fels will
please.

If formal dedications were not a little old-fashioned, I should give
myself the pleasure of writing on one of these pages the name of my
friend Mr. Richard Watson Gilder. I have read with delight and sincere
admiration the poems that have given him fame, but they need no praise
of mine. The occasion of my mentioning his name here is more
personal--it was by his solicitation that I was seduced, nearly a
quarter of a century ago, into writing my earliest love story. I may
say, perhaps without pushing the figure too far, that on his suggestion
I first embarked in the light canoe of a dealer in duffels.

E. E.

JOSHUA'S ROCK, LAKE GEORGE, 1893.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

SISTER TABEA 1

THE REDEMPTIONER 27

A BASEMENT STORY 64

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 91

THE STORY OF A VALENTINE 114

HULDAH, THE HELP 128

THE NEW CASHIER 149

PRISCILLA 157

TALKING FOR LIFE 185

PERIWINKLE 192

THE CHRISTMAS CLUB 228

DUFFELS.

SISTER TABEA.

Two weather-beaten stone buildings at Ephrata, in Pennsylvania, remain
as monuments on this side of the water of the great pietistic movement
in Germany in the early part of the eighteenth century. One of these
was called Bethany, the other Sharon. A hundred and thirty or forty
years ago there were other buildings with these, and the softening hand
of time had not yet touched any of them. The doorways were then, as
now, on the ground level, the passages were just as narrow and dusky,
the cells had the same little square windows to let in the day. But the
stones in that day had a hue that reminded one of the quarry, the
mortar between them was fresh, the shingles in the roof had gathered no
moss and very little weather stain; the primeval forests were yet
within the horizon, and there was everywhere an air of newness, of
advancement, and of prosperity about the Dunkard Convent. One sees now
neither monks nor nuns in these narrow hallways; monks and nuns are
nowhere about Ephrata, except in the graveyard where all the brethren
of Bethany, and