should think it
necessary to avoid me so," she would say. "You treat me exactly as if I
were only a common acquaintance."

"That is exactly what I wish to have every one believe you to be, Mercy,"
Stephen would reply with emphasis. "That is the only safe course. Once let
people begin to associate our names together, and there is no limit to the
things they would say. We cannot be too careful. That is one thing you
must let me be the judge of, dear. You cannot understand it as I do. So
long as I am without the right or the power to protect you, my first duty
is to shield you from any or all gossip linking our names together."

Mercy felt the justice of this; and yet to her there seemed also a sort
of injustice involved in it. She felt stung often, and wounded, in spite
of all reasoning with herself that she had no cause to do so, that Stephen
was but doing right. So inevitable and inextricable are pains and dilemmas
when once we enter on the paths of concealment.

Parson Dorrance was introduced to Mercy by Mrs. Hunter, a young married
woman, who was fast becoming her most intimate friend. Mrs. Hunter's
father had been settled as the minister of a church in Penfield, in the
same year that Parson Dorrance had taken his professorship in Danby, and
the two men had been close friends from that day till the day of Mr.
Adams's death. Little Lizzy Adams had been Parson Dorrance's pet when she
lay in her cradle. He had baptized her; and, when she came to woman's
estate, he had performed the ceremony which gave her in marriage to Luke
Hunter, the most promising young lawyer in the county.

She had always called Parson Dorrance her uncle, and her house in Penfield
was his second home. It had been Mrs. Hunter's wish for a long time that
he should see and know her new friend, Mercy. But Mercy was very shy of
seeing the man for whom she felt such reverence, and had steadily refused
to meet him. It was therefore with a certain air of triumphant
satisfaction that Mrs. Hunter led Parson Dorrance to the rock where Mercy
was sitting, and exclaimed,--

"There, Uncle Dorrance! here she is!"

Parson Dorrance did not wait for any farther introduction; but; holding
out both his hands to Mercy, he said in a deep, mellow voice, and with a
tone which had a benediction in it,--

"I am very glad to see you, Mrs. Philbrick. My child Lizzy here has been
telling me about you for a long time. You know I'm the same as a father to
her; so you can't