wound past his own dwelling to hers at the foot of the mountain.

It was scarcely ten minutes until he heard her voice at the gate again, and through the curtainless window, he could distinguish in the fading light the slender, girlish figure leaning upon the low palings on the other side of which stood a tall, slender youth, whose erect carriage, and shock of yellow hair falling picturesquely about his shoulders and surmounted by the inevitable slouch, told him that it was Joe Bowen. His head drooped, ever so slightly, to meet the pretty face lifted to his. She was laying down instructions of some kind, for the giant nodded now and then, and her pretty gurgling laugh, half suppressed, in consideration of the sick woman, came to the ears of the physician, watching and listening, with a feeling half anger, half annoyance, in his heart, until the conference was ended and Lissy returned to her charge.

"Is she asleep?" she asked softly while she laid aside her things. "I met Joe Bowen yonder where the path forks, and he said he 'd go down and feed the chickens for me. Joe's a master hand at chickens, though he is a sinner."

She laughed, tucking the covers more securely about the feet of her patient. Evidently Joe's sins were not altogether unpardonable to her partial sense.

"But," she added naïvely, "I ain't so mighty good myse'f as I can be settin' myse'f in judgment on Joe. I ain't a perfessor; I ain't even clear in my mind that I believe all the Methodists say; nor the Episcopers either for that matter. I know there ain't any sense in all that talkin' back at the parson like the Episcopers talk, same as if he didn't know what he was sayin'; an' there ain't any call for him to put on them robe fixin's as I can see. And all of that about the dead risin' I know ain't so. For Joe opened an Indian grave last summer-there's a whole graveyard of 'em over yonder on Duck River—and there was the Indian dead and buried same as ever. And he must 'a' been buried a hundred years I know. Oh," she paused; a new idea had come to her,-"mebby the Indians don't count. The Book don't say anything about Indians, and neither does Brother Barry. Air you goin'?"

"Yes, I must get down the mountain while I can see the path. I am not as young as I used to be."

She laughed again, and toyed with the pewter spoon and coarse saucer with which he had prepared the mustard.

"You don't appear to be so mighty old as I can make out," she said.

The words pleased him. Age had never been unwelcome to him; in fact, he had scarcely felt that it had really come to him, until he crossed paths with this sweet young life. Her very next words, however, served to dash the little sweet with bitter.

"Are you afraid to remain here alone?" he asked. "If you are I will send Aunt Dilce up to stay-with you. Mrs. Tucker will not waken before midnight possibly; I have given her a sleeping potion."

There was the faintest hint of embarrassment in her manner as she replied:

"Joe said he'd come up and sit with me till Lucy Ann got here, and then he said he'd fetch me home again." "Oh! he did."

There was a slight impatience in the words but she did not recognize it. She was innocent of intent to wound; too unconscious of offence, too entirely unused to the world and its ways, to understand that she could be in any sense a cause, however innocent, of contention-a thorn in the bosom of a man's content.

She gave him her earnest and entire attention while he explained the different medicines and gave directions concerning them, interrupting him now and then, if it might be called an interruption, with her simple "Yes, sir," "No, sir," "All right, Doctor Borin'." She even walked to the gate with him, and put the rusted chain over the post that held the broken fastenings; and called to him as he went off down the snow-dusted path:

"I'll fetch you a basket of fresh eggs to-morrow sure and certain."

And he had called back to her, "So do; so do," quite cheerily.

Yet there was an ache in his heart; the thorn had pierced home.

(To be continued.)

IRENE.

BY WILLIAM COLBY COOPER.

Come to my sheltering arms, Irene, And pillow your head on my yearning breast Pillow it there and at last find rest, Like a tired bird in its little nest, My beautiful fallen queen

My wayward, wand'ring Irene.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

BY MRS. CALVIN KRYDER REIFSNIDER.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Were I in your place, surrounded by beauty, art, books, and music, I should never want to cross the threshold into the outside world," said Salome to Ruby as she seated herself in the Temple one Saturday morning to spend the hour before Ruby took her morning walk.

"Of what use would my life be then?" asked Ruby, looking at her with those penetrating eyes which Salome could never fathom, although she felt that they looked down into her very inmost being and penetrated her secret thoughts and motives.

"Could it not be a beautiful, peaceful one, sinless, in fact, since there would be no contact save with peace and purity here?"

"A hermit's life, however pure, could not benefit mankind. Our Saviour set us a different example. We must go among the ignorant and the poor and lift them up by giving them good thoughts and purposes," Ruby answered gently.

"And what thanks will you get for it?" almost sneered the sceptical Salome.

"Really, I had not thought of that," answered Ruby.

"Indeed! Then you're a queer Christian worker. The typical Christian workers are always trying to impress poor sinful humanity that they ought to be grateful. Grateful for what? Being poor, wretched, downtrodden, and for the visitors who come and tell them of it?"

"Perhaps you misunderstand the workers. Perhaps they are trying to teach the poor to be grateful for the fact that God is ever near them, ready to hear their first cry to Him for help; to strengthen the first resolve to turn to Him; to walk with them just as soon as they will suffer themselves to be led into the right path."

"They'd do better, in my opinion, to let people entirely alone; to attend to their own business. They are deceitful meddlers with only one general or particular motive; that is, to get their names in the daily papers for benevolent acts they never do, for charities they never give, for motives they never had. Ugh! how I hate them."

"If what you say is true, Salome, they harm no one but themselves."

"Don't they? I say they do! They cause others to hate them just as I do."

"Your hatred reflects back upon yourself, mars your young face, and scars your young heart," answered Ruby solemnly.

"My mother was a church member, and when my father was able to entertain all the preachers in the country she was 'Sister Blake.' When they, and other good friends, had eaten us out of house and home, they forgot all about her-the wretches," and the words came through Salome's teeth with a hiss that caused Ruby to recoil.

"So much the worse for them. So much the better for your mother, who entertained them in a spirit of love and generosity, and who, I doubt not, brightens many dreary moments with memories of what, to her noble heart, was genuine Christian love."

Had Ruby's silvery voice been a sharp steel dagger she could not have cut more deeply the proud, sensitive, rebellious Salome. For a moment she was silent. How did Ruby know this thing? For it was true-a memory of happier days was all that was left to little mother now. She did not think of the loss of her old friends as slights but as consideration for her that she could not afford to entertain them. But Salome would not yield the point. She was wretched, angry, jealous, and rebellious. She could not lay aside those old wrongs and leave them like seeds to spring up in the gardens of those who had sown them, as they surely would do, and let them reap their own harvest, but she fain would appropriate them as wrongs done to herself. Ruby, penetrating the feeling, said:

"Every wrong act, every unjust deed, every sinful thought, is impressed upon the person who does it."

"Do you mean to say that they do not affect the lives of others?" she asked with blazing eyes.

"Oh, no! certainly not. I might do you a grievous wrong from which you would certainly suffer but I should not go free from punishment. I might lie about you and that lie, being accepted as a truth by others, would have all the force of truth in wronging you, perhaps, temporarily, while I should in fact have made myself a liar, than which no other character is more detestable. Christ said the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and the father of lies. Does anything murder peace, honor, virtue, and happiness with such wholesale slaughter as the liar? The Lord permits nothing to happen that is not for our good."