Year: 1863

church porch, but ottentimes will follow
her slave al~ng the aisles, and up the car
peted stepts into the very pulpit, as she
might have followed him into any sceGe
of public strife or triumph, teaching him
that ministers are but men, and that of all
the preachers on this earth Of ours.
there vas but ORe-a holy une-about
whose picture head the old painters always
drew glory, who ooald forget mans
praise or blame, and struggle on through
scorn and persecution and temptation, the
cross and thorny crown his only earthly
tributes, without one blot or bleuish on
his snowy soul, the spotless gitt OF God
returned to Him as spotless as he gave it.


In his self-reproach, young William
Betswo,th made no such excuse for his
mental delinquencies, but thought him
self at that moment the greatest sinner
upon earth.


The text was read, and the first words
OF his sermon were upon the minister's
lips, when the church door opened once
more to amit two ladies, who came softly
up the aisle and seated themselves very
near the pulpit. Both were young, and
one-the smallest and most girlish-wore
golden curls, which fell below her waist.
But it was upon the other that William
Betsworth's blue eyes rested involuntarily,
and it seemed to the young man as though
Satan were indeed tempting him in earn
est If it were wrong to think of the
effect of his sermon, how doubly wrong it
was to go wandering back to his boyhood,
and to see the little pond, with water lilies
on its bosom, and the garden, with its
ranks of red roses, and the school house,
where the girls sat on one side and the
boys on the other, and to see, amid all,
pair of soft black eyes, a childish figure,
and to feel dinpled hand within his own,
and to hear a baby voice say, sobbingly,
Il will come back some day and be your
little wife, O! very wrong; yet he
could not help it any more than he could
help those other thoughts, for there before
him were those soft black eyes, child's
no longer, and that childish form altered
into wOman's.


Il will come back some day and be
your little wife These words sounded
in his ears over and over again, and Love
climbed the pulpit stairs and stood there
beside Ambition. No one guessed all this
save the young minister himself, and when
the sermon was done, Deacon Grumble
nodded approval to Deacon Doleful, and
his mothers eyes were full of tears, called
forth by her innocent pride in her blue
eyed William, and scapegrace Jasper
grasped his brothers hand, as he descend
ed from the pulpit, in earnest congratula-
ton. Only the object of his interest was
dissatisfied, as he thought, with selt-re
proach, upon the earth filled dreams which
had so haunted him. Yet that memory
of his child-love would not be driven from
his heart, and when he arrived at home
and found those two beautiful girls stand
ing together upon the parsonage porch, it
grew still more vivid.


'They had come bask to live," she
said, "and were not going back again,
and late as they arrived on the past night,
she had resolved to come to church as soon
as she heard that William was to preach.
How strange that he, should be a grown
man and minister! 1t seemed but yes
terday that they were children, and he
wore round blue jacket, and fished for
mlnnows with crooked pin. Yet she
knew him. And he-was it possible that
he would have remembered her?" So
she ran on, and her golden-haired sister,
Efiie, smiled beside her like happy child:
In a little while, she left them, and when
she was quite out of sight, William Bets
worth went back into the house, and
thought how strange it was that all those
years of travel in a foreign lad had al
tered his playmate so little, and into what
a beautiful blossom the tender bud of that
spring time had expanded


He preached that night again, and
strove, if ever man did strive, to be no
hypocrite; and it was only too easy, now,
to forget the frowns of Deacon Grumble,
OR the sighs of Deacon Doleful, while
Caroline Graham sat there looking at him
with her soft black eyes. And when that
night he sought his little bedroom, he
found himself thinking OF her once more.
He had spoken to her, and she remem-
bered the school house, and the garden,
and the pond where the water lilies grew;
whether she remembered that baby prom
Use, he could not tell. With this thought.
the young minister fell asleep, and no one
could have blamed him more than he
blamed himself the next morning.


Time passed on, and that ordeal of the
first Sabbath had grown to be an ordinary
habit. The congregation were no longer
so fearfully wide awake, and he was used
to their faces and to his new position.
But if Caroline Graham was absent from
the service, he was conscious of blank.
lost feeling, which he had no power to
overcome, and by this time he scarcely
strove to do SO, for he had begun to feel
as though the thoughts which clung about
him were the purest of his soul, and had
nothing earthly in them. He had loved
her all his life. If she had not returned it,
he should never have loved another wo-
man. So he thought, and so he said to
himself over and over again, believing it