to the door, began to eat her supper alone. As she poured out her cup of tea the hot stream ran partly into the saucer, partly into the cup, and as she helped herself to the baked hash her hand trembled so that half the portion landed on the table. Delia flushed angrily, and spoke to herself under her breath with scornful energy as she repaired the damages: "I don't wonder you 're ashamed of yourself, Delia Harding. I don't wonder at all. Why don't you tell him the truth? Why don't you? Oh, the Lord only knows why I don't! I guess I'm going crazy." She leaned her head wearily on her hand and forgot to eat.

From the doorway came Marcus Town's deliberate voice.

"I have never," said Marcus, ponderingly, "forgotten that first and only meal I ate at my hotel. It's bad enough sleeping there, for a self-respecting man, but eat there-no, sir! It 's out of the question. The first day I came here I ate my dinner with you, you may remember, and my supper I tried to eat at the hotel. Says I to myself as I rose from that supper-table, 'Never again, Marcus, never again!' I walked over here the next morning, just as you were cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast. You can't run a farm, perhaps, but this man knows you can cook. Somehow, you make the things you 're cooking smell so good. When I came to this door that morning I thought I'd never smelled anything like that bacon and eggs cooking. Says I from the doorway to you at the stove: 'I never tasted such a dreadful supper as those hotel people gave me last night.' And says you, as hard as a hammer and not so much as looking round: 'The hotel supper was bad? Well, you'll get a worse breakfast.' And me leaning, hungry, sad, and lonely, against this very door-jamb! How could you, Miss Harding? How could you? What did I do? I walked firmly in at the door, like this. I walked over to the dresser, like this. I took down a plate, knife, fork, and tumbler, just this way-and down I sat me at the table, just so. And that settled it. And it's been so settled, in that same kind of pleasant, informal way, every day and three times a day, and so it 's going to be settled now. Hash, is it? Baked hash? You knew I liked that for supper better than anything else, and you knew I 'd had a long, hard drive to-day, and so you made me my fa

vorite dish, did n't you? That was kind of you, Delia."

Miss Harding's hand was lying on the table, and Marcus laid his over it, then glanced up at her, smiling. As he looked he drew back quickly, deciding that though some women might be very different from other women, all women looked exactly alike just before they began to cry.

"How's that horse of mine to-day? No better, I suppose. Can't walk a step yet. Well, I guess you were right about her being worse before she 's better. It's turned out a long job. It kind of broke it to me it would be when you locked her in the box-stall by herself, as if she was too sick to stand company. By the way, what about that rack in the box-stall? I told you I'd mend it, and I will, right after supper. I'd have mended it long before, but I never could find the key of the stall when you were n't around, and when you were around, you know, you always had so much for me to do-"

"I mended the rack myself," interrupted Delia, shortly.

Marcus looked up at her quizzically.

'You did, eh? How did you mend it? With a hair-pin? Why, I do believe you did!" He burst into a shout of laughter. "Why, I only said that for a joke; but I do believe she actually did mend the rack with a hair-pin!"

"I did n't depend on the hair-pin," said Delia, goaded to speech. "I tied a surcingle round the rack and tied that to a rafter. The hair-pin was just to secure the knot."

"You need n't blush over it, Miss Harding. It's nothing to be ashamed of. I like a real feminine woman myself, and you certainly are one. Everybody round here thinks you are a kind of man-woman, but I knew better right off, as soon as I met you, and here's this hair-pin business just proving it. I guess I'll stick a nail or two alongside of the hair-pin just to encourage it. That hay-rack 's pretty heavy, and if it did fall-hello! I bet that's it now! Hear that! hear that, will you! Whew! There won't be much stable left!"

Indeed, judging from the sounds, as if of bombardment, the banging and cracking and trampling echoes that came from the old barn, the whole structure was being demolished. Delia and Marcus reached the kitchen door at the same moment, and there each paused, as the opening was too

narrow to admit the two, and the next moment Marcus would not have moved if he could, and Delia could not if she would, for he held her arm in an iron grasp.

"Delia Harding," he said sternly, “what does that mean?" And as he spoke he pointed to the house yard, where his mare, followed by Miss Harding's calmer horse, was kicking up her heels with joy in her freedom, prancing and squealing, evidently as sound as a horse could be. There was not the slightest trace of lameness about her, except that her leg was incrusted with bandages. A bit of the rack hanging to her halter told the story. The hair-pin had proved faithless, the rack had fallen, and both horses, the strength of terror in them, had kicked and broken their way to freedom from the old stable.

