hout warning his bedroom door suddenly opened
and in stalked Miner. Grave and silent he waited, until when the meeting
bell sounded, he started forth to church, leaning as of old on the arm
of his friend, and entering his pew sat down beside him.

Ambrose did not pay a great deal of attention to the beginning of the
service that day; on coming in he noticed that Susan and Doctor Webb
were not in their accustomed places, but afterward he seemed always to
have been listening to the August hum of the bees just outside the
raised window on his side of the pew. Through it he could also see the
deep rose of the ripening pink clover fields, smell their almost
overpowering sweetness, till with the weight on his chest which he never
shook off these days he wondered if Emily, who loved the outdoors as he
did, was not by this time weary of feigning illness.

Then Brother Bibbs so changed the order of the usual Sunday routine
that it must have startled Ambrose into consciousness. The elderly man
had finished his sermon, but instead of at once announcing the closing
hymn to be followed by the benediction, he stood clearing his throat,
his little worn face paling with emotion.

"Brether'n and sister'n," he began slowly, "there be faith, hope and
charity, these three things, but the greatest of these is charity. I
want you now to fall on your knees with me and pray for the life of the
young woman lately come into our midst whom we, like the Pharisees of
old, have tried to cast out. I want you to pray for that young Yankee
school teacher, Miss Emily Dunham, because she is powerful sick, and if
the good Lord takes her to Him, I don't see just how we are coming out
with the greatest of these three things."

While the rest of the congregation were falling upon their knees Ambrose
somehow got himself out of the church, nor did he realize during the
moment of his leaving that Miner was there hanging on to his arm. After
a time, however, when both men were walking toward the log cabin, he
turned to his friend, whispering brokenly:

"I didn't know she was sick really, Miner. I thought she was just play
actin' same as I asked her to."

And Miner nodded. "My fault. I suspicioned your ignorance, but I ain't
been able to break it. Em'ly told me of your letter soon as it come. She
hadn't been feelin' any too well before then, though she'd sort 'er been
hidin' it, and afterward she kep' a-gettin' worse and worse."

When finally they had come