d to engage in religious
discussion pronounced him a dangerous young man, but it made it
impossible for her to marry him. So she had been quite anxious that he
should see his way clear to join the church.

They had talked about it during intermission last Sabbath; but Marg'et
Ann, having arrived at her own position by a process of complete
self-abnegation, found it hard to know how to proceed with this stalwart
sinner who insisted upon understanding things. It is true he spoke
humbly enough of himself, as one who had not her light, but Marg'et Ann
was quite aware that she did not believe the Catechism because she
understood it. She had no doubt it could be understood, and she thought
regretfully that Lloyd Archer would be just the man to understand it if
he would study it in the right spirit. Just what the right spirit was
she could not perhaps have formulated, except that it was the spirit
that led to belief in the Catechism. She had hoped that he would come to
a knowledge of the truth through the ministrations of the Rev. Samuel
McClanahan, who was said to be very powerful in argument; but he had
found fault with Mr. McClanahan's logic on Fast Day in a way that was
quite disheartening, and he evidently did not intend to come forward
this communion at all. Her father had spoken several times in a very
hopeless manner of Lloyd's continued resistance of the Holy Spirit, and
Marg'et Ann thought with a shiver of Squire Atwater, who was an
infidel, and was supposed by some to have committed the unpardonable
sin. She remembered once when she and one of the younger boys had gone
into his meadow for wild strawberries he had come out and talked to them
in a jovial way, and when they were leaving, had patted her little
brother's head, and told him, with a great, corpulent laugh, to "ask his
father how the devil could be chained to the bottomless pit." She did
not believe Lloyd could become like that, but still it was dangerous to
resist the Spirit.

Miss Nancy McClanahan had a bit of mint between the leaves of her
psalm-book, and she smelled it now and then in a niggardly way, as if
the senses should be but moderately indulged on the Sabbath. She had on
black netted mitts which left the enlarged knuckles of her hands
exposed, and there was a little band of Guinea gold on one of her
fingers, with two almost obliterated hearts in loving juxtaposition.
Marg'et Ann knew that she had been a hardworking mother to the Rev.
Samuel's f