f to
other hands. At his footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the
Shaker garb.

"My brethren," said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders, feebly
exerting himself to utter these few words, "here are the son and
daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about
to lighten my weary shoulders. Read their faces, I pray you, and say
whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice
aright."

Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most
scrutinizing gaze. The man--whose name was Adam Colburn--had a face
sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and
traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely
reached middle age. There was something severe in his aspect and a
rigidity throughout his person--characteristics that caused him
generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he
had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson,
was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost
invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance
which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.

"This pair are still in the summer of their years," observed the elder
from Harvard, a shrewd old man. "I would like better to see the
hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be
exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which
have heretofore subsisted between them."

"Nay, brother," said the elder from Canterbury; "the hoar-frost and
the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha,
even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they
are yet green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable
Father's purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved
one another as the world's people love? Are there not many brethren
and sisters among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet,
adopting our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual
affection?"

Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it
inexpedient that they should now preside together over a Shaker
village, it was certainly most singular that such should be the final
result of many warm and tender hopes. Children of neighboring
families, their affection was older even than their school-days; it
seemed an innate principle interfused among all their sentiments and