Wait, lad. Let the woman be taught of you and of God. Bring her into the fold, and thus sanctify your life. Be patient. This that you feel is the rashness and heat of youth. Ah, you think I know nothing of what you are passing through! Did I not wait for my wife seven years ? I would have waited to this day, because I loved her, because she was the woman ordained for me, the only one, I honestly believe, whom I could love. You can wait. I waited without hope. Discipline yourself into the noblest manhood by self-control. You will never be happy if you leave us; you will injure yourself irreparably if you remain and deceive the brethren. Let your light so shine before men that they may glorify your Father in Heaven.”

The preacher’s voice, though scarcely raised above a whisper, in this appeal would have commanded the attention of a much larger audience than could have gathered in the old meeting-house. August answered: —

“ I know how it is, sir ! While you speak I hear you and know that you are right. But when I go away I shall hear her voice, not yours.”

“ If she tempts you, remember what befell another who was tempted by a woman.”

“ Shame ! ” exclaimed August, indignantly. “It is not a temptation! It is a man’s feeling that he has a right to liberty. She is mine, I tell you.”

“ Mine own familiar friend ! my companion and guide! ”

Ent turned away ; he could not witness the minister’s emotion unmoved. “Friend Holcombe, do not make me wish for death,” said he.

“ My brother, my son! you have passed through some sore trials, and I never found you too weak to bear them. It is the pleasure of the Lord that you should endure this test. We are coming on hard times. Some may fall away. Do not, do not fail those who have a right to expect of you the conduct of a strong Christian man!”

“ The Lord gave, and he will not take away,” returned Eat. Hastily picking up his broad-brimmed straw hat, he folded his linen coat across his breast and pinned it together (nothing so ornamental as a button was allowed on the garments of this straitest of his sect); he seemed about to depart.

“Stay!” exclaimed Mr. Holcombe. “ Why may I not see you two together ? She will surely not object to come and worship with you here ; come to-morrow ! I ask it as the pastor of the flock, and as your brother. I thank you for your confidence, August. I should have expected it; but let me have the woman’s too. Tell her I deeply desire it.”

“You know her already,” said August, putting on his hat and looking toward the door.

“ Who is she ? ”

“Father Trost’s daughter Mary.”

CHAPTER V.

AUGUST ENT had hardly pronounced this name when the door opened, and Dr. Detwiler entered. Such a man’s coming must have broken up the conference between the deacon and his minister ; but the conference was already at an end.

The deacon turned to the minister, they shook hands, and he went away without speaking further, merely returning the salutation of the doctor by a nod. Friend Holcombe closed the door behind him with a sigh which his jaded look testified came from the heart.

“ I came for you in great haste, Friend,” said the doctor, that hearty companion of the elements who now stood before him, quick of speech, clear of sight, agile, not too slenderly built for service, even for a country doctor’s rough campaigning among the mountains and through the valley land, in winter’s storm and summer’s heat, transformed beyond recognition since he came, a pale, work-worn student, to find his life in Swatara. “ Guildersleeve wants you right away,” he continued. “ Lightfoot is waiting out there. Take him and be off. I 'll run down and tell your wife, and go home by rail. Give the old fellow room in your shed when you get back, unless I send for him. But probably I ’ll not send, for you have ten miles to go, and the road is n’t the best. Can you go ? You must! I shall tell Delia not to wait tea for you.”

“ I must go ? Of course, then, Guildersleeve wants me ! ”

“Itseems a great matter to get you up there, that’s all,” said the doctor. “ Guildersleeve’s days are numbered, but he will last longer than he thinks. He finds it rather harder to repent than he expected, I suppose. I dare say the time will seem long enough to him before you get there.”

While the doctor spoke, Mr. Holcombe walked about and closed the windows; when he went towards the door the doctor followed him. There, in the quiet shadows, Lightfoot grazed in peace, unmindful of all he had escaped by being a brute. His master called to him, and at the same time said : “ I want you to keep a sharp eye all along the road ; the country is perfection itself, — open your eyes wide,— be off!” When the minister was fairly started, Detwiler said : “ I assured the old man that you would be up there in a couple of hours ; he will count the minutes. I ’ll go tell Delia where you are.”

Then he went off quite as hurriedly as the deacon had gone. He was eager to leave the preacher alone with nature, to whose tender mercies he knew he might intrust this hard-working man.

