his strange report could mean. The study was unoccupied.
With the familiarity of an old friend he made his way up the cramped
stairs. The chamber-door was flung wide open: there was no reason why
the whole parish might not come in. The nurse, sobbing in a corner, was
swaying back and forth, her hands folded across her lap. Reuben,
clinging to the coverlet, was feeling his way along the bed, if by
chance his mother's hand might catch hold upon his; and the minister
standing with a chair before him, his eyes turned to heaven (the same
calm attitude which he took at his evening prayer-meeting) was
entreating God to "be over his house, to strengthen him, to pour down
his Spirit on him, to bind up the bruised hearts,--to spare,--spare"----

Even the stout Squire Elderkin withdraws outside the door, that he may
the better conceal his emotion.

The death happened on a Friday. The Squire, after a few faltering
expressions of sympathy, asked regarding the burial. "Should it not be
on Sunday?"

"Not on Sunday," says Mr. Johns; "God help me, Squire,--but this is not
a work of necessity or mercy. Let it be on Monday."

"On Monday, then," said Elderkin,--"and let me take the arrangement of
it all off your thought; and we will provide some one to preach for you
on the Sabbath."

"No, Mr. Elderkin, no; I am always myself in the pulpit. I shall find
courage there."

And he did. A stranger would not have suspected that the preacher's wife
lay dead at home; the same unction and earnestness that had always
characterized him; the same unyielding rigidity of doctrine: "_Except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish._"

Once only--it was in the reading of the last hymn in the afternoon
service--his voice broke, and he sat down half through. But as the song
rose under the old roof of the meeting-house, his courage rose with it.
He seemed ashamed of the transitory weakness. What right had he to bring
private griefs to such a place? What right had the leader to faint, when
the army were pressing forward to the triumph God had promised to the
faithful? So it was in a kind of ecstasy that he rose, and joined with a
firm, loud voice in the final doxology.

One or two of the good old ladies, with a sad misconception of the force
that was in him, and of the divine aid which seemed vouchsafed to him
during the service, came to him, as he passed out, to give him greeting
and a word of condolence. For that time only he passed them by, as if