They rode quite silently to the house of the minister with whom John had exchanged, where they were to dine; after that, the preacher was to go back to the church for the afternoon sermon.

Mrs. Grier, a spare, anxious-looking woman, with a tight friz of hair about her temples which were thin and shining, met them at the door. She had hurried home to "see to things," and be ready to welcome her guests. John she ushered at once into her husband's study, a poor little room, with even fewer books than Mr. Ward's own, while Helen she took to the spare chamber, where she had thoughtfully provided a cambric dress for her, for the day had grown very warm, and the riding-habit was heavy.

She sat down in a splint rocking-chair, and watched her guest brush out her length of shining bronze hair, and twist it in a firm coil low on her neck.

"It was a good gathering," she said; "people came from a distance to hear Mr. Ward. The folks at Lockhaven are favored to listen to such preaching."

"No doubt they feel favored to have Mr. Grier with them to-day," Helen answered, courteously; but there was an absent look in her eyes, and she did not listen closely.

"Well, people like a change once in a while," Mrs. Grier admitted, rocking hard. "Mr. Grier's discourse was to be on the same subject as your husband's, foreign missions. It is one that moves the preachers, and the people seem to like it, I notice, though I don't know that it makes much difference in the collections. But I think they like to get all harrowed up. You'll find there won't be such an attendance in the afternoon. It is ways and means, then, you know. Yes, seems as if sermons on hell made them shiver, and they enjoyed it. I've sometimes thought—I don't know as I'm right—they get the same kind of pleasure out of it that worldly people do out of a play. Not that I know much about such things, I'm sure."

Helen smiled, which rather shocked Mrs. Grier; but though the guest scarcely listened, the little sharp babble of talk was kept up, until they went down to dinner.

There had been no chance for the husband and wife to speak to each other. John looked at Helen steadily a moment, but her eyes veiled any thought. In the midst of Mrs. Grier's chatter, she had gone into the solitude of her own heart, and slowly and silently light was beginning to shine into the mysterious darkness of the last few days. John's grief must have had something to do with this terrible sermon. She felt her heart leap up from the past anxiety like a bird from a net, and the brooding sadness began to fade from her face. The preacher had come down from the pulpit with a certain exhilaration, as of duty done. He was inspired to hope, and even certainty, by the greatness of the theme. Helen should see the truth, his silence should no longer mislead her, she should believe in the justice of God. He had forgotten his sin of cowardice in the onward-sweeping wave of his convictions; he seemed to yield himself up to the grasp of truth, and lost even personal remorse in the contemplation of its majesty.

Mrs. Grier had four noisy children, who all spoke at once, and needed their mother's constant care and attention, so John and Helen could at least be silent; yet it was hard to sit through the dinner when their hearts were impatient for each other.

In a little breathing space at the end of the meal, when two of the children had clambered down from their high chairs and been dismissed, Mrs. Grier began to speak of the sermon.

"It was a wonderful discourse, sir," she said; "seems as if nobody could stand against such doctrine as you gave us. I could have wished, though, you'd have told us your thoughts about infants being lost. There is a difference of opinion between Mr. Grier and two of our elders."

"What does Brother Grier hold?" asked the preacher.

"Well," Mrs. Grier answered, shaking her head, "he does say they are all saved. But the elders, they say that the confession of faith teaches that elect infants are saved, and of course it follows that those not elect are lost. My father, Mr. Ward, was a real old-fashioned Christian, and I must say that was what I was taught to believe, and I hold by it. There now, Ellen, you take your little sister and go out into the garden, like a good girl."

She lifted the baby down from her chair, and put her hand into that of her elder sister.

"Mrs. Grier," Helen said, speaking quickly, "you say you believe it, but if you had ever lost a child, I am sure you could not."

"I have, ma'am,"—Mrs. Grier's thin lip quivered, and her eyes reddened a little,—"but that can't make any difference in truth; besides, we have the blessed hope that she was an elect infant."

It would have been cruel to press the reason for this hope, and Helen listened instead with a breath of relief to what John was saying,—he, at least, did not hold this horrible doctrine.

