"THE nicer half of the You-I seems buried in contemplation this morning," said Philip at his breakfast table, the Saturday before Christmas.

"The home-half of the You-I," Grace replied, after a quick rally from a fit of abstraction, "was thinking that it saw very little of the store-half this week, except when she went to the store to look for it. Was business really so exacting, or was it merely absorbing?"

"'Twas both, dear girl," said Philip, wishing he might repeat to her all that Caleb had said to him as recorded in the preceding chapter, and then scolding himself for the wish.

"I wonder," Grace said, "whether you know you often look as if you were in serious trouble?"

"Do I? I'm sorry you noticed it, but now that it's over, I don't object to telling you that if a single money package had arrived six hours later than it did, the principal general store of this county would have taken second or third place in the public esteem."

"Phil! Was it so large a sum?"

"Oh, no; merely two hundred dollars, but without it I would have had to decline to buy two or three wagon-loads of dressed hogs."

"'Dressed hogs'! What an expression!"

"Quite so; still, 'tis the meatiest one known in this part of the country. I can't say, however, that 'tis an ideal one for use when ladies are present, so I beg to move the previous question. What was it?"

"'Twas that I've seen very little of you this week except when I've been to the store to look for you. Won't the business soon be easier, as you become accustomed to it, so we may have our evenings together once more?"

"I hope so," said Philip.

"You didn't say that as if you meant it."

"Didn't I? Well, dear girl, to-morrow will be Sunday, and you shall have every moment of my time, and 'I shall bathe my weary soul in seas of heavenly rest,' as Caleb frequently sings to himself."

"You poor fellow! You need more help in the store, if you don't wish to become worn out."

"I don't see how any one could assist me. Caleb is everything he should be, but he has given me to understand that everything really depends upon the proprietor, and the more I learn of the business, the more plainly I see that he is right."

Grace asked a few questions, and after Philip had answered them he exclaimed:—

"You artful, inquisitive, dreadful woman! You've dragged out of me a lot of things that I'd determined you shouldn't know, for I've always had an utter contempt for men who inflict their personal troubles upon their wives. But you can imagine from what I've told you that no one but a partner could relieve me of any of my work."

"Then why not teach your partner the business?"

"'Twill be time to do that when I get one."

"Don't be stupid, Phil," Grace said, rising from her chair, going to her husband, and bestowing a little pinch and a caress. "Don't you know who I mean?"

"Dear girl," said Philip, "you're quite as clever as I,—which is no compliment,—and everybody adores you. But the idea of your dickering by the hour with farmers and other countrymen—and dickering is simply the soul of our business—is simply ridiculous."

"I don't see why," Grace replied, with a pout, followed by a flash in her deep brown eyes. "Some of the farmers' wives 'dicker,' as you call it, quite as sharply as their husbands. Am I stupider than they?"

"No—no! What an idea! But—they've been brought up to it."

"Which means merely that they've learned it. What women have done woman can do. I hope I'm not in the way in the store when you're talking business?"

"In the way! You delicious hypocrite!"

"Well, I've listened a lot for business' sake, instead of merely for fun. Besides, I do get dreadfully lonesome in the house at times, in spite of a little work and a lot of play—at the piano. Oh, that reminds me of something. Prepare to be startled. A great revival effort is to begin at the church to-morrow night, and a committee of two, consisting of Caleb and Mr. Grateway, the minister, have been to me to know—guess what they wanted."

"H'm! I shouldn't wonder if they wanted you to promise to sit beside the minister, so that all the susceptible young men might be coaxed to church and then shaken over the pit and dragged into the fold. Caleb and the minister have long heads."

"Don't be ridiculous! What they ask is that you'll have our piano moved to the church, and that you'll play the music for the hymns. There's to be a lot of singing, and the church hasn't any instrumental music, you know, and Caleb has been greatly impressed by your playing."

"Well, I'll be—I don't know what. Old fools! I wish they'd asked me direct! They'd have got a sharp, unmistakable 'NO!'"

"So they said; that was the reason they came to me."

"And you said—"

"That I'd consult you, and that if for any reason you felt that you must decline, I would play for them."

"Grace—Somerton!"

"Why shouldn't I? I often played the melodeon for the choir in our village church before I went to New York."

"Did you, indeed? But I might have imagined it, for there seems to be nothing that you can't do, or won't attempt. But let us see where we are. You've promised, practically, that they shall have the music; if I decline to play, they'll think I'm stuck up, or something of which, for business' sake, I can't afford to be suspected. Besides, when I married you I made some vows that weren't in the service, and one of them was that I never would shift any distasteful duty upon my wife. On the other hand, these Methodists are a literal lot of people. They've wanted me to become a class-leader because Uncle Jethro was one. I believe the duties are to inflict spiritual inquisition every Sunday upon specified people in the presence of one another. I escaped only by explaining that I was not a member of their denomination. But give them an inch and they'll take an ell. If I play for them that night, they'll expect me to do it the next, and again and again, probably every Sunday, and I certainly shan't have our piano jogged once a week over frozen roads, with the nearest tuner at a city seventy-five miles away."

"Then let me tell them that you won't allow them to be disappointed, but that as you've not been accustomed to play for church singing, and I have, that I will play for them."

"That means that every one in the church will stare at you, which will make your husband feel wretchedly uncomfortable. Aside from that, you'll distract attention from the minister; so although I know that you personally are a means of grace—Grace, itself, indeed, ha, ha!—the effect of the sermon won't be worth any more than a bag of corn-husks."