"What does this mean?" he repeated; and Delia, raising such desperate eyes as she might at the call to judgment, replied:

"It means that your horse has been just as well as mine for a week, and I locked her in the box-stall so you would n't know it. And you would n't have known it now if I could have helped it; and I had n't made up my mind when I'd let you knowmaybe I never would. And I was cruel to the horse, for it needed exercise, and the wonder is it did n't ruin it. And I can't tell you why I did it, for I don't know myself. I only know I 've been a wicked woman and a liar." She went on with a kind of wailing note: "Before you came it seemed to me all right, me living alone here and doing for myself. I did n't care if people did call me queer. It all began to be different from the day you said you guessed the other cats thought mine was a kind of king because of the tassels in the poor thing's ears. It seemed to me then you were just talking about me! From that very minute I knew my farm and orchards and all were just like my cat's red tassels, and if I did n't exactly have holes in my ears, it was the same. I have n't had any kind of satisfaction in anything I owned since that day. All I 've got 's only mine because I'm a lonely, forlorn old maid with nobody belonging to me and nobody to share anything with, and-I guess I'm going crazy! I 've been thinking so for days and days."

Once the plaintive flood-gates opened, the stream flowed on and on with no signs of stopping. Marcus stood still, grasping

her arm and staring at her working face, his own utterly bewildered.

"Hold on there," he interrupted at last. "Just go a little slower, won't you? When you do once get started, you 're too swift for my class. What 's all this mean, anyhow? Why on earth did n't you want me to know my horse was well? "

He paused suddenly, and then over his perplexed face crept an expression, half astonishment, half dismay. For a moment he said nothing, then, to his own evident and intense surprise, he began to blush, and the more intently he studied Delia's unhappy face the deeper his blush became. He dropped his grasp of her arm, and leaving her side, began to stride to and fro in the kitchen. When presently he checked his walk and returned to her again, it was to grasp her arm as before, and, as usual, he was laughing.

"Go 'long, Delia Harding!" he said, shaking her slightly by the arm he held. Anybody but you and me 'd have known a week ago—indeed, I ain't sure but it was sooner that horses and abscesses and brass polish business was n't keeping me here. Don't you know an offer of marriage when you get it? Said I to you not half an hour ago, 'What will you sell this farm for?' and I told you all my ailments and wants and needs, and I said I'd something saved up, and-did you suppose all that was meant to go in the deed of transfer? No, sir! I have n't got so much to offer you for the farm,—just all my worldly goods I thee endow, and me thrown in as a kind of good measure,—but that 's my offer, and it stands just so-yours the accepting or the refusal. I have n't said I love you, but I guess we both know I do, or we will know it when you say the word. What are you going to say? Is it a go?"

She looked up at him. Delia had become a woman when she ceased to be a child, and now, after years of womanhood, her slighted girlhood seemed to descend upon her. Marcus was laughing, but, as his eyes met hers, something behind their kindly mischief took her breath away. His plans bewildered her, his vernacular confused her, his personality swept her away with him and to him.

"A go?" she faltered. "No, oh, no! I-oh, I wanted you to stay!" "Then stay it is," answered Marcus. And stay it was.

JOHN

OHN WESLEY was born June 28, 1703, in the rectory of the parish of Epworth, Lincolnshire. The parish was obscure, but in that humble rectory literary, political, and religious questions were discussed with eager interest. For the rector, Samuel Wesley, was something of a poet, more of a politician, and a model parish priest. A university man, and the son and grandson of university men, he had the tastes and instincts of a scholar, and maintained his studious habits all his days. His magnum opus, a commentary on the Book of Job, though rather curious than valuable, is a monument of patient industry and research. He was ambitious of poetic honors also, and in his early years wrote a good many verses. They were rather poor verses, I suppose; just good enough to be damned by Swift in the "Battle of the Books"-where Wesley is despatched by a single kick from the steed

of Homer-and later by Pope in the "Dunciad."

An active-minded, versatile man, he was naturally interested in public affairs, and wrote the first pamphlet published in England in support of the Revolution settlement of 1688. He always had a certain blunt independence, a promptness, sometimes a rashness, of decision, and a habit of obstinate defense of whatever he thought right. When his wife, who did not share his loyalty to the Prince of Orange, persistently refused to say

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Amen" to his morning prayer for the king, "Sukey," said the emphatic little rector-"Sukey, if we are to have two kings, we must have two beds," and mounting his horse, rode away to London, where he stayed till the death of William next year removed that cause of difference.

But, like many of his brothers of the clergy, though a Whig under King William, he was a Tory under Queen Anne; and when the famous trial of Dr. Sacheverell

came on, it was he-so his son John affirms-who wrote for that bumptious parson the famous speech he delivered before the bar of the House of Lords. His parishioners, perhaps as ignorant and brutal a set of half-heathen as could have been found in England, disliking his politics, vexed and harassed him, burned his crops and hocked his cattle, and finally burned down his rectory. But the rector stuck to his post, and by cheerful performance of his duty at last lived down their prejudice and won a surly confidence. As to fear, whether of mobs or lords, like his son John, he never knew what that meant. When a youngster just out of the university, sitting one day in a London coffeehouse, he saw a colonel of the Guards swagger in, swearing like the proverbial trooper. "Here," said young Wesley, calling the waiter, “take this glass of water to the man in the red coat and ask him to wash his mouth out." When the coarse mistress of the Marquis of Normandy, patron of the living in his first parish, persisted in calling upon his wife, he took the obnoxious visitor by the arm and turned her out of door-and then resigned his living.

