household had drawn into its shell. And the huge drifts, lying defiant
against the fences in the short, ineffectual winter sunlight, held out
little hope of reanimation. Aunt Faith, in her pumpkin hood, and Rob Roy
cloak, and carpet moccasins, came over once in two or three days, and
even occasionally stayed to tea, and helped make up a rubber of whist
for Mr. Gartney's amusement; but, beyond this, they had no social
excitement.

January brought a thaw; and, still further to break the monotony, there
arose a stir and an anxiety in the parish.

Good Mr. Holland, its minister of thirty years, whose health had been
failing for many months, was at last compelled to relinquish the duties
of his pulpit for a time; and a supply was sought with the ultimate
probability of a succession. A new minister came to preach, who was to
fill the pastor's place for the ensuing three months. On his first
Sunday among them, Faith heard a wonderful sermon.

I indicate thus, not the oratory, nor the rhetoric; but the _sermon_, of
which these were the mere vehicle--the word of truth itself--which was
spoken, seemingly, to her very thought.

So also, as certainly, to the long life-thought of one other. Glory
McWhirk sat in Miss Henderson's corner pew, and drank it in, as a soul
athirst.

A man of middle age, one might have said, at first sight--there was,
here and there, a silver gleam in the dark hair and beard; yet a fire
and earnestness of youth in the deep, beautiful eye, and a look in the
face as of life's first flush and glow not lost, but rather merged in
broader light, still climbing to its culmination, belied these tokens,
and made it as if a white frost had fallen in June--rising up before the
crowded village congregation, looked round upon the upturned faces, as
One had looked before who brought the bread of Life to men's eager
asking; and uttered the selfsame simple words.

It was a certain pause and emphasis he made--a slight new rendering of
punctuation--that sent home the force of those words to the people who
heard them, as if it had been for the first time, and fresh from the
lips of the Great Teacher.

* * * * *

"'Blessed are the poor: _in spirit_: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.'

"Herein Christ spoke, not to a class, only, but to the world! A world of
souls, wrestling with the poverty of life!

"In that whole assemblage--that great concourse--that had thronged from
cities an