"No, I agree with your husband," he said. "True, all children are born in sin, and are despised and abhorred as sinners by God. Jonathan Edwards, you know, calls them 'vipers,' which of course was a crude and cruel way of stating the truth, that they are sinners. Yet, through the infinite mercy, they are saved because Christ died, not of themselves; in other words, all infants who die, are elect."

Mrs. Grier shook her head. "I'm for holding to the catechism," she said; and then, with a sharp, thin laugh, she added, "But you're sound on the heathen, I must say."

Helen shivered, and it did not escape her hostess, who turned and looked at her with interested curiosity. She, too, had heard the Lockhaven rumors.

"But then," she proceeded, "I don't see how a parson can help being sound on that, though it is surprising what people will doubt, even the things that are plainest to other people. I've many a time heard my father say that the proper holding of the doctrine of reprobation was necessary to eternal life. I suppose you believe that, Mr. Ward," she added, with a little toss of her head, "even if you don't go all the way with the confession, about infants?"

"Yes," John said sadly, "I must; because not to believe in reprobation is to say that the sacrifice of the cross was a useless offering."

"And of course," Mrs. Grier went on, an edge of sarcasm cutting into her voice, "Mrs. Ward thinks so, too? Of course she thinks that a belief in hell is necessary to get to heaven?"

The preacher looked at his wife with a growing anxiety in his face.

"No," Helen said, "I do not think so, Mrs. Grier."

Mrs. Grier flung up her little thin hands, which looked like bird-claws. "You don't!" she cried shrilly. "Well, now, I do say! And what do you think about the heathen, then? Do you think they'll be damned?"

"No," Helen said again.

Mrs. Grier gave a gurgle of astonishment, and looked at Mr. Ward, but he did not speak.

"Well," she exclaimed, "if I didn't think the heathen would be lost, I wouldn't see the use of the plan of salvation! Why, they've got to be!"

"If they had to be," cried Helen, with sudden passion, "I should want to be a heathen. I should be ashamed to be saved, if there were so many lost." She stopped; the anguish in John's face silenced her.

"Well," Mrs. Grier said again, really enjoying the scene, "I'm surprised; I wouldn't a' believed it!"

She folded her hands across her waist, and looked at Mrs. Ward with keen interest. Helen's face flushed under the contemptuous curiosity in the woman's eyes; she turned appealingly to John.

"Mrs. Ward does not think quite as we do, yet," he said gently; "you know she has not been a Presbyterian as long as we have."

He rose as he spoke, and came and stood by Helen's chair, and then walked at her side into the parlor.

Mrs. Grier had followed them, and heard Helen say in a low voice, "I would rather not go to church this afternoon, dearest. May I wait for you here?"

"Well," she broke in, "I shouldn't suppose you would care to go, so long as it's just about the ways and means of sending the gospel to the heathen, and you think they're all going right to heaven, any way."

"I do not know where they are going, Mrs. Grier," Helen said wearily; "for all I know, there is no heaven, either. I only know that God—if there is a God who has any personal care for us—could not be so wicked and cruel as to punish people for what they could not help."

"Good land!" cried Mrs. Grier, really frightened at such words, and looking about as though she expected a judgment as immediate as the bears which devoured the scoffing children.

"If you would rather not go," John answered, "if you are tired, wait for me here. I am sure Mrs. Grier will let you lie down and rest until it is time to start for home?"

"Oh, of course," responded Mrs. Grier, foreseeing a chance for further investigation, for she, too, was to be at home.

But Helen did not invite her to come into the spare room, when she went to lie down, after John's departure for church. She wanted to be alone. She had much to think of, much to reconcile and explain, to protect herself from the unhappiness which John's sermon might have caused her. She had had an unmistakable shock of pain and distress as she realized her husband's belief, and to feel even that seemed unloving and disloyal. To Helen's mind, if she disapproved of her husband's opinions on what to her was an unimportant subject, her first duty was to banish the thought, and forget that she had ever had it. She sat now by the open window, looking out over the bright garden to the distant peaceful hills, and by degrees the pain of it began to fade from her mind, in thoughts of John himself, his goodness, and their love. Yes, they loved one another,—that was enough.

