at she was impressed
with my safety in answer to it? Oh, how grateful to our Father for his
goodness to us we should be. Arthur, can you thank Him for us, now?"
And they knelt in the forest solitude, with God and his blessed sun
and blue sky, and their two young, pure, loving hearts joined in a
fervent outpouring of gratitude.

"Our Father, for the precious and blessed revelation of our hearts,
each to the other, we thank Thee. Let this love be as pure, and
sacred, and holy, and eternal, as we now feel it to be. Grant, dear
Father, that it may be sanctified by holy marriage; and that through
Thy gracious providence, this union of hearts and souls may ever
be ours. Hear us, thy young, helpless, yet trusting, believing, and
loving children."

And she: "Sweet and blessed Saviour; let Thy precious love and
presence be also about us, to keep us, help us, and bless us; and
Father, let the maiden's voice also join in the prayer that Thou wilt
bless us, as one."

They arose, and turned to each other, with sweet, calm, restful, happy
faces; with souls full of trust and confidence, that was to know no
change or diminution.

CHAPTER L.

THE GOSPEL OF LOVE.

Julia pointed out the bird's nest under the roof, and to a faded
garland of flowers, hung upon the rough bark of the old hemlock,
against which Barton had reclined, and another upon the rock just over
where she had rested. In some way these brought to Bart's mind the
flowers on Henry's grave; and in a moment he felt that her hand had
placed them there; the precious little hand that lay so willingly in
his own. Raising it to his lips, he said: "Julia, this same blessed
hand has strewn my poor dear brother's grave with flowers."

"Are you glad, Arthur?"

"Oh, so glad, and grateful! And the same hand wrote me the generous
warning against that wretched Greer?"

"Yes, Arthur. Father came home from that first trial distressed about
you, and I wrote it. I thought you would not know the hand."

"I did not--though when your letter came to me in Jefferson, the
address reminded me of it. But I did not think you wrote it. And when
rumors were abroad of my connection with these men, after I went
to Albany, who was it who sent somebody to Ravenna, to get a
contradiction from Greer, himself?"

"No one sent anybody: some one went," in the lowest little voice.

"Oh, Julia! did you go, yourself?"

"Yes."

"With the love of such a woman, what may not a man do?" cried B