r the world's people."

"Is this a graveyard?" Athalia demanded, impetuously.

"Yee," he said, smiling; "it's our burial-place; we're Shakers."

"But why are there just the stakes--without names?"

"Why should there be names?" he said, whimsically; "they have new names
now."

"Where is your community? Can we go and visit it?"

"Yee; but we're not much to see," he said; "just men and women, like
you. Only we're happy. I guess that's all the difference."

"But what a difference!" she exclaimed; and Lewis smiled.

"I've come up for pennyroyal," the Shaker explained, sociably; "it grows
thick round here."

"Tell me about the Shakers," Athalia pleaded. "What do you believe?"

"Well," he said, a simple shrewdness glimmering in his brown eyes,
"if you go to the Trustees' House, down there in the valley, Eldress
Hannah'll tell you all about us. And the sisters have baskets and pretty
truck to sell--things the world's people like. Go and ask the Eldress
what we believe, and she'll show you the baskets."

She turned eagerly to her husband. "Never mind the ten-o'clock train,
Lewis. Let us go!"

"We could take a later train, all right," he admitted, "but--"

"Oh, PLEASE!" she entreated, joyously. "We'll help you pick pennyroyal,"
she added to the Shaker.

But this he would not allow. "I doubt you'd be careful enough," he said,
mildly; "Sister Lydia was the only female I ever knew who could pick
herbs."

"Do you get paid for the work you do?" Athalia asked, practically. Lewis
flushed at the boldness of such a question, but the old man chuckled.

"Should I pay myself?" he asked.

"You own everything in common, don't you?" Lewis said.

"Yee," said the Shaker; "we're all brothers and sisters. Nobody tries to
get ahead of anybody else."

"And you don't believe in marriage?" Athalia asserted.

"We are as the angels of God," he said, simply.

He left them and began to sickle his herbs, with the cheerfully obvious
purpose of escaping further interruption.

Athalia instantly bubbled over with questions, but Lewis could tell her
hardly more of the Shakers than she knew already.

"No, it isn't free love," he said; "they're decent enough. They believe
in general love, not particular, I suppose.... 'Thalia, do you think
it's worth while to wait over a train just to see the settlement?"

"Of course it is! He said they were happy; I would like to see what kind
of life makes people happy."

He looked at the lighted e