"What does it matter what his belief is?" she said. "I love him!"

So, by and by, the content of mere existence unfolded in her heart, and John's belief was no more to her than a dress of the mind; his character was unchanged. There was a momentary pang that the characters of others might be hurt by this teaching of the expediency of virtue, but she forced the thought back. John, whose whole life was a lesson in the beauty of holiness—John could not injure any one. The possibility that he might be right in his creed simply never presented itself to her.

Helen's face had relaxed into a happy smile; again the day was fair and the wind sweet. The garden below her was fragrant with growing things and the smell of damp earth; and while she sat, drinking in its sweetness, a sudden burst of children's voices reached her ear, and Ellen and the two little boys came around the corner of the house, and settled down under the window. A group of lilacs, with feathery purple blossoms, made a deep, cool shade, where the children sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac stars floating in the water.

This was evidently a favorite playground with the children, for under the frame of the grindstone were some corn-cob houses, and a little row of broken bits of china, which their simple imagination transformed into "dishes." But to-day the corn-cob houses and the dishes were untouched.

"Now, children," Ellen said, "you sit right down, and I'll hear your catechism."

"Who'll hear yours?" Bobby asked discontentedly. "When we play school, you're always teacher, and it's no fun."

"This isn't playing school," Ellen answered, skillfully evading the first question. "Don't you know it's wicked to play on the Sabbath? Now sit right down."

There was a good deal of her mother's sharpness in the way she said this, and plucked Bobby by the strings of his pinafore, until he took an uncomfortable seat upon an inverted flower-pot.

Ellen opened a little yellow-covered book, and began.

"Now answer, Jim! How many kinds of sin are there?"

"Two," responded little Jim.

"What are these two kinds, Bob?"

"Original and actual," Bob answered.

"What is original sin?" asked Ellen, raising one little forefinger to keep Bobby quiet. This was too hard a question for Jim, and with some stumbling Bobby succeeded in saying,—

"It is that sin in which I was conceived and born."

"Now, Jim," said Ellen, "you can answer this question, 'cause it's only one word, and begins with 'y.'"

"No fair!" cried Bob; "that's telling."

But Ellen proceeded to give the question: "Doth original sin wholly defile you, and is it sufficient to send you to hell, though you had no other sin?"

"Yes!" roared Jim, pleased at being certainly right.

"What are you then by nature?" Ellen went on rather carelessly, for she was growing tired of the lesson.

"I am an enemy to God, a child of Satan, and an heir of hell," answered Bobby promptly.

"What will become of the wicked?" asked the little catechist.

Bobby yawned, and then said contemptuously, "Oh, skip that,—cast into hell, of course."

"You ought to answer right," Ellen said reprovingly, but she was glad to give the last question, "What will the wicked do forever in hell?"

"They will roar, curse, and blaspheme God," said little Jim cheerfully; while Bobby, to show his joy that the lesson was done, leaned over on his flower-pot, and tried to stand on his head, making all the time an unearthly noise.

"I'm roarin'!" he cried gayly.

Ellen, freed from the responsibility of teaching, put the little yellow book quickly in her pocket, and said mysteriously, "Boys, if you won't ever tell, I'll tell you something."

"I won't," said Jim, while Bobby responded briefly, "G'on."

"Well, you know when the circus came,—you know the pictures on the fences?"

"Yes!" said the little boys together.

"'Member the beautiful lady, ridin' on a horse, and standin' on one foot?"

"Yes!" the others cried, breathlessly.

"Well," said Ellen slowly and solemnly, "when I get to be a big girl, that's what I'm going to be. I'm tired of catechism, and church, and those long blessings father asks, but most of catechism, so I'm going to run away, and be a circus."

"Father'll catch you," said Jim; but Bobby, with envious depreciation, added,—

"How do you know but what circuses have catechism?"

Ellen did not notice the lack of sympathy. "And I'm going to begin to practice now," she said.

