gest religious bluffs" on record.
Its groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still
suggested their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a
hundred devotees, and in the rambling choir, with its bare space for
the future organ, the few choristers, gathered round a small harmonium,
were lost in the deepening shadow of that summer evening. The muleteer
remained hidden in the obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments'
desultory conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected
absence of Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their
practicing, the choristers withdrew. The stranger, who had listened
eagerly, drew back in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for
a few moments a vague and motionless figure in the silent church. Then
coming cautiously to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put
aside, and the faint light of the dying day shone in the black eyes of
Teresa! Despite her face, darkened with dye and disfigured with dust,
the matted hair piled and twisted around her head, the strange dress
and boyish figure, one swift glance from under her raised lashes
betrayed her identity.

She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened
a hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on a name written on the
title-page, "Nellie Wynn." _Her_ name, and _her_ book. The instinct
that had guided her here was right; the slight gossip of her
fellow-passengers was right; this was the clergyman's daughter, whose
praise filled all mouths. This was the unknown girl the stranger was
seeking, but who in her turn perhaps had been seeking Low--the girl who
absorbed his fancy--the secret of his absences, his preoccupation, his
coldness! This was the girl whom to see, perhaps in his arms, she was
now periling her liberty and her life unknown to him! A slight odor,
some faint perfume of its owner, came from the book; it was the same
she had noticed in the dress Low had given her. She flung the volume to
the ground, and, throwing her arms over the back of the pew before her,
buried her face in her hands.

In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte
abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have
had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the
spiritual Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not
meet that requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that
vast shell, empty of sentiment and bea