next on the
other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for
a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their
respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be
discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be
seen, heard, or felt wherever she was.

"The village must be abed, I guess," mused Abijah, as he neared the
Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign
of life showed on porch or in shed. "No, 't aint, neither," he thought
again, as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the
direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air
certain burning sentiments set to the tune of "Antioch." The words, to a
lad brought up in the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:

"Daughter of Zion, from the dust, Exalt thy fallen head!"

Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others,
but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another
familiar verse, beginning:

"Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth."

"That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto."

"Say to the North,
Give up thy charge,
And hold not back, O South,
And hold not back, O South," etc.

"Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt
in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes
up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap,
Aleck!"

Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood
side of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where
the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds
showing fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open,
and as Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed
out the opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of
voices sent the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:

"Shall we whose souls are lighted
With Wisdom from on high,
Shall we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?"

"Land!" exclaimed Abijah under his breath. "They're at it up here, too!
That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and
the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I
bate ye it's the liveliest of the two."

Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses w