knew.

"I'm glad you're better," he said, and said no more. But one look of
his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other
people.

"And how have you been, John? How do you like the tan-yard? Tell me
frankly."

He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily,
"Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread. It's a grand
thing for me not to have been hungry for nearly thirty days."

"Poor John!" I put my hand on his wrist--his strong, brawny wrist.
Perhaps the contrast involuntarily struck us both with the truth--good
for both to learn--that Heaven's ways are not so unequal as we
sometimes fancy they seem.

"I have so often wanted to see you, John. Couldn't you come in now?"

He shook his head, and pointed to the cart. That minute, through the
open hall-door, I perceived Jael sauntering leisurely home from market.

Now, if I was a coward, it was not for myself this time. The avalanche
of ill-words I knew must fall--but it should not fall on him, if I
could help it.

"Jump up on your cart, John. Let me see how well you can drive.
There--good-bye, for the present. Are you going to the tan-yard?"

"Yes--for the rest of the day." And he made a face as if he did not
quite revel in that delightful prospect. No wonder!

"I'll come and see you there this afternoon."

"No?"--with a look of delighted surprise. "But you must not--you ought
not."

"But I WILL!" And I laughed to hear myself actually using that phrase.
What would Jael have said?

What--as she arrived just in time to receive a half-malicious,
half-ceremonious bow from John, as he drove off--what that excellent
woman did say I have not the slightest recollection. I only remember
that it did not frighten and grieve me as such attacks used to do;
that, in her own vernacular, it all "went in at one ear, and out at
t'other;" that I persisted in looking out until the last glimmer of the
bright curls had disappeared down the sunshiny road--then shut the
front door, and crept in, content.

Between that time and dinner I sat quiet enough even to please Jael. I
was thinking over the beautiful old Bible story, which latterly had so
vividly impressed itself on my mind; thinking of Jonathan, as he walked
"by the stone Ezel," with the shepherd-lad, who was to be king of
Israel. I wondered whether he would have loved him, and seen the same
future perfection in him, had Jonathan, the king's son, met the po