"a
change of heart." Upon mentioning this in a furtive tone to Mrs.
Manning, she laughed heartily, rather to his surprise, for he was a
reverent sort of non-churchgoing pagan, and said, "Very good, Bro--very
good, indeed!"

He decided that he had guessed rightly; the Episcopalian was, he had
heard, a very cheerful kind of religion, tears and groaning not being
required of its neophytes.

But his eyes were to be opened. The last trump could not have startled
him more than something he saw with his own eyes one day. It happened in
this way: There was an accident on the wharf; a young man was crushed
between the end of the dock and the side of the steamer; some one came
running to the cottage and said it was Lawrence Vickery. Mrs. Manning,
the hands at the mill, and even old Dinah, started off at once; the
whole town was hurrying to the scene. Bro, shut up in his workroom,
going over his beloved valve again, did not hear or see them. It was
nearly dinner-time, and, when he came out and found no boat, he was
surprised; but he paddled himself across on a rude raft he had, and went
up to the cottage. The doors stood open all over the house as the hasty
departures had left them, and he heard Marion walking up and down in her
room up stairs, sobbing aloud and wildly. He had never heard her sob
before; even as a child she had been reticent and self-controlled. He
stood appalled at the sound. What could it betoken? He stole to the foot
of the stairs and listened. She was moaning Lawrence's name over and
over to herself--"Lawrence! Lawrence! Lawrence!" He started up the
stairs, hardly knowing what he was doing. Her grief was dreadful to him:
he wanted to comfort her, but did not know how. He hardly realized what
the cry meant. But it was to come to him. The heart-broken girl, who
neither saw nor heard him, although he was now just outside the door,
drew a locket from her bosom and kissed it passionately with a flood of
despairing, loving words. Then, as if at the end of her strength, with
a sigh like death, she sank to the floor lifeless; she had fainted.

After a moment the man entered. He seemed to himself to have been
standing outside that door for a limitless period of time; like those
rare, strange sensations we feel of having done the same thing or spoken
the same words before in some other and unknown period of existence. He
lifted Marion carefully and laid her on a lounge. As he moved her, the
locket swung loose agains