st take this Heaven-sent chance of telling
her all, but how do it without alarming her?

A moment, and her step sounded in the stillness of the empty church.

Obeying the first impulse, he passed through the outer door, and
standing on the step, knocked once, twice, three times; then, opening
it a little and speaking through the chink, he called, "Is Miss Nancy
Wentworth here?"

"I'm here!" in a moment came Nancy's answer; and then, with a little
wondering tremor in her voice, as if a hint of the truth had already
dawned: "What's wanted?"

"You're wanted, Nancy, wanted badly, by Justin Peabody, come back from
the West."

The door opened wide, and Justin faced Nancy standing halfway down
the aisle, her eyes brilliant, her lips parted. A week ago Justin's
apparition confronting her in the empty meeting-house after nightfall,
even had she been prepared for it as now, by his voice, would have
terrified her beyond measure. Now it seemed almost natural and
inevitable. She had spent these last days in the church where both of
them had been young and happy together; the two letters had brought him
vividly to mind, and her labor in the old Peabody pew had been one
long excursion into the past in which he was the most prominent and the
best-loved figure.

"I said I'd come back to you when my luck turned, Nancy."

These were so precisely the words she expected him to say, should she
ever see him again face to face, that for an additional moment they but
heightened her sense of unreality.

"Well, the luck hasn't turned, after all, but I could n't wait any
longer. Have you given a thought to me all these years, Nancy?"

"More than one, Justin." For the very look upon his face, the tenderness
of his voice, the attitude of his body, outran his words and told her
what he had come home to say, told her that her years of waiting were
over at last.

"You ought to despise me for coming back again with only myself and my
empty hands to offer you."

How easy it was to speak his heart out in this dim and quiet place! How
tongue-tied he would have been, sitting on the black hair-cloth sofa in
the Wentworth parlor and gazing at the open soapstone stove!

"Oh, men are such fools!" cried Nancy, smiles and tears struggling
together in her speech, as she sat down suddenly in her own pew and put
her hands over her face.

"They are," agreed Justin humbly; "but I've never stopped loving you,
whenever I've had time for thinking or lovi