ourse, Episcopalians," he continued, with an odd sort of pride in the
fact. "But I have aided her--I have aided her."

"In the matter of Masters, perhaps?"

Brother Bethuel glanced at his companion quickly in the darkening
twilight. He caught him indulging in a long, tired yawn.

"I was about to say, general charity; but the matter of Masters will
do," he said carelessly. "The man is a poor fellow up in the mountains,
in whom Miss Dooris is interested. He is often ill and miserable, and
always very poor. She sends him aid when she can. I am to take a bundle
to-morrow."

"And she prays for him," said Wainwright, beginning to descend as the
stage stopped at the door of the village inn.

"She prays for all," replied Brother Bethuel, leaning over, and
following him down with the words, delivered in a full undertone.
Brother Bethuel had a good voice; he had preached under the open sky
among the great peaks too long to have any feeble tones left.

"I do not believe anybody ever prays for me," was Wainwright's last
thought before he came sharply into personal contact with the
discomforts of the inn. And, as his mother died when he was born,
perhaps he was right.

The next morning he wandered about and gazed at the superb sweep of the
mountains. Close behind him rose the near wall of the Blue Ridge; before
him stretched the line of the Alleghanies going down toward Georgia, the
Iron Mountains, the Bald Mountains, and the peaks of the Great Smoky,
purple and soft in the distance. A chain of giant sentinels stretched
across the valley from one range to the other, and on these he could
plainly see the dark color given by the heavy, unmixed growth of
balsam-firs around and around up to the very top, a hue which gives the
name Black Mountain to so many of these peaks.

It was Sunday, and when the three little church-bells rang, making a
tinkling sound in the great valley, he walked over to the Episcopal
church. He had a curiosity to see that girl's eyes again by daylight.
Even there, in that small house of God where so few strangers ever came,
he was hardly noticed. He took his seat on one of the benches, and
looked around. Colonel Eliot was there, in a black broadcloth coat
seventeen years old, but well brushed, and worn with an air of unshaken
dignity. The whole congregation heard him acknowledge every Sunday that
he was a miserable sinner; but they were as proud of him on his one leg
with his crutch under his arm as if h