Then, while her brothers watched her, deeply interested, she took off her shoes, and in her well-darned little red stockings climbed deliberately upon the grindstone.

"This is my horse," she said, balancing herself, with outstretched arms, on the stone, and making it revolve in a queer, jerky fashion by pressing her feet on it as though it were a treadmill, "and it is bare-backed!"

The iron handle came down with a thud, and Ellen lurched to keep from falling; the boys unwisely broke into cheers.

It made a pretty picture, the sunbeams sifting through the lilacs on the little fair heads, and dancing over Ellen's white apron and rosy face; but Mrs. Grier, who had come to the door at the noise of the cheers, did not stop to notice it.

"Oh, you naughty children!" she cried. "Don't you know it is wicked to play on the Sabbath? Ellen's playing circus, do you say, Bobby? You naughty, naughty girl! Don't you know circus people are all wicked, and don't go to heaven when they die? I should think you'd be ashamed! Go right up-stairs, Ellen, and go to bed; and you boys can each learn a psalm, and you'll have no supper, either,—do you hear?"

The children began to cry, but Mrs. Grier was firm; and when, a little later, Helen came down-stairs, ready for her ride, the house was strangely quiet. Mrs. Grier, really troubled at her children's sinfulness, confided their misdeeds to Helen, and was not soothed by the smile that flashed across her face.

"They were such good children to study their catechism first," she interceded, "and making a horse out of a grindstone shows an imagination which might excuse the playing."

But Mrs. Grier was not comforted, and only felt the more convinced of the lost condition of Mrs. Ward's soul. The conviction of other people's sin is sometimes a very pleasing emotion, so she bade her guest good-by with much cordiality and even pulled the skirt of her habit straight, and gave the gray a lump of sugar.

Helen told John of the scene under the lilacs, as they trotted down the lane to the highway, but his mood was too grave to see any humor in it. Indeed, his frame of mind had changed after he left his wife for his second sermon. The exhilaration and triumph had gone, and the reaction had come. He brooded over his sin, and the harassed, distressed look of the last few days settled down again on his face. But Helen had regained her sweet serenity and content; she felt so certain that the darkness since Thursday had been the shadow in which his sermon had been conceived that her relief brought a joy which obscured any thought of regret that he should hold such views.

John's head was bent, and his hands were clasped upon his saddle-bow, while the reins fell loosely from between his listless fingers.

"You are so tired, John," Helen said regretfully.

He sighed, as though rousing himself from thought. "A little, dearest," and then his sorrowful eyes smiled. "You look so fresh and rested, Helen. It was wise for you to lie down this afternoon."

"Oh, but I didn't," she said quickly. "I was busy thinking."

He looked at her eagerly. "Yes," she continued, "I think I know what has distressed you so these last few days, dear. It is this thought of the suffering of mankind. If you have felt that all the heathen who have died are in hell, I don't wonder at your sorrow. It would be dreadful, and I wish you did not think it. But we will not talk about it,—of course you would rather not talk about it, even to me, but I understand."

She bent forward, and smiled brightly, as she looked at him. But his face was full of grief.

"It was not that, Helen," he said; "it was something nearer than that. It was remorse, because of late, for nearly a year, I have neglected my people. I have not admonished them and warned them as I ought. And nearer still, because I have neglected you."

"Me!" she cried, too much astonished to say more.

"Yes," he answered, his head bent again upon his breast, "you, my dearest, my best beloved,—you, who are dearer than my life to me, dearer than my happiness. I have known that you have been far from truth, that you have not believed, and yet I—I have been silent."

Helen looked at him, and the sudden awful thought flashed into her mind that he did not know what he was saying, and then she said with a gasp: "Oh, John, is that all? Have you been so unhappy just because of that? Oh, you poor fellow!"

She brought her horse close beside his, and laid her hand on his arm. "Dear, what does it matter what I believe or do not believe? We love each other. And where is your tolerance, John?" She laughed, but the look of terrible concern in his face frightened her.

"Ah, Helen," he said, "such tolerance as you would have me show would be indifference."

