the tea-bowl. The Chinaman's clock was striking the half
after seven. He stared at the floor, haggard with guilt.

"Dear me, I'm late for prayer-meeting again. Snow will be looking for
me."

I slipped out behind him, glad enough of Urkey's raw air after that
close chamber of mysteries. I avoided the wharf-lane, however, more than
a little scared by this sudden new aspect of the Minister, and got
myself out to the shore street by Miah White's yard and the grocery
porch, and there I found myself face to face with Mate Snow. That
frightened me still more, for the light from Henny's Notions' window was
shining oddly in his eyes.

"You're lookin' for the minister," I stammered, ducking my head.

He stopped and stared down at me, tapping a sole on the cobbles.

"What's this? What's this?"

"He--he says you'd be lookin' for 'im, an' I seen 'im to the Chinaman's
an' he's comin' right there, honest he is, Mr. Snow."

"Oh! So? I'd be looking for him, would I?"

"Y--y--yessir."

I sank down on the grocery steps and studied my toes.

"He was _there_, though!" I protested in desperation, when we had been
waiting in vain for a long quarter-hour. The dark monitor lifted his
chin from his collar and looked at his watch.

"It's hard," I heard him sigh, as he turned away down Lovett's Court,
where Center Church blossomed with its prayer-meeting lamps. Shadows of
the uneasy flock moved across the windows; Emsy Nickerson, in his
trustee's black, peered out of the door into the dubious night, and
beyond him in the bright vestry Aunt Nickerson made a little spot of
color, agitated, nursing formless despairs, an artist in vague dreads.

I was near enough, at the church steps, to hear what Mate told them.

"I'll lead to-night. He's gone out in the back-country to pray alone."

Aunt Nickerson wept quietly, peeping from the corners of her eyes.
Reverent awe struggled with an old rebellion in Emsy's face, and in
others as they came crowding. The trustee broke out bitterly:

"Miah White's took to the bottle again, along o' him. If only he'd do
his prayin' at Miah's house a spell, 'stead o' the back-country--"

"There was a back-country in Judea," Mate cried him down. "And some one
prayed there, not one night, but forty nights and days!"

What a far cry it was from the thwarted lover behind the prescription
screen, fanning the flames of hell-fire through the night, to the Seer
thundering in the vestry--had there been any there w