It seemed as if Lightfoot’s hoofs had no sooner struck on the road which led up among the chestnuts and the pines, to the pine grove through which he must pass on his way to Guildersleeve’s, than the shadows which had lain so heavily on the minister’s face gave flickering tokens of intention to depart. There was a change in the flow of the mysterious currents, a lifting up, a loosing, a dispersion of what had threatened to descend and break in mist and rain. Serene grew his brow; the fine head was lifted, the erect figure expanded, the eyes of the man saw, or seemed to see, the clouds and their shadows rolling away. He could now discern. All that Nature could do for Friend Holcombe she had done, or was about to do.

He surrendered himself by degrees to the charming influences at work beyond the troubled sphere of pastoral conscience, suffering though he was under the burden of human sorrows and human guilt when he set out on this errand ; bearing the burden with him, as he went, it was now with hope that he continued his way. But, though this glory through which he passed, this ever-renewing glory, rebuked despair, while his eyes noted the broad sunbeams slanting through the woods and the mossy trunks of the old trees, and the wayside pools, he thought with a troubled spirit of August. And yet if it would please the Lord to bring the Methodist’s daughter into the Mennonite fold, could it not be to His honor ? might it not even be that thus the Head of the church would turn the old man from the speech of a persecutor, to engage in the milder teaching of one who loved the Gospel even better than he loved his sect ? As this question crossed Friend Holcombe’s mind, he looked upward and smiled ; so impossible was it for him to understand a man like Trost, that he found it easy to believe that the thing he hoped was feasible. There was Saul of Tarsus to justify his longing !

He remembered, too, just in this connection, that a very considerable degree of friendship had flourished during the past year between Mary Trost and the young girl who had found a home under his roof, and was to him almost as a daughter.

Edna had indeed sought out Mary, who was nearer her own age than Rosa, and whose much wider experience of life had proved to her great attraction. Her travels and adventures in the far West, her life among the Indians, the actual dangers she had passed through, and the courage thus developed, made her, as a character, and as a teller of strange tales, a delightful companion to the girl, a portion of whose inheritance was a courageous love of adventure. Edna had the spirit that had taken her father to the ends of the earth before he was twenty-one.

While Mr. Holcombe goes on his way, we may consider for a moment this friendship. With the growth of it no one interfered. As Delia perceived in its first stages, it was encouraged by Father Trost. She only tried to keep pace with Mary in sharing the confidences of her daughter. It was quite clear to her that no interference would have been tolerated by Edna, had she attempted any. If there was no roof under which the girl could meet her friend, there was the highway, with the heavens for a roof; all out-doors.

In this vast apartment of nature the girls were promenading one fine afternoon ; Mary had been telling adventures as usual, and Edna listening as usual, when the former said: “ How long are you going to keep on asking and taking? It is time you gave a little to me. Don’t you know it is more blessed to give than to receive ?”

“ What will you have ? ” asked Edna. “ I would like to give something to somebody.”

“ I will have — let me see — your history,”

Father Trost had dropped a remark about Edna one day that led Mary to promise herself she would some time ask this, as she had now suddenly remembered.

“There is precious little to tell,” said Edna, “ but such as I have I ’ll give. Do you remember Annie Gell? No; I dare say you never heard of her either. There was once a girl who lived away off with that old woman. The house was very small, but there was land enough around; they were swallowed up in land. The old woman had cultivated it some seasons without help of mankind. She was really a good farmer. Do you want to see the house, dear ? ”

There Edna paused, and, with animated face turned towards her companion, waited an answer. Her ambition, it was evident, was to make an interesting story for that tale-teller to whom she was indebted for many a pleasant hour.

“ I want to see the house, and the old woman, and the girl, — everything. The clearer the better,” said Mary. And Edna, well pleased, proceeded.

“ It was an old brown house, and had no up stairs. There was a door in the middle, and a room on each side. The rooms were a keeping-room and a bedroom and a kitchen. It had a good dry cellar, dry enough to keep the milk in. The woman kept pigs and a cow. But when she wanted her land ploughed or broken in — do you know what I mean ? ”

“ O yes ; cultivated, of course.”

“ I thought you would say so; it isn’t what I meant. She cut down a great many trees herself, and after that the land was ploughed, and she planted and sowed, and had good crops almost always. The house had a hop-vine growing over the door ; it was a verylarge old vine, for it ran around both the windows and along the edge of the roof up nearly to the top of the chimney. She and the girl used to gather the hops, — there were bushels sometimes. They sold them and made quite a large sum of money. The windows had white curtains onto them. The door of the house was red. There was a well with a long pole near the house in the front yard. The house stood on the ground, only one step to go up. There was a little grove of pine-trees not far off, and the ground was covered with moss. Do you see the place ? ”

“As plain as I ever saw anything. Go on.”

