almost miraculous instinct. The former comforted herself with the hope
that teething would bring a variation to the two identical mouths; but
no! they teethed as one child. John, after desperate attempts, which
always failed in spite of the headaches they gave him, postponed the
idea of distinguishing one from the other, until they should be old
enough to develop some dissimilarity of speech, or gait, or habit.
All trouble might have been avoided, had Phebe consented to the least
variation in their dresses; but herein she was mildly immovable.

"Not yet," was her set reply to her husband; and one day, when he
manifested a little annoyance at her persistence, she turned to him,
holding a child on each knee, and said with a gravity which silenced
him thenceforth: "John, can you not see that our burden has passed into
them? Is there no meaning in this--that two children who are one in body
and face and nature, should be given to us at our time of life, after
such long disappointment and trouble? Our lives were held apart; theirs
were united before they were born, and I dare not turn them in different
directions. Perhaps I do not know all that the Lord intended to say to
us, in sending them; but His hand is here!"

"I was only thinking of their good," John meekly answered. "If they
are spared to grow up, there must be some way of knowing one from the
other."

"THEY will not need it, and I, too, think only of them. They have taken
the cross from my heart, and I will lay none on theirs. I am reconciled
to my life through them, John; you have been very patient and good with
me, and I will yield to you in all things but in this. I do not think I
shall live to see them as men grown; yet, while we are together, I feel
clearly what it is right to do. Can you not, just once, have a little
faith without knowledge, John?"

"I'll try, Phebe," he said. "Any way, I'll grant that the boys belong to
you more than to me."

Phebe Vincent's character had verily changed. Her attacks of
semi-hysterical despondency never returned; her gloomy prophecies
ceased. She was still grave, and the trouble of so many years never
wholly vanished from her face; but she performed every duty of her life
with at least a quiet willingness, and her home became the abode of
peace; for passive content wears longer than demonstrative happiness.

David and Jonathan grew as one boy: the taste and temper of one was
repeated in the other, even as the voice and