tual. A little
excitement, a very earnest desire to get home once more, did partially
supply the need; and by the time the houses were empty and the churches
full, the wagon stopped at Mrs. Derrick's gate.

"I guess nobody's home," said Mr. Simlins as he with great tenderness
helped Mr. Linden to alight--"but anyway, here's the house all
standin'. Reuben, you go ahead and see if we can get in."

But before Reuben touched the door, Mrs. Derrick had opened it from the
inside, and stood there--her usually quiet manner quite subdued into
silence. Not into inaction however, for her woman's hands soon made
their superior powers known, and Mr. Simlins could only wonder why this
and that had not occurred to him before. Quick and still and
thoughtful, she had done half a dozen little things to make Mr. Linden
comfortable before he had been in the house as many minutes, and
assured the two others very confidently that "he shouldn't faint again,
if he wanted to ever so much!"

"Well, I was sorry to let him go," said Mr. Simlins, "and now I'm glad
of it. It takes a woman! Where's some-somebody else?"

"There's nobody else in the house," said Mrs. Derrick. "Faith's gone to
meeting, and Cindy too, for all I know."

"I'll send Dr. Harrison word in the morning where _I_ am," said Mr.
Linden,--which Mr. Simlins rightly understood to mean that the fact
need not be published to-night. He took gentle leave of this lost guest
and went to church; excusing himself for it afterwards by saying he
felt lonely.

If Faith had seen him there, she might have jumped at conclusions
again; but she did not; and after the service walked home, slowly
again, though nobody was with her. A little wearied by this time with
the night and the day's work, wearied in body and mind perhaps, she
paced homewards along the broad street or road, on which the yellow
leaves of the trees were floating lazily down, and which was all filled
from sky and wayside with golden light. It brought to mind her walk of
last Sunday afternoon--and evening;--the hymn, and those other lines
Mr. Linden had repeated and which had run in her head fifty times
since. And Faith's step grew rather slower and less lightsome as she
neared home, and when she got home she went straight up to her room
without turning to the right or the left. Her mother was just then in
the kitchen and heard her not, and shielded by her bonnet Faith saw not
even that Mr. Linden's door stood open; but when s