ingly. "I know why
you're real and true. Your master who painted you was like us
once--like us, and like you! He knew what it was to dig and dig; he
knew what it was to work and work until his back and his head and his
feet and his hands ached and ached--he knew! And so he painted you!

"_She_ says you're praying; that you've stopped your work and 'turned
to higher things.' She says we all should have an Angelus in our lives
each day. Good God!--as if she knew!"--Hephzibah was on her feet now,
her hands to her head.

"An Angelus?--me?" continued the woman scornfully. "And where? The
dish-pan?--the wash-tub?--the chicken-yard? A fine Angelus, that! And
yet"--Hephzibah dropped to her knees again--"you look so quiet, so
peaceful, and, oh, so--rested!"

"For the land's sake, Hetty, what be you doin'? Have you gone clean
crazy?"--It was Theron in the parlor doorway.

Hephzibah rose wearily to her feet. "Sometimes I think I have,
Theron," she said.

"Well,"--he hesitated,--"ain't it 'most--supper-time?"

"I s'pose 'tis," she assented, listlessly, and dragged herself from the
room.

It was not long after this that the picture disappeared from the
parlor. Hephzibah had borne it very carefully to her room and hung it
on the wall at the foot of her bed, where her eyes would open upon it
the first thing every morning. Each day she talked to it, and each day
it grew to be more and more a part of her very self. Not until the
picture had been there a week, however, did she suddenly realize that
it represented the twilight hour; then, like a flash of light, came her
inspiration.

"It's at sunset--I'll go out at sunset! Now my Angelus will come to
me," she cried softly. "I know it will!"

Then did the little hillside farmhouse see strange sights indeed. Each
night, as the sun dropped behind the far-away hills, Hephzibah left her
work and passed through the kitchen door, her face uplifted, and her
eyes on the distant sky-line.

Sometimes she would turn to the left to the open field and stand there
motionless, unconsciously falling into the reverent attitude now so
familiar to her; sometimes she would turn to the right and pause at the
brow of the hill, where the valley in all its panorama of loveliness
lay before her; and sometimes she would walk straight ahead to the old
tumble-down gate where she might face the west and watch the rose
change to palest amber in the sky.

At first her eyes saw but grass,