lity of individual suffering in the
midst of a universe that creates and destroys in swarms. The mystery
aroused no wonder in their thoughts, for the blindness of habit, which
passes generally for the vision of faith, had paralyzed in youth their
groping spiritual impulses.

On the following Sunday, before leaving for fresher fields, Mr. Mullen
preached a sermon which established him forever in the hearts of his
congregation, and in the course of it, he alluded tenderly to "the
exalted Christian woman who has been recently removed from among us to a
brighter sphere." It was, on the whole as Mrs. Gay observed afterwards,
"his most remarkable effort"; and even Sarah Revercomb, who had heard
that her daughter-in-law was to be mentioned in the pulpit, and had
attended from the same spiritual pride with which she had read the
funeral notice in the Applegate papers, admitted on her way home that
she "wished poor Judy could have heard him." In spite of the young
woman's removal to a sphere which Mr. Mullen had described as
"brighter," she had become from the instant of her decease, "poor Judy"
in Sarah's thoughts as well as on her lips.

To Abel her death had brought a shock which was not so much a sense of
personal regret, as an intensified expression of the pity he had felt
for her while she lived. The huddled figure against the mill-stone had
acquired a new significance in the act of dying. A dignity which had
never been hers in life, enfolded her when she lay with the accusing and
hostile look in her face fading slowly into an expression of peace. With
the noble inconsistency of a generous heart, he began to regard Judy
dead with a tenderness he had never been able to feel for Judy living.
The less she demanded of him, the more he was ready to give her.

"I declar' it does look as if Abel was mournin'," remarked Betsey
Bottom to Sarah on a September afternoon several months later. "It
ain't suprisin' in his case seein' he jest married her to get even with
Molly."

"I don't believe myself in settin' round an' nursin' grief," responded
Sarah, "a proper show of respect is well an' good, but nobody can expect
a hearty, able bodied man to keep his thoughts turned on the departed.
With women, now, it's different, for thar's precious little satisfaction
some women get out of thar husbands till they start to wearin' weeds for
'em."

"You've worn weeds steady now, ain't you, Mrs. Revercomb?"

Sarah set her mouth tightly. "Th