weakly to the boy.

Martin turned back. He found his mother sitting beside his father.

"Martin," said his father with grave earnestness, "your mother's
been reading to me from your Testament. We've been talking about
Bible things that we haven't paid much attention to. We were both
brought up better, Martin. The Lord's had mercy upon me. He might
have taken me suddenly that night, but he knew I wasn't ready, and
he had mercy on me. And now, lad, your mother and I thought we would
just kneel right down here to-night, and ask the Lord to take each
of us, and make us his own. You want to, don't you, my son?"

Martin nodded, and for the first time the stage-driver's family
knelt together. They whose souls had been sleeping were awake.

BY THE WAY.

Cliffs by the blue bay held many fossil shells. Children sometimes
strayed here and there with hammers, pounding out fossils from
fallen pieces of the cliffs. On the extent of sands that bordered
the cliffs and stretched up the coast between them and the breakers,
old stumps that had been months before brought in by the waves lay
half buried from sight. A short distance farther up the coast, the
sands went a greater way inland, forming a nook where driftwood and
stumps had accumulated. On the sand in this nook stood a horse and
an old wagon. Beyond a large log, a little fire of driftwood had
been started, and a woman was endeavoring to fry some fish in a
spider. Two children had partly unharnessed the horse, and were
giving him some dry grass.

From afar, a woman and a girl who had been taking a walk on a road
high up on the cliffs, looked curiously down at the persons in the
sandy nook.

"I wonder who they are, and what they are traveling that way for?"
said the girl to her mother.

"It's the same wagon that was on, the sands last night, I suppose,"
returned her mother. "The milk boy said he saw a wagon drive on the
beach about dark. I wonder if they stayed up here all night? Suppose
we walk down, Addie, and talk with that woman."

"I'm afraid she won't want to see us," objected the daughter. "If
they had wanted to see anybody, they'd have stopped at the
settlement."

Notwithstanding this objection, the mother began to descend the path
toward the sands at the bottom of the cliffs. Both Mrs. Weeks and
her daughter Addie were somewhat breathless by the time they had
pushed their way through the heavy white sand to the spot where the
stranger, was cooking. Th