“The old woman had a hump on her poor back.” Edna said this with a feeling, and a resolution, which could not have escaped notice. She mentioned the fact only that her picture might be more pointed in detail. “The hump came from a fall when she was young. I can’t tell you what a worker she might have been if that had n’t happened. She was a little woman, not near as tall as Mrs. Holcombe. Not as large as you are even, but so different! She wore poor clothes, and kept herself close in everything. She had gray hair, nearly white, and the dearest eyes you ever saw. Her face had a great many wrinkles. She did n’t smile very often, but she never frowned on the girl. The girl was a child of her sister’s ; when the mother died she was taken up to the poor little farm, and the poor old aunty ; and at first how dull it was ! but she liked it better at last than any other place.” The significance with which these last words were spoken made it impossible for Mary to doubt their meaning. But Edna did not dwell upon that point.

“ One day when she went into the room with some eggs she had found in the bushes, — for the old speckled hen they were sure had stolen her nest, and she had hunted everywhere for it, and found it at last, — she felt as if she could not stay there, could not breathe, the old aunty looked so awfully. She was sitting by the window, and when she saw the girl she said, ‘So you found the nest?’ That girl will never forget how the voice sounded. She had to go in then with her basket and show the eggs. ‘Sit down,’ said aunty, ‘for I want to say something particular to you.’ Whenever she spoke that way, the poor thing had to obey. So she went and sat down and said, ‘ What do you want?’ Just then there Came a bee in at the window, and that seemed to turn her thoughts off from what she had been seeing and hearing. ‘ We are going to have folks come,’ she said; and then she leaned across old aunty, and let the prisoner out.

“‘I have been waiting to tell you what the doctor said, and something more ’; that came next in a very low voice, but it did n’t shake any. ‘ When was he here ? ’ said the girl, and then she went nearer to the old woman and smoothed her gray hair and held her hand ; — there were only those two, and they loved each other.

“‘Not to-day,’ said she. ‘You remember it was last week, was n’t it?’ but it was only the day before ! 'He told me,’ she said, ‘that there wasn’t any use doctoring me any more.’ ‘ lie did n’t say that! ’ said the girl, firing up. ‘Well, it was near like it. Why, child, I should owe him a pretty bill if he was like other folks. But he is n’t, and I’ve settled with him ; so don’t worry about that. He has been kind to me, and he ’ll be kind to you.’ ”

Edna’s eyes had been fixed steadily on her listener while she went on, but as if conscious of the pain that must be visible in them she now looked away, but still went on.

“ The girl said, ‘ Don’t talk so, aunty; I don’t know what has got into you. The doctor talked like a fool; I expect he would n’t have said it if I had been by, I can tell you. The roads are getting bad, and it’s out of his way to come here.’ You may know how she felt by that; she wouldn’t have said it about the doctor, if she had n’t been so desperate. But when the old woman heard her going on that way, she smiled almost. ‘ You’re mistook there,’ said she. ‘ Michael Detwiler don’t grudge going. You must n’t talk so, my gal, or what will they think of you down there ? ’

“ When the girl heard her say that, she guessed what she meant, and felt as if she must die. She could n’t answer a word. ‘You are going to have a new home, and the bestest home that gal ever had. You 'll forget old aunty before those maple leaves turn red. I planted them about the door myself,’ she said. Then it was dreadful to hear her say to that poor girl: ‘ I have n’t done right things by you, child, I 'm afeared. Not always. But now you 'll have a better chance than you’ve ever had to do right by yourself. Be as good as you know how to be, and there is n't any one living can beat you at that, you dear child.’ ”

“O, that was sweet to hear,” said Mary.

“ Yes ; but once she said to me, 'You devil ! ’ that was a great while ago. It comes back,—for perhaps I was one. _Then I — the girl, I mean — asked her, ‘ Where am I going ? — when am I going ? ’

