ving
thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins thought he looked all
the time as if he wanted to get rid of her. The three parted, therefore,
not in the best humor all round. Mrs. Hopkins declared she'd see the
minister in Jericho before she'd fix herself up as if she was goin' to a
weddin' to go and see him again. Why, he did n't make any more of her
than if she'd been a tabby-cat. She believed some of these ministers
thought women's souls dried up like peas in a pod by the time they was
forty year old; anyhow, they did n't seem to care any great about 'em,
except while they was green and tender. It was all Miss Se-usan, Miss
Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, my dear! but as for her, she might jest as well
have gone with her apron on, for any notice he took of her. She did n't
care, she was n't goin' to be left out when there was talkin' goin' on,
anyhow.

Susan Posey, on her part, said she did n't like him a bit. He looked so
sweet at her, and held his head on one side,--law! just as if he had been
a young beau! And,--don't tell,--but he whispered that he wished the
next time I came I wouldn't bring that Hopkins woman!

It would not be fair to repeat what the minister said to himself; but we
may own as much as this, that, if worthy Mrs. Hopkins had heard it, she
would have treated him to a string of adjectives which would have greatly
enlarged his conceptions of the female vocabulary.

CHAPTER XIII.

BATTLE.

In tracing the history of a human soul through its commonplace nervous
perturbations, still more through its spiritual humiliations, there is
danger that we shall feel a certain contempt for the subject of such
weakness. It is easy to laugh at the erring impulses of a young girl;
but you who remember when_______ _________, only fifteen years old,
untouched by passion, unsullied in name, was found in the shallow brook
where she had sternly and surely sought her death,--(too true! too
true!--ejus animae Jesu miserere!--but a generation has passed since
then,)--will not smile so scornfully.

Myrtle Hazard no longer required the physician's visits, but her mind was
very far from being poised in the just balance of its faculties. She was
of a good natural constitution and a fine temperament; but she had been
overwrought by all that she had passed through, and, though happening to
have been born in another land, she was of American descent. Now, it has
long been noticed that there is something in the