ief pathos.

Smith was looking at the ground, as a huge, shy boy might stand when
anxious to express sympathy of which he was somewhat ashamed. "I know it
must be a sort of abiding trial to you." After a moment he added, "I
wouldn't like to make it worse by having you think that I was goin' to
preach any strange doctrine. I'd sometimes give a good deal if the Lord
would raise me up a friend that I could speak to concerning the lights
that come to me that I know that it wouldn't do to speak of in the
public congregations, because of their upsetting nature, and likewise
because I doubt concerning their meaning. And of this matter there was
no thought in my mind to speak in public, for it is for the future to
declare whether it be of the darkness or of the light; but to you I
spoke, almost unwittingly, and perhaps in disobedience to the dictates
of wisdom."

He looked at her wistfully.

Susannah leaned her arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and
looked down the slope. His insight into her own trials caused her to
sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity. She made an honest effort
to assist him to self-analysis. She said, "A great many things come into
our minds at times, Mr. Smith, that seem important, but, as you say, if
we do not speak about them, afterwards we see that they are silly. Of
course with you, if you think some of your thoughts are revelations, it
must make you often fancy that the others may be very important too, but
it does not follow that they are, and, as you say, time will weed them
out if you are trying to do right." She wondered if he would resent her
_ifs_. She stood looking down the bank in the short silence that
followed, feeling somewhat timorous. The steep ground was covered with
the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray
teasles which grew to greater height. Through the teasles the white and
purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water--rich, soft,
vague in outline. At one side, by an old stump, there was a splendid
feather, yellow and green, of fading golden rod; yellow butterflies,
that looked as if they had dyed their wings in the light reflected from
this flower, repeated its gold in glint and gleam over all the gray
hillside, shot with the white and the blue. At the foot of the bank lay
the flat valley, and from this vantage ground the river could be seen.
The soft musical chat of its waters ascended to her ears, and among the
huge bron