“ ‘ To-morrow, maybe,’ said she. ‘ I may be called for any day now. There’s nobody I dast leave you with on this earth but one, and she ’ll be to you more ’n I ever could be. And do it for your mother’s sake. The Lord above forgive me where I have come short. You have had a hard, hard time up here with the old woman.’ ‘No, I have not,’ the girl said. ‘ I have had as good a time as anybody ever had. There could n’t be a better. Handed about so from one to the other ! I am not going away. I am going to stay here, and keep you with me.’ But the old woman said, ‘ We must go, both of us, you your way and I mine. You are young, and I am old. It ain't for either of us to say we will or we won’t. It is going to be managed for us. Your things are all ready. You have only got to put ’em in the blue chest. You must wear your best frock down,’she said. ‘ You'll have all the money the old place will bring. I have told the doctor about it. Yes, things come about,’ she said, ‘ if you just give ’em time enough. Neighbor Faulkner ’ll get my land that he’s wanted for years. The old house ’ll go down. He won’t fill the well up, I reckon. I dug that well myself. Never mind; but don’t let ’em bury the old woman so deep you’ll never be able to draw up a thought of her. And mind, everything is yourn.’ ”

The face of Edna had grown pale while she told this tale. “ That is about all,” she said, after a pause. “ Nobody ever heard this story before. The minister’s wife had said she would take the girl; and so when all was over, the doctor took her down to live in a house full of people, where she knew she could not suit anybody, though they were all kind to her ; it was a long time before she could make up her mind to stay there; and now she feels all the time that something will happen to take her away. She did go back to the old place once ; but it was terrible up there. The hop-vine had grown over the door, and there was only the crickets to make a noise. She had to get in at the window, for the door was fastened. She stayed there all night, but she could not sleep ; and if they had n’t come for her she would have gone away—somewhere, for the old house was n’t home to her any longer. . . . . So now she is staying on ; but Mary has come, and she knows all about it; that makes a difference ! ”

“But I should think,” said Mary, “that the girl you have been telling about would almost worship the minister’s wife.”

“ I would not like to have her know all I think,” Edna answered; and her answer expressed exactly her feeling, — a want of confidence in Mrs. Holcombe that would command her love.

The next time Father Trost had anything to say about the Holcombes to Mary, she told him Edna’s story, and said : “ Poor child ! she don’t feel at home there ; she is n’t a bit like their people ; but I don’t see how she can help liking them. I ’m sure there could n’t kinder folks be found.”

“ That’s natur’,” answered the old man ; “ she’s cut on another bias.”

And this antagonism he considered a judgment.

CHAPTER VI.

THE business that took Mr. Holcombe to Guildersleeve’s was pressing heaviest on his mind as he approached the farm-house that stood at some distance from the high road in a field unshadowed by a solitary tree, — as bare and bleak a place to dwell in as the old man’s heart had made for himself and others on the earth.

Old, hoary, and dying, he lay on his bed, past help of any power that he could command. He was waiting with the impatience of a man who had never known what patience was, moment after moment waiting for the arrival of Preacher Holcombe.

For twenty years, ever since Bishop Rose’s time, he had lived under ban, indifferent all these years to the sentence of his brethren, able to live without their friendship, and able also to maintain himself without dealings with them. His business relations had been with men of other denominations. But neither his pride, nor the defiance with which he had withstood those who had tried and excommunicated him for his contumacious behavior, nor the spirit of revenge with which he had in personal combat proved his rights, refusing, when the brethren called him before them, to recognize their privilege of interference, and to submit to their reproof, — nothing of all this had tempted him to unite himself with any other religious body. Father Trost had not yet abandoned his hope of numbering the old man among his converts ; but it was sufficiently manifest that Guildersleeve was not the stuff of which a convert could be made. The stamp of the Mennonite was as deeply impressed upon him as his own nature. He could live independent of all outside shows, he said; and he had given some evidence that it was possible for a man to become a heathen, and go on from year to year prospering and laying up treasure on earth. Guildersleeve had long been accounted the richest farmer of the district, and so he was a sad stumbling-block in the way of those who had been trained in the belief that the face of Providence was against the ungodly. More than one young man, contemplating the career of Guildersleeve, had found himself doubting whether the old Scripture would admit of modern application, — “ though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.”

After a brief illness, it had become evident to this stalwart offender that he could not possibly recover, and now he remembered death and judgment, and began to exhibit those dastardly symptoms which in a moment can destroy the significance of a lifetime. All his boasted strength, then, was but a weakness ! If we could imagine a devil, and a devil repenting, what more pitiable object! He told the doctor he wanted to see Friend Holcombe. At that moment when he made the request all his defences fell. His will once shaken, no more rallying for him. There stood the discovered and ashamed spirit which had intrenched itself in solitude so long!

He had given no hint to his family, when the doctor had gone, that he expected another guest that day. He only lay and waited, and to those outraged women, his mother and his wife, who had been tossed for sleepless days and nights on the rack of his agony, the state of his mind seemed auspicious.

As to the preacher, though so long a resident in Swatara, known far and near for zeal, efficience, and the widest sympathy, it had never been his fortune to come into real contact with Guildersleeve.