Life in the Epworth rectory, to a man of his tastes and aspirations, could not have been easy. His income was only about one hundred and fifty pounds a year; his year; his family was large, "nineteen children in twenty-one years," as he told his bishop, and the rector, who was perhaps a little deficient in worldly wisdom, once or twice knew the inside of a debtors' jail. But he could not be soured or disheartened. He was a genial man, with a vein of mellow humor, loved a moderate pipe and kindly talk, told a story capitally, and must have been a delightful companion. And to these amiable qualities he added an earnest and active piety too rare in his day. His tastes coveted the still air of delightful studies; but his lot was cast in a remote parish of the Lincolnshire fens, among a boorish folk who despised his learning. And here he labored for forty years, instructing, exhorting, visiting from house to house, knowing every soul in his parish by name, till he lived to see the number of his communicants increased tenfold, not a papist or dissenter in his parish, and the moral tone of the community cleansed and elevated. Yet he hoped for still better things, and his

last words must have been recalled by his sons, in later years, with the solemn force of prophecy. "Charles," said the dying man to the son at his bedside, “be steady; the Christian faith will surely revive in these kingdoms. You shall see it, though I shall not."

SUSANNA WESLEY

BUT the dominant influence in the Epworth rectory was not that of the rector, but of his wife. Susanna Wesley was a woman to be regarded with some awe

Nobly planned

To warn, to comfort, and command. Lacking in humor, perhaps deficient also in the softer and more distinctively feminine graces, she had, instead, a remarkable dignity and poise of character. In clearness and force of intellect, in practical judgment, in deliberate steadiness of purpose, she was unquestionably the superior of her husband. A daughter of the great Dr. Annesley, the St. Paul of nonconformity, she was his twenty-fifth child, -at the early age of thirteen she had gone over for herself all the arguments for dissent, and deliberately decided to enter the Church of England. At least, so the biographers say; but it may be plausibly conjectured that the acquaintance with young Sam Wesley, who had just made a similar change, may have had something to do with her decision.

It is certain, however, that Susanna Wesley was always accustomed to do her own thinking. Her union with her husband was one of singular beauty and loyalty; but it did not imply any tame conformity of opinion, and she evidently found difficulty now and then in harmonizing her logical conclusions with her theory of wifely obedience. When Mr. Wesley, during one of his long absences in London in attendance upon Convocation, wrote to remonstrate with her for having gathered a company in the rectory of Sunday evenings in a way dangerously near a violation of the Conventicle Act, she gave him her reasons for the meeting, -and very good ones they were,—but concluded: “If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire it, but send me your positive command." Mr. Wesley did not send it. ""T is a misfor

Drawn by Katharine Kimball

tune almost peculiar to our family," she wrote to John in Oxford, "that your father and I seldom think alike." When they thought differently, it is hardly probable that Mrs. Wesley was often found in error.

The education of her children was almost entirely intrusted to her. She began it in the cradle. Before they were a week old the babes of the Wesley family were taught "to fear the rod and cry softly," so that, al

hours, and next morning began his reading lessons with the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis. The religious training of her children of course received Mrs. Wesley's most careful attention. She prepared for them an admirably clear body of explanations upon the catechism and creed, and she was accustomed to meet them separately, once a week, at a specified time, for an hour of religious conversation and instruction. Long afterward, John Wesley, when a Fellow of Lincoln College, wrote to his mother, begging her to give him an hour of her thought and prayer every Thursday even

though the rectory was as full of children as a hive is of bees, it was as quiet as a Quaker meeting-house. As the children emerged from infancy, their hours of work and play, their habits of dress, manner, speech, were all regulated by exact rule, and instant obedience was always required. "The first thing to be done with children," said Mrs. Wesley, "is to conquer their will." She mentions, as a proof of the thoroughness with which this was done in her own flock, that when they were ill "there was no difficulty in making them take the most unpleasant medicine." At the age of five came the solemn day when every child was taught his letters in one day of six

ing, as she used to do when he was a boy at home.

If to this laxer age Mrs. Wesley's system of parental discipline seem over-rigid, it should be said that her patience was so tireless, and all her requirements were so evidently dictated by love, that her children never rebelled, but retained a grateful recollection of the rectory life all their days. Certainly to her favorite son, who was to be her greatest, this training was of the utmost importance. John Wesley was the son of his mother. From her he inherited his logical cast of mind, his executive capacity, his inflexibility of will, his union of independence of judgment with respect for