month after the events above recorded. The minister was in great force
that day, but it is no part of mine to tell how he bore himself. I was
there, and am not likely to forget the scene. It was a fateful Sabbath
for T'nowhead's Bell and her swains, and destined to be remembered for
the painful scandal which they perpetrated in their passion.

Bell was not in the kirk. There being an infant of six months in the
house it was a question of either Lisbeth or the lassie's staying at
home with him, and though Lisbeth was unselfish in a general way, she
could not resist the delight of going to church. She had nine children
besides the baby, and being but a woman, it was the pride of her life
to march them into the T'nowhead pew, so well watched that they dared
not misbehave, and so tightly packed that they could not fall. The
congregation looked at that pew, the mothers enviously, when they sang
the lines--

"Jerusalem like a city is
Compactly built together."

The first half of the service had been gone through on this particular
Sunday without anything remarkable happening. It was at the end of the
psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near
the door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in
that attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of
the church. In their eagerness to be at the sermon many of the
congregation did not notice him, and those who did put the matter by in
their minds for future investigation. Sam'l, however, could not take
it so coolly. From his seat in the gallery he saw Sanders disappear,
and his mind misgave him. With the true lover's instinct he understood
it all. Sanders had been struck by the fine turn-out in the T'nowhead
pew. Bell was alone at the farm. What an opportunity to work one's
way up to a proposal. T'nowhead was so overrun with children that such
a chance seldom occurred, except on a Sabbath. Sanders, doubtless, was
off to propose, and he, Sam'l, was left behind.

The suspense was terrible. Sam'l and Sanders had both known all along
that Bell would take the first of the two who asked her. Even those
who thought her proud admitted that she was modest. Bitterly the
weaver repented having waited so long. Now it was too late. In ten
minutes Sanders would be at T'nowhead; in an hour all would be over.
Sam'l rose to his feet in a daze. His mother pulled him down by the
coat-tail, and his father s