drying herbs; then they followed
Brother Nathan up a shaky flight of steps to the loft. Here some elderly
women, sitting on low benches, were sorting over great piles of herbs in
silence--the silence, apparently, of peace and meditation. Two of
them were dressed like world's people, but the others wore small gray
shoulder-capes buttoned to their chins, and little caps of white net
stretched smoothly over wire frames; the narrow shirrings inside the
frames fitted so close to their peaceful, wrinkled foreheads that no
hair could be seen.

"I wish I could sit and sort herbs!" Athalia said, under her breath.

Brother Nathan chuckled. "For how long?" he asked; and then introduced
her to the three workers, who greeted her calmly and went on sorting
their herbs. The loft was dark and cool; the window-frames, in which
there were no sashes, opened wide on the still August fields and woods;
the occasional brief words of the sorting-women seemed to drop into a
pool of fragrant silence. The two visitors followed Brother Nathan down
the room between piles of sorted herbs, and out into the sunshine again.
Athalia drew a breath of ecstasy.

"It's all so beautifully tranquil!" she whispered, looking about her
with blue, excited eyes.

"Tay and tranquillity!" Lewis said, with an amused laugh.

But as they went along the grassy street this sense of tranquillity
closed about them like a palpable peace. Now and then they stopped and
spoke to some one--always an elderly person; and in each old face the
experiences that life writes in unerasable lines about eyes and lips
were hidden by a veil of calmness that was curiously unhuman.

"It isn't canny, exactly," Lewis told his wife, in a low voice. But she
did not seem to hear him. She asked many questions of Eldress Hannah,
who had taken them in charge, and once or twice she burst into impetuous
appreciation of the idea of brotherhood, and even of certain theological
principles--which last diverted her husband very much. Eldress Hannah
showed them the dairy, and the work-room, and all there was to see,
with a patient hospitality that kept them at an infinite distance. She
answered Lewis's questions about the community with a sad directness.

"Yee; there are not many of us now. The world's people say we're dying
out. But the Lord will preserve the remnant to redeem the world, young
man. Yee; when they come in from the world they cast their possessions
into the whole; we own nothing, for