Amy's door Lawrence Newt raised her hand, bent over it
with quaint, courtly respect, held it a moment, then pressed it to his
lips. He looked up at her. She was standing on the step; her full, dark
eyes, swimming with moisture, were fixed upon his; her luxuriant hair
curled over her clear, rich cheeks--youth, love, and beauty, they were
all there. Lawrence Newt could hardly believe they were not all his. It
was so natural to think so. Somehow he and Amy had grown together. He
understood her perfectly.

"Perfectly?" he said to himself. "Why you are holding her hand; you are
kissing it with reverence; you are looking into the face which is dearer
and lovelier to you than all other human faces; and you are as far off as
if oceans rolled between."

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHURCH GOING.

The Sunday bells rang loud from river to river. Loud and sharp they rang
in the clear, still air of the summer morning, as if the voice of
Everardus Bogardus, the old Dominie of New Amsterdam, were calling the
people in many tones to be up and stirring, and eat breakfast, and wash
the breakfast things, and be in your places early, with bowed heads and
reverend minds, and demurely hear me tell you what sinners you always
have been and always will be, so help me God--I, Everardus Bogardus, in
the clear summer morning, ding, dong, bell, amen!

So mused Arthur Merlin, between sleeping and waking, as the bells rang
out, loud and low--distant and near--flowing like a rushing, swelling
tide of music along the dark inlets of narrow streets--touching arid
hearts with hope, as the rising water touches dry spots with green. Come
you, too, out of your filthy holes and hovels--come to church as in the
days when you were young and had mothers, and you, grisly, drunken,
blear-eyed thief, lisped in your little lessons--come, all of you, come!
The day has dawned; the air is pure; the hammer rests--come and repent,
and be renewed, and be young again. The old, weary, restless, debauched,
defeated world--it shall sing and dance. You shall be lambs. I see the
dawn of the millennium on the heights of Hoboken--yea, even out of the
Jerseys shall a good thing come! It is I who tell you--it is I who order
you--I, Everardus Bogardus, Dominie of New Amsterdam--ding, dong, bell,
amen!

The streets were quiet and deserted. A single hack rattled under his
window, and Arthur could hear its lessening sound until it was lost in
the sweet clangor of the bells. He lay i