ess.

The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon spiritual
matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his study visitors who came
with such intent. Sometimes it was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill, in
great iron-bowed spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous voice,
who had got his brain onto a muddle about the beast with two horns, or
the woman that fled into the wilderness, or other points not settled to
his mind in Scott's Commentary. The minister was always very busy at
such times, and made short work of his deacon's doubts. Or it might be
that an ancient woman, a mother or a grandmother in Israel, came with her
questions and her perplexities to her pastor; and it was pretty certain
that just at that moment he was very deep in his next sermon, or had a
pressing visit to make.

But it would also happen occasionally that one of the tenderer ewe-lambs
of the flock needed comfort from the presence of the shepherd. Poor Mrs.
Stoker noticed, or thought she noticed, that the good man had more
leisure for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet
and venerable matron or spinster. The sitting was apt to be longer; and
the worthy pastor would often linger awhile about the door, to speed the
parting guest, perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young
people who are not displeased with each other, and who often find it as
hard to cross a threshold single as a witch finds it to get over a
running stream. More than once, the pallid, faded wife had made an
errand to the study, and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks,
flushed with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had gone
back to her chamber with her hand pressed against her heart, and the
bitterness of death in her soul.

The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that the minister's
wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism, such as only women,
who feel all the nerves which in men are as insensible as
telegraph-wires, can experience.

The doctor did not know what to make of her case,--whether she would live
or die,--whether she would languish for years, or, all at once, roused by
some strong impression, or in obedience to some unexplained movement of
the vital forces, take up her bed and walk. For her bed had become her
home, where she lived as if it belonged to her organism. There she lay,
a not unpleasing invalid to contemplate, always looking resigned,
patient, serene, e