said the lady
hastily, "but a missionary's wife, you know--there is much to be
considered."

Philip, evidently bent upon doing his own considering, pursued his
inquiries, and gained the interview. He proposed to the young lady in
presence of the principal, and in so very business-like a way as
convinced both the elder and the younger that there was more
practicability beneath that poetical exterior, than the latter would
have suggested or warranted them in believing.

Philip was not long in discovering Emily Dean to be the eldest child of
an independent farmer in Western New York. She had four sisters and
three brothers younger than herself. "With such a family, the father can
more easily part with this daughter," thought Philip; and he started off
on the next train to visit the family of the Deans.

Emily he found to be a favorite in the household. His proposition to
take her with him "away to the barbarous Turk" was received with
consternation and tears. The more, that it was felt, from the first,
that if she wished it they should have to give her up.

The enthusiastic suitor proposed the father should at once go for his
daughter and conduct her home. To all objections and demurrers as to
haste and postponement Philip had a ready and eloquent answer. There was
no gain-saying this ardent pleader.

The farmer left his host of potato-gatherers and apple-pickers and went
off on the express. In twenty-four hours he returned with his daughter.
Philip would have given no time for preparations--but in this he was
forced to yield.

The parents insisted their eldest daughter should have a wedding
_trousseau_--it was not meet she should set out on so long a voyage,
across the ocean of water, and the ocean of married life, in the
condition of Miss Flora McFlimsey. So Philip St. Leger took this
interval of time for his flying trip to his brother-in-law in Virginia.

But he found, as we have seen, the gloom of death spread over Kennons.
Had he needed aught to convince him anew of the evanescent nature of all
beneath the sun, he found it here. It was indeed painful to contrast the
joy and happiness of this Southern home of little more than six years
ago, and the present desolation. In that joy he had shared--in this
gloom was his own heart wrung. In the moment of mournful silence that
followed his long; discourse and Duncan's, life seemed to him not worth
the living, and rising from his chair he said, with marked emphasis: