bishop leaned forward and with all his might laid on the people their share of responsibility. He made them see that only in the leaf and branch of missionary ardor, each in his own degree, each in his own way, could a man show the vital sap of his personal Christianity. "Men and brothers," he cried with passionate earnestness, "if we are indeed Christians, we cannot but preach those things which we have seen and heard!" The girl was still tingling with an excitement that would have carried her easily as far as the fiercest Sioux tribes of Dakota, when the good bishop turned at the end of the service to give his benediction. Almost every head was raised to catch a last glimpse of the finely cut face; and then, as they looked, he opened his lips to speak, and his whole set of false teeth, loosened, no doubt, by the energy of his appeal, came out. It was over in a moment, and forgotten next day, but to Martha it was a moment of agony. A dull, brick-red crept up over her face, and her visions of missionary work fell crashing about her. Poor, splendid, militant saint! That his teeth should have fallen out after such a sermon! Did it ever happen when he was quelling a mob of treacherous savages? If so, did they refrain from laughter? She strove to bring her noble pictures of the work back to mind, but in each scene the teeth came in. If she went out there, if she stood between hostile chiefs, and with ringing voice called them to peace, she saw herself so only for an instant. Then in the very moment of triumph, she saw herself clutching madly at her departing teeth, and heard derisive yells of mocking laughter.

Needless to state, the bishop was too used to his teeth to mind them, and the congregation forgot them. Martha, however, was troubled. She could not understand why she had blushed. At last it came to her slowly. It was not vicarious mortification nor suppressed mirth; it was just intense anger at the killing of her sublime dream, the utter ruin of her high thrill of self-sacrifice and work, at the touch of the repulsive, uncrushable, ridiculous. The delicate harp had been keyed to highest pitch, the strings taut and quivering with sweetest music. A rough, coarse hand had come crashing down, throwing the whole instrument into a very chaos of discord, and that melody was spoiled forever.

When she tried to understand this second blush in the September starlight she came to much the same conclusion. Left to itself, her nature did not admit of anger against its own opposite elements; but a sullen rage seized her if into the untrammelled freedom of her dream-life that heavy, ungainly, daily self of hers rushed, with clumsy fingers putting far out of reach of possibility the dear things that to "Pattie" were deliciously possible and sweet. Would her two beings never fuse into a consistent whole? What brought them thus into collision? The first time-humor, the irresistible absurd. The second time- When Martha had

thought so far, she always drifted off, wandered away into the spirit country and forgot herself.

One afternoon in December, when she had established the dark kings firmly upon her heart-throne, a tall, brown-haired, grayeyed man walked into the stiff, painfully ordered drawing room, and Miss Endicott, dazed to the point of paralysis, stood apparently frozen to the top of a minute stepladder that looked absurdly inadequate to its burden and grasped the Christmas holly till the sharp leaves pricked and pitted her poor hands. In that brief minute she thought of a dozen cordial greetings, and said nothing at all, because every one was of "Pattie," and Martha simply could not utter them. He broke the silence.

"Just as I should have expected to find you," he laughed; "brandishing a bristling holly-bough to ward off any approaching friendly hand. You are unconquerably prickly, aren't you, Miss Endicott? But I learned in my nursery the way to deal with nettles and such-like unfriendly creatures. Come down at once, and tell me why you never said good-by to me last spring." He took the holly deliberately from her and held out his hand. Martha laid hers in it with a throb of joyous emotion. Then her eyes fell to his face, dropped a step farther, and saw the foolish red-pricked hands, and the emotion was routed instantly by her own tolerant, infectious smile.

"I'm not fit to shake hands, Mr. Armitage," she said, descending from the stepladder. "But I-I'm very glad to see you. Er-er-will you have some tea?"

"Please. Well," as they sat down, "don't you want to know why I am here, how I came- anything at all about me?"

"Of course," Martha murmured, "eranything you would like to tell me."

"You're not a bit encouraging, Miss Endicott. If you think you're being cordial, I beg to undeceive you. But as I know you're dying of curiosity, all the same, I will tell you. I am in charge of the canal, and as I had a free foot as to where to pitch headquarters' tent, I naturally chose Attica."

"Naturally," agreed Martha, wondering what possible advantages Attica offered for the headquarters of the Canal-building Commission.

"I came chiefly to ask you why you had not told me you were leaving Washington," he went on. Martha could only look helplessly at him and stammer awkwardly, "I -I thought-__”

"You ran away," he accused her, with a quiet smile. "You're a perfect little coward; and you were tired of being criticised. How is the work?"

"I haven't written much lately." Martha could never have shown him the swansong of her happiness that had seen the light in June.

"We'll work hard, then, this winter," he said calmly.

Tea came and Martha made it. A sudden glimpse was vouchsafed to her of "Pattie," with beating heart and trembling fingers, lifting the too-heavy kettle with small, delicate hands, and of "Jim" taking it from her and gently chiding her rashness. But she swung the kettle just as easily as usual, a little more so, perhaps, for her arm stiffened in the fear of weakening, and “Pattie” drifted away in a cloud of steam. Mr. Armitage had been talking on of Washington friends, of his joy in his engineering, of the canal, of his plans for the winter, and Martha forgot herself at last in her interest, and talked a little, asking shy, hesitating questions, and then making a dash for cover behind the kettle, till his eager, pleased answers brought her out again to stay out half a minute longer each time. At last he rose. "May I come often?" he said earnestly. "You know you are my only friend here." He knew the way to Martha's hospitality, but he did not anticipate the result. Martha instantly determined that it was her painful duty to introduce him at once to Violet Andrews, who would know how to amuse him, as she

did all men. "He must have a good time here," she thought desperately, "and he hasn't anyone to talk to except me. He must be very tired of me." Aloud she said very formally: "Will you dine with us on Friday night? I should like you to meet some of my friends."

"I should love to. You're sure you want me? Yes, I know you do," he added, smiling down gravely into her grieved eyes. "If you didn't, you never would have worked yourself up to such an effort of cordiality as asking me, instead of writing a stiff little note. I want to meet your father and mother, too, so I am doubly glad to come."

"My-my stepmother," Martha corrected, not quite knowing why she told him anything so impossibly personal.

'Oh, is it?" Mr. Armitage said. “You never told me. Are there have you sisters ?"

"Oh, yes," Martha assured him hastily. "But-but they're not old enough. Violet

"She stopped in utmost confusion, and covered her retreat by a defiant silence. He had opened his lips to ask her what she meant, but her eyes stopped him.

"Poor little girl!" he muttered, as he passed into the hall after a formal parting. Martha half heard the words.

"He thinks she is my sister, of course,' she thought. "It isn't as bad as that for her, just being my friend, and Violet understands me. She knows I don't mean to be horrid. He-he needn't be so sorry for her."

Then she noticed that the hand that held her handkerchief was shaking, and she grew suddenly aware that she was very, very tired. She sat down in a stiff arm-chair and wondered if she would be always hopelessly awkward and repressed. "I had so much to say to him," she breathed regretfully, "but it didn't come." The pulse in her throat began to beat nervously, and she realized that it would be heaven to fling herself down somewhere and cry, and cry, and cry, till the half pain, half excitement, was all cried away. In unwonted abandonment she clasped her hands in her lap, but that brought her to earth. She could forget her face, but those hands were always in plain sight. They were well-shaped enough, but they were big and brown and they looked so utterly silly clasped in that helpless way that the anomaly of it struck their owner

forcibly, and Martha laughed again and rose to put the room to rights. Her "redding up" was only delayed by one remarkable incident. When she came to the branch of holly that had so sorely hurt her muchabused hands she put it hesitatingly aside, and afterward furtively, laughing at herself all the way upstairs, she carried it to her room and put it above her dead mother's expressionless, faded photograph. She had almost laughed the sentiment away by the time the deed was done, but it was done, and "Pattie," standing before the little Christmas decoration, held triumphant carnival for a full minute, because she had made Martha do a foolish thing. The victim went on laughing, but the holly stayed on the wall.

That was the beginning of the second chapter. Then, distrusting her own power to interest and amuse, she had presented Mr. Armitage to Miss Andrews, who, nothing loath, bestirred herself to please. Martha had told her nothing but that they had met in Washington. James Armitage told her only that while no building could be done till spring, the preparatory work of his canal would keep him in Attica all winter. So Violet let her oft-conquered heart seek a new tyrant. Gradually he came to see her oftener, and Violet talked to him at length about her troubles. Jim was always sympathetic and kind. He never laughed at her. Even Martha was sometimes a little cruel and unfeeling, but Jim always understood. She never dreamed that he sandwiched his visits to her between the long afternoons in Martha's stiff drawing-room, when with books and her manuscript he beguiled her, till she forgot her plain self and talked, not as "Pattie" talked to him in her dreams, but still earnestly, day by day breaking away the loosened stones of that gateless, breachless wall of reserve. Violet did not know that he sat with her, absently answering, with absurd enthusiasm, her most vapid remarks, simply because he dared not visit Martha every day, and she was at least near the rose. And she told him a great deal about Martha and Martha's family, to show him how really ideal it was to have a stepmother and a perfectly indifferent family.

"You see," she remarked one afternoon, "my family are always fondling me and fussing over me, and it bores me dreadfully.

It is more than one ought to be expected to bear, such selfish love! Look at Martha Endicott. Her stepmother is one of those cheerful, practical people who doesn't worry a bit if you are ill. I remember when Martha had diphtheria, Mrs. Endicott said for a week that she wasn't going to worry over a sore throat. She had seen too many. And she didn't bother Martha a bit—just left her alone up in her room till the doctor was sent for because the child didn't get any better, and then of course they had a nurse and Mrs. Endicott took the children away to be free from chance of infection. She never frets about Martha at all, doesn't make her go to balls or criticise her dresses, or anything. I don't believe she knows what Martha has on. I wish my mother was that way. It is hard, isn't it?”

"Very," James Armitage answered, thinking of the loneliness of a pair of farouche blue eyes. "Don't you suppose she sometimes wants a little-a little petting?"

"Not at all," Violet said with conviction. "She hates it when you kiss her. I do it very seldom."

"She doesn't know how, poor little girl," the man thought.

Violet went on: "Mr. Endicott is just absorbed in his law-books and his political work. I think the second Mrs. Endicott must have been a disappointment. He seems to avoid being at home just as much as he can."

"They are an interesting family," Jim remarked vaguely, and looked up to meet two brown, reproachful eyes.

"They are a very convenient family," Miss Andrews murmured. "I could get on perfectly with reasonable people like that. My problem is so different. Mr. Armitage, I don't believe you are interested in my little troubles. You are hardly listening. I wanted your advice."

It

Jim felt that he had been unpardonably rude, and hastened to make much more cordial amends than were necessary. was his way to be kind and tender to womenperhaps because he was so big-and Violet accepted the absent-minded sympathy with self-satisfied sweetness and melancholy. All the men she knew were in love with her. It was not strange that she should be too stupid to detect the absence of Mr. Armitage's heart in his pleasant words.

When he came away from the Andrews's

house in Moose Street that afternoon, he walked to his canal and back and never noticed the afternoon's work on the trenches; neither did he know that he had skipped dinner entirely. The only idea that he remembered having, beyond the persistent image of a tall fair woman with lonely eyes, was that when Attica was a frontier city the settlers must have been of an unusually humorous turn of mind. They could never have been Dutchmen, he mused, or they would not have thought of naming their streets Bear, Moose, Beaver, Snake, Buck, etc., and crossing them with Birch, Ash, Maple, Buck-eye, Oak, and the other trees of the forest.

"I won't go to her till to-morrow," he concluded, as he turned firmly away from his magnetic pole. Then he turned back with equal firmness and walked twice up and down three blocks of Beaver Street, which, curiously enough, seemed to him to contain only one house-an ugly red brick mansion, with a garden running all around it and lilac-bushes in full bloom scenting the night air. "Good-night, 'Pattie,'" he whispered.

To Martha, under the horse-chestnut, next morning, came a languid, happy Violet to retail with minute accuracy each word of this red-letter afternoon, and into all Mr. Armitage's sympathetic speeches, as she repeated them, crept a tone, a suggestive note, of something more, which was simply the prevailing key of Violet Andrews's mind.

"Poor boy!" Violet murmured; "I wish I could care for him. Perhaps it will come. O Martha, did I tell you, he called me by my name once, quite by accident? didn't seem to notice the slip, either. suppose he thinks of me that way."

He

I

"What way?" said Martha, and if she had not had by nature a good contralto voice, her tone might have been called gruff. "Oh, as 'Violet."" The little dark head lay back against the bench and the brown eyes were soft and a little wistful. Martha felt a sudden fierce longing to change her own name. Would it do to ask Violet to call her "Pattie"? No; she knew she could never bring her lips to speak the quaint pet name sacred to her dreams. But she heard in spirit James Armitage's voice saying the homely "Martha," and

she felt sure that the very sound of it must repel, as the sound of “Violet" attracted. She was fighting her jealousy, telling herself that it was nature for a man to love a pretty, bright girl, and not a tall, plain, clever one. It was no comfort to imagine that some men might love clever women, for Violet had taught her for many years, with quite unconscious cruelty, that brains didn't count, so the long, happy afternoons seemed to hold a colder meaning. "He wants me for a friend," she thought, "and that's all."

"It

"The thing that half frightened me was his manner," Miss Andrews went on. was so queer and abstracted, as if while he said one thing he was thinking quite another. Ah, well, they are all that way. He was holding on to himself, too. I love that suppressed volcano feeling. For instance, something was said about short people, and I told him-I didn't mean to fish, but he is so understanding—that it was one of my great sorrows, being so little; and he said, Why should you feel so? Some little girls are very nice.' Then he started to say something, and looked across at me quickly and stopped. I pretended not to notice, of course, but it was rather exciting-not the words, you know, but the way he said it; and then it was so jolly to stand beside him and look up. He is so wonderfully big. The only man I know bigger than you, dear."

