Underwood would sniff and say,

66

Petticoat govern

ment."

Clearly that was not his form of government.

Within this same hour a member of this household of faith, Mariah Hardenbergh, knocked at the weatherbeaten door of Hannah Carver. Hannah Carver, weather-beaten herself, opened the door a crack; she was not accustomed to Sunday visitors.

"Oh, Miss Hannah," catching her breath at the withheld welcome, "I thought I'd come to read to you."

"Oh," with an inflection of pleasure, "how good of you."

"No, I'm not good," said Mariah sturdily. "I'm cross and bad, and I'm afraid some judgment will fall on me for being so wicked."

"The tower of Siloam. They were not sinners above others, any more than you are," opening the door wide to the penitent and to her old eyes bewitching sinner. "What tower is ready to fall over on your head?"

66

'Only what I deserve," said Mariah, following Hannah Carver into her long sitting room and thinking she did not wonder that her mother wanted to go away; she had not been a good daughter. If she had been would not her mother have loved her best of all? Oh, dear!" she groaned, bursting into tears.

Hannah Carver was a girl herself two-score years ago. She let this girl have her way, and weep her

heart out, asking not one intrusive question. From a bit of remembered romance she was sure the weeping girl had quarreled with John Wheatcroft. She could not forbear saying when she brought Mariah a cup of tea-her own unfailing cup of consolation-that John Wheatcroft was a good man and deacon in the church. Mariah laughed at the tea and the remark and graciously received both.

"I trust your mourning will be turned into laughter," said the romantic old woman, with the air of one pronouncing the benediction.

"I haven't read to you," said Mariah penitently. "I didn't mean to behave so; but I had to cry or scream."

"Crying is more befitting the day."

"And the subject," the subject," was Mariah's retort. She would have laughed, but that would not have been befitting the day.

"I'm glad I came, ," she said later, when she heard the sleigh-bells stop at the door.

"So am I; you have done me good. I wish I could cry like that. My mother died a year ago, and I shall never be comforted till I see her again.'

"I'm so sorry," said the girl with a mother.

"I want to rent my upstairs rooms and summer kitchen this summer to some Sabbath-keeping city people. If you hear of anybody let me know."

Hannah Carver was forgetting that it was the Sab

bath, Maria thought mischievously.

"But I mustn't

think about it to-day," she made demure reply.

"Oh," with a quick effort to catch back her words. "Did I speak of it? That shows me how I can't keep it out of my mind. It's the hardest thing in the world for me not to think my own thoughts on the Sabbath

day as we are told."

"But you must think some thoughts; whose must you think?" said Mariah resentfully.

"Meditation would keep me in thoughts, but my head gets so tired meditating."

"There's plenty to think about.'

"But not Sunday things."

"Oh, dear! Now you talk like John Wheatcroft. I have to think of things on Sunday."

"My mother used to think that some parts of the Bible shouldn't be read on Sunday."

"Then I think," exclaimed the girl hastily, forgetting that Hannah Carver's mother was dead and must not be spoken against, "that she was like the Jews who persecuted Jesus for not keeping the Sabbath." Then frightened, she fled through the half-open door, and turning to see if the mother's daughter had forgiven her, saw the weather-beaten face disappear as the door was shut.

"I wish she had happy Sundays," she said, as John Wheatcroft, sitting in the sleigh, extended his hand to help her up to his side.

"Doesn't she? Why not?"

"Because she can't think her own thoughts," was the reply with indignant promptness.

"Would her own thoughts make her any happier? Yours do not seem to."

"Sometimes my thoughts do," she said shyly.

"If we did not set aside our own thoughts once a week, when would a man think something better than he can think himself?"

"Oh, dear; I'll never be good," she sighed. "You can't think how hateful and horrid I feel. I wish you would drive around for an hour or two; brave enough to face that big man again."

66

I am not

It's not
God

Driving around is not for the Sabbath. the way to get braver either. Face the truth. makes the truth; do not be afraid of it.”

"But aren't there wicked truths? she questioned. "This is a wicked, sinful, dreadful, unnatural, selfish, terrible truth."

66

Mariah, you use too many words. You confuse your judgment with words."

"Then I will not speak again," she retorted, hurt and angry.

The remainder of the drive was silent, but she felt that her companion was sympathetic. Once she looked up into his eyes and smiled. By the warm light of his blue eyes she knew that he had forgiven her. She could not live and not be forgiven.

CHAPTER IX

HOT BISCUITS AND A GOLD RING

Ours, but to do our best,
Matters not what the test,

God's part to do the rest;
Let us be glad.

HE captain was telling a story to Miss Mariah, sit

THE

ting close to her chair. It was the story of his shipwreck. The ship was loaded with coal, from Newcastle to New York. Twenty days out the ship went down; nothing was saved. It was a long story and of thrilling interest to listener and narrator; Mariah and John Wheatcroft entered as the deep voice, moved with unwonted feeling, was saying, "I thought it was my last day; the day of judgment was hanging over me.

Mariah stood listening, with her hat in her hand. Miss Mariah's old head was bent forward till it nearly touched the broad shoulder close to her arm-chair. Harry Waterbury had been one of her Sunday-school boys in the old days.

With shy eyes and deepened color-if that were possible Katrina Hardenbergh stepped about, setting the tea table. She had made biscuits for supper Sunday night. The tempting things, small, browned deliciously, and hot, were wrapped in a white towel on the