"Oh, Phil! don't imagine that everybody sees me through your eyes. Besides, except while playing I shall sit demurely on a front bench, with my back to the congregation."

So Caleb and the minister were rejoiced, and spread the announcement throughout the town, and Grace rehearsed the church's familiar airs to all the hymns on the list which the minister gave her, though some of them she had to learn by ear, by the assistance of Caleb, who whistled them to her. Soon after dark on Sunday night six stalwart sinners, carefully selected by Caleb, exulted in the honor of carrying the little upright piano to the church, where they remained so as to be sure of seats from which to hear the music.

The Methodist church edifice in Claybanks could seat nearly three hundred people and give standing room to a hundred more. Seldom had it been filled to its extreme capacity; but when the opening hymn was "given out" on the night referred to, the building was crowded to the doors and a hundred or more persons outside begged and demanded that windows and doors should remain open during the singing. Pastor Grateway, who had been in the ministry long enough to make the most of every opportunity, improved this occasion to announce that according to custom in all churches possessing instruments, the music of each hymn would be played before the singing began. Grace, quite as uncomfortable as her husband would have been in her place, was nevertheless familiar with the music and the piano, and the congregation rose vociferously to the occasion. Even the sinners sang, and one back-seat ruffian, who had spent a winter in a city and frequented concert saloons, became so excited as to applaud at the end of the first hymn, for which he was promptly tossed through an open window by his more decorous comrades.

The hymn after the prayer was equally effective, so the minister interpolated still another one after the scripture reading called the "second lesson." He, too, had been uplifted by the music—so much uplifted that he preached more earnestly than usual and also more rapidly, so as to reach the period of "special effort." At the close of the sermon he said:—

"As we sing the hymn beginning 'Come, ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,' let all persons who wish to flee from the wrath to come, and desire the prayers of true believers, come forward and kneel at the mourners' bench."

The hymn was sung, and two or three persons approached the altar and dropped upon their knees. As the last verse was reached, Caleb whispered to the minister, who nodded affirmatively; then he whispered to Grace, who also nodded; then he found Philip, who was seated near the front, to be within supporting distance of his wife, and whispered:—

"Give your wife a spell for a minute; play 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross' the way you did the other day for me. That'll fetch 'em!"

Philip frowned and refused, but Caleb snatched his hand in a vise-like grasp and fairly dragged him from his seat. Half angry, half defiant, yet full of the spirit of any man who finds himself "in for it," whatever "it" may be, Philip dropped upon the piano stool which Grace had vacated, and attacked the keys as if they were sheaves of wheat and he was wielding a flail. He played the music as he had played it to Caleb, with the accent and swing of a march, yet with all the runs and variations with which country worshippers are wont to embroider it, and the hearers were so "wrought up" by it that they began the hymn with a roaring "attack" that was startling even to themselves. Grace, seeing no seat within reach, and unwilling to turn her back to the people, retired to one end of the piano, under one of the candles, from which position, on the raised platform in front of the pulpit, she beheld a spectacle seldom seen in its fulness except by ministers during a time of religious excitement—a sea of faces, many of them full of the ecstacy of faith and anticipation, others wild with terror at the doom of the impenitent.

Like most large-souled women, Grace was by nature religious and extremely sympathetic, and unconsciously she looked pityingly and beseechingly into many of the troubled faces. Her eyes rested an instant, unconsciously, on those of one of the stalwart sinners who had brought the piano to the church. In a second the man arose, strode forward, and dropped upon his knees. Grace looked at another,—for the six were together on one bench,—and he, too, came forward. Then a strange tumult took possession of her; she looked commandingly at the others in succession, and in a moment the entire six were on their knees at the altar.

"Great hell!" bellowed the ruffian who had been tossed through the window, into which he had climbed halfway back in his eagerness to hear the music. Then he tumbled into the church, got upon his feet, and hurried forward to join the other sinners at the mourners' bench, which had already become so crowded that Caleb was pressing the saints from the front seats to make room for coming penitents.

The hymn ended, but Philip did not know it, so he continued to play. Grace whispered to him, and when he had reached the last bar, which he ended with a crash, he abruptly seated himself on the pulpit steps and felt as if he had done something dreadful and been caught in the act. Grace reseated herself at the instrument; and as the minister, with the class leaders, Sunday-school teachers, and other prominent members of the church were moving among the penitents, counselling and praying, and the regular order of song and prayer had been abandoned or forgotten, she played the music of the hymns that had been designated by the minister on the previous day. Some of the music was plaintive, some spirited, but she played all with extreme feeling, whether the people sang or merely listened. She played also all newer church music that had appealed to her in recent years, and when, at a very late hour, the congregation was dismissed, she suddenly became conscious of the most extreme exhaustion she had ever known. As she and her husband were leaving the church, one of the penitents approached them and said:—

"Bless the Lord for that pianner—the Lord an' you two folks."

"Amen!" said several others.

Philip and Grace walked home in silence; but when they were within doors, Philip took his wife's hands in his, held them apart, looked into Grace's eyes, which seemed to be melting, and exclaimed:—

"Grace Somerton—my wife—a revivalist!"

"Is Saul also among the prophets?" Grace retorted, with a smile which seemed to her husband entirely new and peculiar. "It was your music that started the—what shall I call it?"