Long habit during the winter, long listening to these confidences, had given Martha the necessary, passive endurance under torture.

Now she did not know that she suffered. She only thought vaguely what a waste of good material it was that so tall a man should care for Violet, who would look well beside the very shortest. How stupid of Fate!

Miss Andrews rose.

"Must I go, Martha? There's the lunch bell. I should love to stay, but I do not want to be in your way. I don't have to ask you to say nothing of what I've told you. People will know soon enough. I suppose he will come this afternoon. After yesterday's volcanic suppression, the-the explosion

"Eruption," said Martha, who hated unfinished metaphors.

"Eruption-yes-must come soon. Well. may I stay to lunch?”

The most patient of souls will rebel, and Martha had a hurt creature's longing to be alone-all alone.

"I'm sorry, not to-day, Violet," she said, leading her guest back to the house. "II have a great deal to do."

Miss Andrews did not mind being sent home, and strolled away down Beaver Street with leisurely ease. Martha watched her till the white parasol was a dot in the distance. Then she went in to luncheon.

Later, when she had escaped upstairs, she sat down and forced herself sanely to think it out. Violet and James Armitage loved one another. Then there was nothing more to be said. As to herself-she was a brute-she had been jealous and horrid to Violet! If not in word, at least in spirit, she had had hated her. That was a revealing flash, after which Martha gravely reviewed her soul and body, and said aloud calmly: "Fool! How could a man care for me? Fool!" The girl was densely unconscious of any charm in herself. "Fool!" Martha repeated evenly, and then she laughed. But for the first time her laugh was bitter. She did not desire to be his friend! With hard eyes and drawn mouth she stood for a minute before the window, fighting with her agony of love and jealousy. At last the control of her twenty suppressed years gave way, and with trembling hands she tore the pins out of her orderly hair and let it loose in great billows below her waist. Then she flung off her simple white linen gown, and found and shook out the pale-blue India silk, whose glories had not seen the light since Mary Denis's wedding-day. With reckless abandonment, she coiled the despised palegold hair low on her neck, crowning all with a superb old tortoise-shell comb of her mother's. The effect as she stared into the mirror satisfied her. She looked round the room. It reflected herself, her old, admirable, systematic self, and for the moment she had that self under her heel. She snatched up her work-basket and childishly, fiercely, turned it inside out. Spools and reels of many-colored silk and cotton rolled distractedly in all directions, buttons peppered the table and floor, needles and pins sparkled among the stiff sofa-cushions. The whole cosmos was made chaos. Martha laughed again, this time with joyous relief in every line of her face. Her

eyes were sad still, and lonely, but the strained look was gone-she was free. A knock, and a hard determined voice broke in upon her pæon of victory. I want

"Martha, dear, let me in at once. to speak to you before you go down." "Yes, mother." Martha had a distressing relapse into self at the thought of her room, but she boldly opened the door. "What is it?"

"I want you to be properly dressed. That old white linen really isn't decent. Mr. Armitage can wait a minute." By this time Mrs. Endicott had adjusted her glasses. In one surprised look she took in Martha's regal dignity, her unwonted air of distinction, and the ruins over which the pale-blue silk towered. Then her suspicion, her hope, her match-making scheme of a second ago came over her with double force. She overlooked the unwonted scene, asked no questions, but gave her orders like a general and a stepmother.

"Go down at once," she said.

"Mr. Armitage is there?" Martha was utterly dazed, her defiant mood gone, her courage lost. Mrs. Endicott fairly swept her down the stairs, and the girl hardly knew that she was left alone at the drawingroom door, and that she stood there petrified, with frightened eyes, for a full half minute.

To James Armitage, coming toward her across the room, Martha was beautiful in that moment. He held out both hands as she moved forward. But after that one wild outburst in her room, a double mantle of constraint had fallen over her—and while her brain throbbed with the tumultuous thoughts of the afternoon and a pulse seemed beating out in her head the insistent demand that she should make up to Violet for those moments of her hatred, she said aloud primly:

"How do you do? I am so glad you have gotten on so far with the trenches. I saw them yesterday. Will you have some tea ?"

She was utterly unconscious of her own changed appearance. The becoming, distinguished coiffure and the soft India silk were part of a day whose promise had not been fulfilled, of a mood that was gone. In spirit Martha was clothed in the plain white linen. She made tea, talking a little meanwhile because Mr. Armitage sat so silent. His eyes never left her face, but she