nt you all
and wholly; every thought, every feeling,--the whole strength of your
being. I don't care if I say it: I would not wish to be second in your
heart even to God himself!"

"Oh, Moses!" said Mara, almost starting away from him, "such words are
dreadful; they will surely bring evil upon us."

"I only breathed out my nature, as you did yours. Why should you love an
unseen and distant Being more than you do one whom you can feel and see,
who holds you in his arms, whose heart beats like your own?"

"Moses," said Mara, stopping and looking at him in the clear moonlight,
"God has always been to me not so much like a father as like a dear and
tender mother. Perhaps it was because I was a poor orphan, and my father
and mother died at my birth, that He has been so loving to me. I never
remember the time when I did not feel His presence in my joys and my
sorrows. I never had a thought of joy and sorrow that I could not say to
Him. I never woke in the night that I did not feel that He was loving
and watching me, and that I loved Him in return. Oh, how many, many
things I have said to Him about you! My heart would have broken years
ago, had it not been for Him; because, though you did not know it, you
often seemed unkind; you hurt me very often when you did not mean to.
His love is so much a part of my life that I cannot conceive of life
without it. It is the very air I breathe."

Moses stood still a moment, for Mara spoke with a fervor that affected
him; then he drew her to his heart, and said,--

"Oh, what could ever make you love me?"

"He sent you and gave you to me," she answered, "to be mine in time and
eternity."

The words were spoken in a kind of enthusiasm so different from the
usual reserve of Mara, that they seemed like a prophecy. That night, for
the first time in her life, had she broken the reserve which was her
very nature, and spoken of that which was the intimate and hidden
history of her soul.

CHAPTER XXXIII

AT A QUILTING

"And so," said Mrs. Captain Badger to Miss Roxy Toothacre, "it seems
that Moses Pennel ain't going to have Sally Kittridge after all,--he's
engaged to Mara Lincoln."

"More shame for him," said Miss Roxy, with a frown that made her mohair
curls look really tremendous.

Miss Roxy and Mrs. Badger were the advance party at a quilting, to be
holden at the house of Mr. Sewell, and had come at one o'clock to do the
marking upon the quilt, which was to be filled up b