s somewhere nigh about the fourth time."

Scarcely had Grandpa arranged the merest preliminaries of his tale when
ominous footsteps were heard returning along the way whither Grandma and
Madeline had so recently departed, and he was interrupted by a strangely
calm though authoritative voice from behind the door; "Pa!"

"Wall, wall, ma! what ye want, ma?" exclaimed Grandpa, turning his head
aside, with a slight shade of annoyance on his face.

No answer immediately forthcoming, that wofully illusory smile returned
again to his features. He moved still nearer to the stove, and was just
at the point of resuming the thread of his narrative when--

"Bijonah Keeler!" came from behind the door in accents still calm,
indeed, but freighted with a significance which words have faint power to
express.

"Yis, yis, ma! I'm a coming, ma!" replied Grandpa, rising hastily and
shuffling toward the door; "I'm a coming, ma! I'm a coming!"

The door opened wide enough to receive him, and then closed upon him in
all his ignominy.

The sound of his voice in irate expostulation, mingled with the steady
flow of those serener tones, grew gradually faint in the distance, and I
was left alone with the sepulchral group of young men.

They arose, still maintaining the weighty aspect of those elected to the
hour, and abruptly opened their lips in song.

There was no repression now; the Ark fairly rang with the sonorous
strains of that wild Jubilate.

They sang:--

"Light in the darkness, sailor,
Day is at hand;
See, o'er the foaming billows,
Fair haven stands."

Their voices rolling in at the chorus with the resistless sweep of the
ocean-waves:--

"Pull for the shore, sailor,
Pull for the shore;
Heed not the rolling waves,
But bend to the oar:"

and with a final "Pull for the shore," that sent that imaginary life-boat
bounding high and dry on the strand at the hands of its impulsive crew.

Then they sat down and wiped the perspiration from their faces, which had
become transfigured with a sudden zest and radiance.

I recovered myself sufficiently to express a bewildered sense of pleasure
and gratitude.

"Do you sing, teacher?" asked Harvey Dole, a round-faced youth with an
irrepressible fund of mirth in his eyes, who had broken in on the former
silence with an unguarded little snicker.

Lovell Barlow, he of the dignified countenance and spade-shaped beard,
had faintly and helplessly e