Mardie?"

Susanna's lip was trembling and her face was pale. She lifted her
swimming eyes to the Sister's and asked, "Is it for us, Eldress Abby?"

"Yee, it's for you," she answered; "there's always a Shaker supper on
the table for all who want to leave the husks and share the feast. Come
right in and help yourselves. I will sit down with you."

* * * * *

Supper was over, and Susanna and Sue were lying in a little upper
chamber under the stars. It was the very one that Susanna had slept in
as a child, or that she had been put to bed in, for there was little
sleep that night for any one. She had leaned on the window-sill with her
mother and watched the pillar of flame and smoke ascend from the burning
barn; and once in the early morning she had stolen out of bed, and,
kneeling by the open window, had watched the two silent Shaker brothers
who were guarding the smoldering ruins, fearful lest the wind should
rise and bear any spark to the roofs of the precious buildings they had
labored so hard to save.

The chamber was spotless and devoid of ornament. The paint was robin's
egg blue and of a satin gloss. The shining floor was of the same color,
and neat braided rugs covered exposed places near the bureau, washstand,
and bed. Various useful articles of Shaker manufacture interested Sue
greatly: the exquisite straw-work that covered the whisk-broom; the
mending-basket, pincushion, needle-book, spool and watch cases,
hair-receivers, pin-trays, might all have been put together by fairy
fingers.

Sue's prayers had been fervent, but a trifle disjointed, covering all
subjects from Jack and Fardie, to Grandma in heaven and Aunt Louisa at
the farm, with special references to El-der-ess Abby and the Shaker
cows, and petitions that the next day be fair so that she could see them
milked. Excitement at her strange, unaccustomed surroundings had put the
child's mind in a very whirl, and she had astonished her mother with a
very new and disturbing version of the Lord's prayer, ending: "God give
us our debts and help us to forget our debtors and theirs shall be the
glory, Amen." Now she lay quietly on the wall side of the clean, narrow
bed, while her mother listened to hear the regular breathing that would
mean that she was off for the land of dreams. The child's sleep would
leave the mother free to slip out of bed and look at the stars; free to
pray and long and wonder and suffer and repent,--not w