onder done
Unto the sons of men."

But such absorbing enthusiasm, even in a good cause, argued a doctrinal
laxity which could not pass unnoticed.

"A deegnifyin' of the creature above the Creator, the sign above the
thing seegnified," Uncle Johnnie Turnbull urged upon the session,
smarting from the deep theological wound he had suffered at Jonathan's
hands.

A perceptible chill crept into the ecclesiastical atmosphere which
Marg'et Ann felt without thoroughly comprehending.

Nancy Helen was sixteen now, and Marg'et Ann had taught the summer
school at Yankee Neck, riding home every evening to superintend the
younger sister's housekeeping.

Laban had emerged from the period of unshaven awkwardness, and was going
to see Emeline Barnes with ominous regularity.

There was nothing in the affairs of the household to trouble Marg'et Ann
but her father's ever increasing restlessness and preoccupation. She
wondered if it would have been different if her mother had lived. There
was no great intimacy between the father and daughter, but the girl
knew that the wrongs of the black man had risen like a dense cloud
between her father and what had once been his highest duty and pleasure.

She was not, therefore, greatly surprised when he said to her one day,
more humbly than he was wont to speak to his children:--

"I think I must try to do something for those poor people, child; it may
not be much, but it will be something. The harvest truly is great, but
the laborers are few."

"What will you do, father?"

Marg'et Ann asked the question hesitatingly, dreading the reply. The
minister looked at her with anxious eagerness. He was glad of the humble
acquiescence that obliged him to put his half-formed resolution into
words.

"If the presbytery will release me from my charge here, I may go South
for a while. Nancy Helen is quite a girl now, and with Laban and your
teaching you could get on. They are bruised for our iniquities, Marg'et
Ann,--they are our iniquities, indirectly, child."

He got up and walked across the rag-carpeted floor. Marg'et Ann sat
still in her mother's chair, looking down at the stripes of the
carpet,--dark blue and red and "hit or miss;" her mother had made them
so patiently; it seemed as if patience were always under foot for
heroism to tread upon. She fought with the ache in her throat a little.
The stripes on the floor were beginning to blur when she spoke.

"Isn't it dangerous to go down ther