lled him, though not unkindly.

"Nay, Josiah," said she, giving him a timid push with her maiden hand,
"thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the spring
between us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to sit so close to
me?"

"But we are of the world's people now, Miriam," answered Josiah.

The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact, seem
altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat apart from
each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight discovered the tops
of a group of buildings. While their attention was thus occupied, a
party of travellers, who had come wearily up the long ascent, made a
halt to refresh themselves at the spring. There were three men, a
woman, and a little girl and boy. Their attire was mean, covered with
the dust of the summer's day, and damp with the night-dew; they all
looked woebegone, as if the cares and sorrows of the world had made
their steps heavier as they climbed the hill; even the two little
children appeared older in evil days than the young man and maiden who
had first approached the spring.

"Good evening to you, young folks," was the salutation of the
travellers; and "Good evening, friends," replied the youth and damsel.

"Is that white building the Shaker meeting-house?" asked one of the
strangers. "And are those the red roofs of the Shaker village?"

"Friend, it is the Shaker village," answered Josiah, after some
hesitation.

The travellers, who, from the first, had looked suspiciously at the
garb of these young people, now taxed them with an intention which all
the circumstances, indeed, rendered too obvious to be mistaken.

"It is true, friends," replied the young man, summoning up his courage.
"Miriam and I have a gift to love each other, and we are going among
the world's people, to live after their fashion. And ye know that we do
not transgress the law of the land; and neither ye, nor the elders
themselves, have a right to hinder us."

"Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave-taking," remarked
one of the travellers.

"Yea, ye-a," said Josiah, reluctantly, "because father Job is a very
awful man to speak with; and being aged himself, he has but little
charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh."

"Well," said the stranger, "we will neither use force to bring you back
to the village, nor will we betray you to the elders. But sit you here
awhile, and when you have heard what we shall te