"Oh, John!" she said, and then began resolutely to speak of other things.

But soon they fell into silence, Helen longing to get home and brush this useless and foolish anxiety from her husband's heart, and he agonizing for his sin towards her and towards his people.

The late afternoon sunshine gilded the tender green of the fields, and slanting deep into the darkness of the woods, touched the rough trunks of the trees with gold. Long shadows stretched across the road, and the fragrance which steals out with the evening dews began to come from unseen blossoms, and early clover; and a breath of the uncertain night wind brought hints of apple orchards or the pungent sweetness of cherry-blossoms. They had gone more than half-way home when they drew rein to water their horses, under a whispering pine by the roadside. The trough, overflowing with sparkling water, was green with moss and lichen, and was so old and soft that a bunch of ferns had found a home on its side. The horses thrust their noses down into it, blowing and sputtering with sheer delight in the coolness. John made a cup of a big beech leaf, and filled it for his wife. As he handed it to her, they heard steps, and in a moment more Mr. Grier came around the curve of the road. His horse, too, was thirsty, and he let the reins fall on its neck while he greeted them both with formal and ministerial dignity, saying he "wished they might have tarried until he came home, and perhaps he could have persuaded them to stay the night."

The horses pounded and splashed in the pools about their feet, and were impatient to be off, but Mr. Grier delayed. He spoke of church matters, and General Assembly, and their respective congregations; and then, with a little hesitation, he said:—

"I had almost hoped, Mrs. Ward, that you would have been in Brother Ward's church to-day, even though Mrs. Grier had much pleasure in seeing you under our roof. I had you in my mind in the preparation of my sermon."

Mr. Grier was a tall, thin man, with watery blue eyes, and a sparse sandy beard growing like a fringe under his chin from ear to ear. He moved his jaws nervously as he waited for her answer, and plucked at his beard with long, lean fingers.

Helen smiled. "Did you think I should be a large contributor to foreign missions, Mr. Grier?"

"No, ma'am," he answered solemnly, "I was not thinking of any benefit to the heathen. I had somewhat to say which I felt might be for the good of your own soul."

Helen flushed, and flung her head back with a haughty look. "Ah,—you are very good, I'm sure," she said, "but"—

Mr. Grier interrupted her, wagging his head up and down upon his breast: "Brother Ward will forgive me for saying so, ma'am, but I had your welfare at heart. Brother Ward, you have my prayers for your dear wife."

"I—I thank you," John said, "but you must not feel that my wife is far from the Lord. Have you been told that the truth is not clear to her eyes? Yet it will be!"

"I hope so,—I hope so," responded Mr. Grier, but with very little hope in his voice; and then, shaking the reins, he jogged on down the shadowy road.

"What does he mean?" cried Helen, her voice trembling with anger, and careless whether the retreating minister overheard her. John gave her a long, tender look.

"Dearest," he said, "I am sorry he should have spoken as he did, but the prayers of a good man"—

"I don't want his prayers," she interrupted, bewildered; "it seems to me simply impertinence!"

"Helen," he said, "it cannot be impertinence to pray for a soul in danger, as yours is, my darling. I cannot tell how he knew it, but it is so. It is my sin which has kept you blind and hidden the truth from you, and how can I be angry if another man joins his prayers to mine for your eternal salvation?"

"You say this because I do not believe in eternal punishment, John?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered gently, "first because of that, and then because of all the errors of belief to which that leads."

"It all seems so unimportant," she said, sighing; "certainly nothing which could make me claim the prayers of a stranger. Ah, well, no doubt he means it kindly, but don't let us speak of it any more, dearest."

Their horses were so close, that, glancing shyly about for a moment into the twilight, Helen laid her head against his arm, and looked tenderly into his face.

He started, and then put a quick arm about her to keep her from falling. "No," he said, "no, I will not forget." It was as though he answered some voice in his soul, and Helen looked at him in troubled wonder.

The rest of the ride was very silent. Once, when he stopped to tighten her saddle-girth for her, she bent his head back, and smiled down into his eyes. He only answered her by a look, but it was enough.