During her early widowhood, and indeed for years, until infirmity and broken-heartedness, and her son’s direct interference prevented, Mrs. Guildersleeve had held a prominent place in the church. But she had lived too long, she deemed. Ten years ago, when the sad conviction fastened upon the whitehaired woman, her son kissed her, and said they were cruel words to hear. But not for that she lingered; she seemed to be only waiting until her prayers should be answered.

Standing by the window at nightfall, she saw Mr. Holcombe approach. He rode down the lane adjoining the field in which the house stood, dismounted, and tied his horse to the cedar post under the willow which she herself planted when a girl: and never was a truer saying, she was wont to think, than that with the willow the planter plants his sorrow.

Friend Holcombe was not a stranger to old Dame Guildersleeve. Now and then at a neighbor’s funeral, or in some chance way, she had met him, and in his face she had seen that which gave her confidence in him. Had the doctor sent him here ? The face of her son was turned toward the wall; what should she do ? Perhaps he slept. Then it would be best that he should waken and see for himself that Mr. Holcombe was there. She dared not even open the door until the preacher knocked, so in bondage was she yet, though the man who had shut her life up in this prison was lying on his bed as helpless as a worm.

It was impossible that she should suspect the real fact that her son was listening all the while with an intentness which nothing could escape, first for the clatter of horse-hoofs on the stones in the lane, then for the sound of the gate swinging on its rusty hinges, then for approaching footsteps. “ Come in,” he said, in a way that startled the old woman, when the preacher knocked. His voice had n’t sounded strong like that in many a day. Would he get up next, and order her out of the room ? it would not have surprised her.

What did Moses Guildersleeve want at this time of day? An assurance which no man could give. A witness no pleader could produce. He had wakened to find that upon him an eye was fixed which must have been always observing, that towards him an ear was bent which had heard all! He had been living in frightful intimacy with a power which could crush him in a moment !

But now that Mr. Holcombe was here, it seemed as if he had nothing to say to him. Had it been possible for the minister to have mistaken the meaning of the doctor, he would have supposed that his presence was tolerated merely because the sick man had not force enough to resent it.

He made no allusion to the message Detwiler had brought him, choosing that Guildersleeve should acknowledge that he had sent for him ; so he inquired about his sickness, until at last, as if ashamed of his faltering, the old man said: “ There’s no use talking about what laid me here on this bed ; one can’t do the work of ten, and keep on that way more than seventy year. I’m a dead man, as I expect Detwiler told you.”

“ He said you were a very sick man, Mr. Guildersleeve.”

A pause followed, broken by, “Did you walk up here ? ”

“No; the doctor’s Lightfoot brought me.”

“ My Sorrel in the stable is worth a dozen of him. You may have him. I’ve made my will, but he’s yours ! Sorrel ’s for the preacher. Lightfoot ’s a pretty fair traveller, but not the creetur Detwiler thinks. What’s the odds, though ? Michael is a good fellow ; I’ve always liked him since he first came into this country.”

Anything to delay the moment when something very different from this must be said. In three days he had not spoken as many words ; but now, as if angry with himself, he broke out: “ I did n’t expect you would come ! what do you want ? ”

Mr. Holcombe could easily answer that question. “ I want to hear from you, sir, the words I must wish to hear from any man in your case. I want to feel sure that when you quit this comfortable home, which you have made for yourself here, you will go to another, where you will find a love which will go beyond that of a mother.”

As if the steady, mild composure of the preacher’s voice had soothed him, Guildersleeve answered with a softening voice, “Nothing could go beyond that.”

Low as the words were spoken, the old woman sitting by the fireplace heard them, and wistfully turned toward the bed ; but he did not call her to him, and she sat still in her place.

Then followed a long, pitiful talk between Fear, that was inquiring a safe path out of life, and Faith, who saw the way so bright and clear. Mr. Holcombe tried to show the old man that an angel of light was waiting to conduct him ; but he saw only angry brethren, and the averted faces of old Ahern and Eby, who came into the country with him, and between whom and himself were ties of relationship which he had refused to recognize these many years. It was the preacher’s duty to show the sinner that these men would be among the first to welcome him back to the church if he would but return, that they expected him ! Guildersleeve doubted this; but there was August Ent, what did he say ? Would August be glad to have him back, did he expect him ? The minister could not doubt it ; but might he bring August with him in the morning to see Mr. Guildersleeve ? then he could hear with his own ears what the deacon would say. No ! no ! but there was n’t a man, he owned, for whose good opinion he would give so much. If Ent actually expected him back, he’d go, if he died trying. “ Then,” said Mr. Holcombe, “ shall I tell the brethren tomorrow that it is your wish to return to them, and that, if God spares your life, you will ? ”

The mother of Guildersleeve at that question knocked the ashes out of her pipe and laid it on the shelf, and waited her son’s answer.

