moved here. They
were Catholics. There was a girl in the family, and in some way or
other George got acquainted with her and got to visiting at her house.
You know the Catholics have no church here--there are so few of
them--but at her house my brother met Catholics who talked to him and
gave him books to read. The truth is, he fell in love with the girl and
our trouble began. She and her folks somehow convinced him that her
religion was the oldest one--that it was really established by our Lord,
and that all the other denominations had shot off from it. George had
the manhood to come to father and tell him what he believed and that he
was going to join the Catholics, so that he and the girl could marry
according to Catholic rites. I was too young to know what it was all
about, but I was terrified by father's fury. He acted like a crazy man.
He couldn't eat or sleep. He disowned my brother and drove him from
home. George married the girl and they all moved away. By accident we
heard that he had died of consumption away out West, and then a man--a
Catholic, some kin of George's wife--came to deliver some message George
had sent from his death-bed. We were all sitting in the parlor. Before
father would let him say what the message was father asked the man if
George died a Catholic, and when the man said he did and that a priest
had been called in, my father refused to hear the message and showed him
the door. My mother seemed willing to listen to it, but she always obeys
my father. They are almost exactly alike, and so she said nothing."

The gate latch clicked. Voices were heard from the house. "They are
back. I'll have to go in," Tilly said, and she sighed as from weighty
memories awakened by her recital.

John got up and Tilly took his arm again. It seemed to him that her hold
upon it was somehow insecure, and he took her hand and drew it higher
up. He had never touched her hand till now, and, while it was rough from
her accustomed toil, by contrast with his own brick-and-stone rasped
palm, it felt as soft as velvet. There was a warm lack of resistance in
it and he released it reluctantly. How glorious and bliss-drenching
seemed the moonlight as it lay on the landscape! And it was not to end,
he told himself. There was the party to look forward to. That would give
him another chance to see her alone. He was a strong man, and yet he was
all but swooning under emotions which he had never dreamed could exist.

"Oh, the