it was time to get up and stop thinking of it all.

She put on a little white dress that she wore to church at home and
hurried down to discover what the family plans were for the day, but
found, to her dismay, that the atmosphere below-stairs was just like
that of other days. Mr. Tanner sat tilted back in a dining-room chair,
reading the weekly paper, Mrs. Tanner was bustling in with hot
corn-bread, Bud was on the front-door steps teasing the dog, and the
minister came in with an air of weariness upon him, as if he quite
intended taking it out on his companions that he had experienced a
trying time on Saturday. He did not look in the least like a man who
expected to preach in a few minutes. He declined to eat his egg because
it was cooked too hard, and poor Mrs. Tanner had to try it twice before
she succeeded in producing a soft-boiled egg to suit him. Only the
radiant outline of the great mountain, which Margaret could see over the
minister's head, looked peaceful and Sabbath-like.

"What time do you have service?" Margaret asked, as she rose from the
table.

"Service?" It was Mr. Tanner who echoed her question as if he did not
quite know what she meant.

Mrs. Tanner raised her eyes from her belated breakfast with a worried
look, like a hen stretching her neck about to see what she ought to do
next for the comfort of the chickens under her care. It was apparent
that she had no comprehension of what the question meant. It was the
minister who answered, condescendingly:

"Um! Ah! There is no church edifice here, you know, Miss Earle. The
mission station is located some miles distant."

"I know," said Margaret, "but they surely have some religious service?"

"I really don't know," said the minister, loftily, as if it were
something wholly beneath his notice.

"Then you are not going to preach this morning?" In spite of herself
there was relief in her tone.

"Most certainly not," he replied, stiffly. "I came out here to rest, and
I selected this place largely because it was so far from a church. I
wanted to be where I should not be annoyed by requests to preach. Of
course, ministers from the East would be a curiosity in these Western
towns, and I should really get no rest at all if I had gone where my
services would have been in constant demand. When I came out here I was
in much the condition of our friend the minister of whom you have
doubtless heard. He was starting on his vacation, and he said to a
brother