“They would n’t believe it.”

“ Not if I tell them ! O yes. They will believe it when I tell them you acknowledge that you sinned when yon undertook to right yourself by going to law, and resorted to blows when you had been injured; and that if it were possible you would gladly give them all manner of evidence of your penitence.”

Guildersleeve hesitated, but nothing short of such confession, he perceived, could now bring him out of the place in which he found himself. At last he said : —

“ It’s true. I was wrong. I have been paying for my pride interest and principal. I’ve had a dreadful hard row to hoe, Hulcum, I tell you.”

“Shall I say it to the brethren or to the congregation ? It shall be as you wish.” These words covered much ground, and they made an impression.

“It would put them women of mine in everybody’s mouth.” said he.

Low as he spoke, his mother heard. “ Son, if it’s me you mean, or Ruth, let it be afore them all. It ’s for the glory of God.”

“ A debt,” he muttered. “ I’ve always paid my honest debts, Mr. Hulcum. A man’s a mean cuss that won’t pay his debts. But this seems to be outlawed.”

“ It could not be if you lived forever. Come, brother, show your hope that your Maker has forgiven you, by asking the brethren to forgive you to-morrow. They will do it with joy.”

“ They ’ll say the old bear 7s afeared at dying.” The man’s face took the hue of tawny marble as he spoke. It was the nearest approach to pallor that could be produced upon it.

“ Why should you not fear ? You are going into the presence of a just God and holy. But if fear is reasonable, so is trust. You reproach yourself about these women ; that gives me something to hope by, for they, I know, forgive you.”

“ Mother, come here.”

She came at that call. She had borne the huge sinner on her bosom in his sleek infancy, on her heart in his rough manhood. He took her hand and held it fast in his. At last he pressed it to his lips, and his eyes, which had been closed, opened upon her.

“ Will He do like you ? ” he said.

“ What was you thinking when you married Ruth ? ”

She did well to remind him of those, his best days. He thought of them and did not answer.

“You believed He gave her to you.”

“ Your memory is a first best one, mother! ”

“If I have n’t forgotten that, He has n't. If you look to Him now, when you 're low down and far gone, as you did when you was young and nothing could stand afore you, son ! He is n’t deaf. He does n’t grow hard of hearing and old like us.”

“ Ruth ! ” he shouted, in a voice that seemed to fill the house ; then he turned to Mr. Holcombe, “ Tell ’em all, children and all,” he said ; " they all know Guildersleeve ; tell ’em it was devil’s pride, and I've been a devil’s angel to the church. The Methodists courted me for that ; I knew it, but I never shook hands with ’em on ’t. Ruthy—”

While he spoke a woman had entered the room, — a gray-haired, bowed, and wrinkled woman, the kind of creature a man can crush to the dust and no one be the wiser for it, if the knowledge depends on her complaint. Patience and loyalty in their inferior forms were her virtues. She had never expected an hour like this. Out of the lips which had not opened in speech to her for years she never expected to hear words of self-reproach, or pleading for pardon. What words that this dying wretch could say would restore anything like joy to the cowed, frightened thing who had given herself to him to labor in his fields and in his house, to endure privations and hardships, to pass through experiences which the heart can indeed make light of when it discerns love in the eyes of him for whom it endures them !

It seemed now as if she never could have left the corner into which she had crept, and approached near to his bed, had not Mr. Holcombe taken her hand, and in a gentle manner constrained her.

“ Don’t look at me that way, Ruth,” said her husband, in his turn apparently alarmed at her presence. “ Are you afeared of me? You did n’t look that way once. Mother remembers I was glad when you said you’d have me. . . . . Yon can tell by a woman’s looks what the matter is. She looks as if I had scared her.”

“ Don’t talk so, Moses. The minister will think you’ve gone crazy.”

“ What’s that to me ! You can think of it when I’m gone. It was n’t right, Ruthy; ’t was hellish in me to take what I found, and do what I did with it. But the folks are all going to know I owned it at last.”

Again he closed his eyes and drew his hand from hers, and again it sought his mother’s ; he held to the hope that between them at least no separation was possible. Her enduring motherlove gave him all the hope he had for the dark future towards which he was hurrying.

