Mr. Taylor looked at me meditatively, and as if not quite satisfied.

"Else, how dark the providence," I went on, “when a good man is cut off in the midst of his days and his usefulness! But if we understand that, his own calling and election being made sure, his earthly work was finished, we see light. God could do just as well without him, on earth ; and he was fitted, so far as he was ever likely to be, for heaven. What need to keep him longer in a state of probation and trial?

"Work on in faith and hope, Mr. Taylor, and look in your own heart for results. If you find them there, be content; for even St. Paul contemplated the possibility of being a castaway, while preaching to others. Leave outside results to God."

"Ah!" said he, with a smile that was tinged with sadness, "you should have been the preacher, and I the layworker, Miss Frost."

"Not so," I answered. "It would be strange indeed, if I were not furnished with material for one short sermon to you, since you have preached me so many! I give you back the slow distillation of your own wisdom.'

"It is better than I thought it was," he rejoined, cheerily.

The event proved that Mr. Taylor's work was more fruitful in results than he had known. Yesterday he presented eleven candidates to the Bishop for confirmation. Among them were Carrie, Ruth, and Alice-fruits, I humbly dared to think, not alone of his faithful sowing, but of my own quiet watering. The sweet thought bowed my head so low, while it lifted my heart to the skies, that I quite forgot that my voice was to take the place of Ruth's, in the hymn to be sung while the candidates were gathering at the chancel-rail. Essie sounded the preliminary and opening chords, but I was deaf to the call. There was a momentary flutter of embarrassment and perplexity in

the choir. Then Ruth, standing just before the altar, halfturned, and took up the lagging strain. The sweet, clear, thrilling voice swept round the church, drawing a few tremulous voices after it, as it went; and then soared aloft, like the very spirit of sacred song. The choir followed afteras soon as it could recover itself-with a kind of breathless swoop, and the church was filled with harmony. Still, that swelling voice from the chancel-rail led all the rest, dominating all, etherializing all, infusing through all its own subtile sweetness and intensity of feeling. How wondrously, and yet with what entire unconsciousness, the inspired girl sang,-putting her whole soul into her voice, and slightly bending her head, as if listening to some celestial accompaniment, inaudible to us:—

I drew a long breath when it was all over. For, I need not say that, not Alice, with her budding genius; nor Carrie, with her softness; nor even Essie, with her bright good-nature, and the healthful play of her fresh, full life; but Ruth, with her varying moods, her sore cross of infirmity, and her entrancing voice; lies nearest my heart.

Aunt Vin met us in the vestibule. "I know 'twould be a work of superderogation to tell you that you sing like a sheriff, Ruth," she said, benignantly; "you've had the opinion of better cynosures than I am. But I heard Essie Volger saying, the other day, that you could sing the rheumatic scale to refection; and I'm coming up, some day, on purpose to hear it. I haven't the least idea what sort of a piece it is; but if there's any music to be distracted from the rheumatiz, I'm the person to depreciate it. I have it awful, sometimes."

XXXIX.

A RE-FLOW OF TROUBLE.

N artist of wonderful power has appeared in Shiloh, and is painting the quiet little hamlet with a gorgeousness of color, a boldness of treatment, a breadth of effect, and a brilliancy of tone, beyond all that Ruskin could conceive, or Turner dare to paint. She charges the forests with great masses of glowing

reds, shading, at the edges, into orange. She makes a tree on the hillside-otherwise green-to hold out one bough burning as with flame, and another reddened as with blood. She paints the oaks in rich raiment of purple and crimson, blotched with golden brown. She dips her pencil in bright scarlet for the sumach, and pale yellow for the beeches. Here and there, in the meadows, an isolated maple becomes a fixed, earthly embodiment of the sunset's celestial and evanescent glories. At last, having emptied her palette of all its most brilliant colors, she tones down the dazzling effect by drawing over the picture, soft, gauzy veils of azure and amethystine haze. Needless to say that her name is Autumn!

Yes, Francesca, the feet of October are bright on the hilltops, and still I am in Shiloh! Two weeks ago Uncle John wrote to ask if it was not time for the "rose crop " to be in, and Flora ended a résumé of her winter's plans with a threat to come and see for herself what mischief I was about, if I did not at once return to help in their execu

tion. Even Aunt Belle added a gracious postscript to the effect that a kindly welcome home was ready for me whenever I chose to claim it; to characters so radically dissonant as hers and mine, an occasional separation is a wonderful promoter of harmony. We shall tolerate each other all the more cordially through the winter for the summer's escape from the necessity of toleration.

First, I was kept in Shiloh by the autumn pictures, to which every day added some new effect that I could not bear to miss; then, by a new wave of trouble, or rather, the reflow of an old one. In the fair, still, sunny days of late September, the fever, so long held in abeyance, broke out again. My child-woman, Libby, was one of the first to sicken. She was so unmistakably a child of God that, when Bob burst into my room crying out "Libby's got the fever!" I felt how fit it was that she should be called to enjoy her heavenly inheritance, and knew that I had not a thread to hang an earthly hope upon. A few days later her mortal part went to swell the immortal harvest to be finally reaped from Shiloh burial ground.

From the clods and the flowers laid gently upon her small grave, I went to Mrs. Burcham's bedside. She had been stricken down by the fever, about a week previous. Soon after, Major Burcham had sought Aunt Vin and begged her, with tears in his eyes, to take charge of the sick-room; his wife had no relatives within easy distance, none of them could reach her under some days; meanwhile, she would be left to such care, willing but unskilful, as he could give her, and the various assistance of the neighbors. The appeal was not made in vain. For five days the faithful old nurse had been at her post: for the past three days and nights she had scarcely slept. That morning, I had looked in upon her, on my way to Libby's corpse, and found her looking nearly as haggard as her patient.

"You are killing yourself," I remonstrated. "Surely, you can have watchers at night."

"Don't you be troubled! I'm made of tougher immaterial than you think. As to the watchers, there's plenty of 'em to be had for the askin'-good, bad, and different. But the truth is, that every time I've left her, she's run down unrecountably,-pulse all gone to most nothin',—and it's took all my wits to bring her up again. So I've made up my mind that it's easier to stick by her as long as she's in such a carious situation; or, at least, till you have done your last good deed for poor little Libby, and can come and stay with Mis' Burcham while I refute myself with a nap. I ain't afraid to trust her with you, but there ain't another person in all Shiloh that I'm willin' to leave her with, though it does sound a little like self-gloriousness!"

So Mr. Divine drove me directly from the graveyard to the house of Major Burcham. That gentleman was standing by the gate, and assisted me to alight. I saw him look at Leo (who was with us, as usual) in a way that I could not understand; I saw Leo look at him grimly, fiercely, giving utterance to a low growl.

"Leo!" said Mr. Divine, sharply, yet with no intonation of surprise.

It was plain that the dog had an antipathy to Major Burcham, and that Mr. Divine understood it well.

Mrs. Divine began to make kind inquiries after Mrs. Burcham. Before they came to an end, I discovered that the soft, warm slippers, in which I had expected to be "shod with silence" and with comfort, during the nightwatch, had been left behind; and I begged Mrs. Divine to send them to me, by Leo, sometime in the course of the evening.

"He has seen me alight here," said I, in conclusion, "and will know where to find me."

"Ye-es," returned she, hesitatingly. Then, seeing that Mr. Divine had engaged the Major's attention, she leaned over, and whispered;-"Leo'll bring them, I guess, seeing it's you; but you had better keep a little lookout for him,