rogress of the work.

At nightfall they quitted the field, leaving the plough behind them.
Nat lifted Ivo on the horse, and walked by his side up the hill; but,
suddenly remembering that he had left his knife where the plough was,
he ran back hastily, and thus found himself again in the valley.
Looking up, he saw the sun set magnificently behind two mountains
draped in pine woods. Like the choir of a church built all of light and
gold were earth and sky; the treasures of eternity seemed to blink into
time; long streamers of all shades of red and purple floated about; the
little cloudlets were like, angels' heads; while in the midst was a
large, solemn mass of vapor like a vast altar of blue pedestal covered
with a cloth of flame. The sight provoked a wish to rise upward and
melt in rapture, and again an expectation to behold the bursting of the
cloud and the coming forth of the Lord in his glory to proclaim the
millennial reign of peace.

On the crown of the hill was Ivo. The horse, bound to the earth and
tearing up its bosom all day, seemed now to stride in mid-air and to
travel gently upward; his hoofs were seen to rise, but not to stand on
ground. Ivo was stretching out his arms as if an angel beckoned to him.
Two pigeons above his head winged their flight homeward: they rose high
and far,--what is high and what is far?--their pinions moved not: they
seemed to be drawn upward from above, and vanished into the fiery
floods.

Who can tell the pride and gladness of the heart when, glowing with the
spirit of the universe, it overpeers every limit and looks into the
vast realms of infinity?

Thus Nat stood gazing upward, free from earth's sighs and sorrows. A
beam of the inexhaustible glory of God had fallen into the heart of the
simple-hearted working-man, and he stood above all principalities and
powers: the majesty of heaven had descended upon him.

The memory of this day never faded from the hearts of Nat and of Ivo.

6.
THE GRAMMAR-SCHOOL.

An unavoidable change soon separated Ivo from the friend of his
childhood. The time had come for taking the first step which led to his
future calling. The change was external as well as internal,--the short
jacket worn till now being replaced by a long blue coat, which, in
anticipation of his growing, had been made too large in every
direction.

As he walked toward Horb, with his mother, in this new garb,