His wife sat down on the bedside, and waited there till he looked up again, then she smiled and kissed him. She too had forgiven all. Henceforth she would always believe that a sort of craziness had made her husband what he was so many years, but by the mercy of God he had come out of it before he died.

Friend Holcombe might now depart. But would he come again to-morrow ? Yes, surely. After he had spoken with the congregation and the brethren ? Yes.

He had not passed from the lane to the highway, before he began to think of the argument to faithfulness which he should have to lay before August in this respect and confidence which his conduct had inspired in a man like Guildersleeve. And while he thought of this, lo on the highway August stood before him !

CHAPTER VII.

WHEN Deacon Ent knocked thatevening at the door of Father Trost’s house, he was in no enviable state of mind.

An hour before, when he met Mr. Holcombe on the road, the minister had stopped to acquaint him with Guildersleeve’s words and wish concerning him. The words made an impression. The old man’s testimony to the deacon’s influence, his Christian influence, his influence as a Mennonite, had an importance which, surely, the future of the living man, as well as his past, must justify.

Instead of proceeding directly to the house of his neighbor, as he had purposed to do when startled by the sudden and unwelcome appearance of Mr. Holcombe, August went back to his own house and walked about in the moonlight, wondering whether he had been hindered from going over to Mr. Trost’s house for an hour only that he might meet the minister and receive that message, and be told again that he had the reputation of a saint to sustain before the people. Ought he not then to keep out of the way of temptation ? But temptation! That word aroused his indignation, and he arose and looked at the bright moon, and the paler stars, as if he would defy the very heavens to show a better girl than Mary Trost. And she loved him !

If he would only compel himself to look steadily back on what had happened, he could not help seeing that there was a time when he held all this business in his own hands ; and whether he would continue to do so was a matter of choice with him. He must remember that the first time he said anything to Mary that would have made Mr. Holcombe open his eyes with wonder could he have overheard it, she had not understood him. He might have retreated then, and no soul would have been the wiser, but, on the contrary, he had gone far out of his usual course and practice, in the hope of kindling in her heart a little spark of interest in himself.

At last love had surprised her, and involuntarily she had confessed it. All this was his own work. And he had promised Mary that he would come to her this evening, knowing that she was alone, for her father was away on his circuit.

But since making that engagement, he had talked with the preacher in the meeting-house, and the preacher had now, as it were, risen out of the ground to talk to him.

The question simply was, whether he would go over to Trost’s or not. He went.

He was able to meet and to bear his own responsibilities.

But it is written, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.”

Twice already, since the moon rose, Mary had gone to the door to look for the deacon. When she had assured herself that no figure walked along the road or across the fields, she still stood there and noticed how all things brightened in the moonlight, and listened to the sounds proceeding at intervals from barn and shed where the living creatures were gathered; and while she stood she sang : —

But she did not go far in that hymn. She remembered what had taken her to the door, and resumed the work which she would not drop again, she promised herself, till August came. Nothing, she felt persuaded, would prevent his coming.

When he knocked, she said, “ Come in,” but without rising from her chair; and when he entered she still sat, quiet, and collected, as if she were not to be disturbed by his coming or his going. Mary was a conspicuously fine-looking girl ; it was easy to determine into what kind of flower this pink bud would expand. Besides good looks she had good traits, — candor, good temper, steadfastness. She was what is called “well informed,” moreover, for she had been a year at a Wesleyan school, and had made good use of her advantages; her composed face and neat attire made her an attractive beauty to the eyes of August Ent.

In the perfect order and bright aspect of the kitchen in which she sat, in the polish of the oaken floor, the cleanliness of the walls, the orderly array of tin and delft-ware on the shelves, which each had its ornamental border of paper fringe, Ent had come to take a pride similar to that of ownership. Ever since this establishment was set up, he had been filled with admiration by the perfection of housekeeping which was exhibited therein.

Some Dutch blood flowed in his Mary’s veins. To the honest Hollanders of a far-off town the faces of her ancestors were familiar. There toiled her sturdy progenitors, scrubbing with Dutch ardor the fences round their dwellings, yea, even the very trunks of trees in whose shadows the honest fathers sat and smoked. They gave theirlives to scrubbing-brush and sand, and went down to dust at last abhorring it. Mary’s love of cleanliness, however, was not exaggerated into sin or slavery. August knew whose steady oversight ruled here, turning all things to the best account, whose patience and content were constant. But out of the combination of the very qualities he prized he might have perceived the difficulties he must meet in attempting to persuade the girl to accept with him his faith. To her mind it would be but a little thing for August to leave the strait-laced sect to which he belonged for that of which her father was so notable a member. She did not, perhaps, wish to convert the deacon out of his religion into hers, but she had still less intention of being drawn out of her own religious body into his.

The relation between them had not yet assumed the shape in her mind that necessarily one must make a proselyte of the other. She was merely persuaded that she had no call to join herself to a denomination so despised by her people as that in which Deacon Ent had grown up. He must of necessity be a conspicuous member of whatever body he identified himself with, and would it not be a great thing if he would prove himself capable of a more liberal Christianity ? Father Trost had been asking the same question.

Among August’s thoughts as he came hither had been this, that he would attempt some treatment of the vexed subject this night. It might he that when it was required, he should find himself furnished with an irresistible argument. But when he had entered the kitchen, argument was the last style of conversation he felt desirous to attempt. Still, in the midst of their talk, he did ask Mary if, provided the day were pleasant, she would walk down with him to the meeting-house, and hear Mr. Holcombe preach in the morning. He wanted her to see with her own eyes the impression made by Guildersleeve’s confession.

Mary considered, and said that she would ; she had never heard Mr. Holcombe preach, and she liked his wife, she liked them all. She heard he did n’t put out his doctrines very often, and hoped he would let ’em alone to-morrow, for if there was anything she disliked it was to have doctrines put at her the minute she went into a congregation where she did n’t belong.

“ It seems to me,” said the deacon, thoughtfully, “ it gets clearer and clearer, that there’s one truth that covers all the others, and takes ’em all in. That’s the reason that I wonder more and more at this narrow, persecuting spirit which some good people have. If there was more of the great truth understood, there wouldn’t be so much show of holding by the little ones.”

He spoke with a solemnity and tenderness that made an impression on Mary, so that she asked, with utmost deference : “ What do you mean by the great truth, August ? Some will have it’s one thing, and some another.”

He answered with a single word. It rolled out of him like a cannon-ball, — “ Love.”

After a moment’s reflection, she responded, “ That may be.”

When she answered so, and he saw that they were of one mind on the most important point, August seemed to become possessed of a new power of speech ; he forgot the church, his influence, his obligations, Mr. Holcombe, Mr. Guildersleeve. “ Let all other questions go,” he exclaimed. “ I did n’t come here to talk about doctrines. It was thinking of you that brought me. I never shall vest, Mary, till I see you in my own house. That is your place. Would n’t our house be equal to any meeting - house in the land ? Would n’t we be worth a good price to each other ? ”

He himself broke the silence which followed Ids question: “Did n’t you promise, Mary, that nothing should stand between us ? ”

“ Yes, August, but— ”

“Yes is yes !” said he, impetuously, taking up her hesitating speech.

“ Yes is yes,” she answered in a lower voice, but now not hesitating, equal to the demand of the moment.

“ Give me your hand, then, for a token.”

She gave it to him, and it did not tremble in his strong grasp. “ I would like to see the thing, the man, or the church that could separate us,” he said, with a short, triumphant laugh. Then he arose and lifted the little table, covered so neatly with its white cloth, and furnished so prettily with the candles ot Mary’s own making, in theirbright brass candlesticks. “ That shall be done with whatever interferes,” he said, moving it one side. “ It shall be put out of the way as so much rubbish ; Mary agrees to that ? ”

Beyond imagination he had spoken, — inconsequential, impotent seemed all argument that would oppose him. He was to be governed by no authority except the authority of the love he had declared. He did not seem to notice even that Mary did not answer his last question; i was in fact hardly a question, but rather an assertion of fact; and indeed, he did read agreement in her face. Looking around he saw Trost’s Bible lying on a shelf. He arose and brought it to the table. “ We cannot see the end,” he said; “we don’t know how it will be brought about; but if we belong to each other, nothing shall interfere between us, — we know that. We don’t bind ourselves by oaths as some might. I could live a long time on your promise, Mary, but this word of God is precious to us ; lay your hand on the book, and let us promise before God to be true to each other.”

Mary shrunk back a moment, as though this were some unholy rite he was proposing ; but she could not withstand the appeal of his solemn, yet glowing face ; she came forward and laid her hand upon the book; he closed his own broad palms over it, and bowed his head as if in silent benediction, and then aloud called on God to witness that he gave himself to love, protect, and serve her.

He had but ceased speaking, when Father Trost opened the door, and advanced into the room. “ Well, well, young people,” said he, not unpleasantly, “ are you holding Quaker meeting?”