John gave himself a heartier manner. "I reckon, Johanna, you'd be rather amazed to hear that I travelled nearly all the way from Pulaski City with yo' young missie and stayed at the same hotel here with her and her friends a whole Saturday and Sunday, wouldn't you?"

Johanna's modest smile glittered across her face as she slowly replied, "No-o, seh, I cayn't 'zac'ly fine myseff ama-aze', 'caze Miss Barb done wrote me about it in her letteh."

The girl was flattered to ecstasy. 'Yass, seh, I is," she said; but her soft laugh meant also that something in the way he faltered on the dear nickname made her heart leap.

"Now, Johanna," murmured John, looking more roguishly than he knew from under his long lashes, you' a-foolin' If you had a letter you'd be monst'ous proud to show it. All you've got is a line or two saying 'Send me my shawl' or something o' that sort."

me.

Johanna glanced up with injured surprise and then tittered, "Miss Barb wear a shawl-fo' de Lawd's sa ake! Why, Mr. March, even you knows betteh 'n dat, seh." Her glow of happiness stayed while she drew forth a letter and laid it by her cup of coffee.

"Oh!"-the sceptic tossed his head"seein's believin'; but I can't see so far off."

Johanna could hardly speak for grinning. "Dass heh letteh, seh, writ de ve'y same night what she tell you goodby."

Sitting thus absorbed, he was to the meek-minded girl before him as strong and fine a masculine nature as she had ever knowingly come near. But his intelligence was only masculine at last— a young man's intelligence. She kept her eyes in her plate; yet she had no trouble to see, perfectly, that her confidence was not ill-advised - - a confidence that between the letter's lines he would totally fail to read what she had read.

As

One thing was disappointing. often as read to her, the letter had seemed to sparkle and overflow with sweet humor and exquisite wit to that degree that she had to smother her laughter from beginning to end. Mr. March was finishing it a second time and had not smiled. Twice or thrice he had almost frowned. Yet as he pushed its open pages across the table he said ever so pleasantly,

"That's a mighty nice letter, Johanna; who's going to answer it for you?

"Hit done answ'ed, seh. I ans' it same night it come. My fatheh writ de answeh; yass, seh, Unc' Leviticus."

'Oh, yes. Well, you couldn't 'a'

chosen better.-Oh! Miss Barb says here" Mr. March gathered up the sheets again-Write me all you hear about the land company.' That's just so's to know how her father gets on, I reckon, ain't it?" He became so occupied with the letter that the girl did not have to reply. He was again reading it through. This time he repeatedly smiled, and as he folded it and gave it up he said once more,

Yes, it's a nice letter. Does Miss Barb know where to mail the next one to you?

"I ain't had no chaynce to sen' her word, seh."

"Why, that's a pity! You ought to do that at once, Johanna, and let her know you've got here safe and well-if only for her sake. I'll do it for you tonight, if you'd like me to."

Johanna thankfully assented.

Mr. March did not ponder, this time, as to what the opening phrase of the letter should be; and as he sealed the "hurried note he did so with the air of a man who is confident he has made no mistake. It began, "Dear Miss Barb."

T was a gray day in the country, gray overhead, gray on all sides. Above a broad suburban road the leafless branches of the trees interlaced in a hazy net-work of fine-drawn boughs; and, following the middle of the way, sweeping in generous curves now to the left, now to the right, the wet, shining rails of a car-track shot out of sight, gleaming in dull reflection of the leaden sky.

In the languid morning air little trails of mist dragged themselves slowly through the short green grass of the adjacent lawns, or lingered in bluish shadow amidst the brown clinging leaves of the thick-set clumps of shrubbery; and sounding from somewhere in the distance came the smooth roll of carriage wheels and regular trot of rapidly approaching horses.

At the window of a small coupé that soon turned the corner an old gentleman was sitting, scanning the passing landscape with regretful interest. Years before, he had come this way, a boy, rambling through woods and lanes in search of chestnuts. Now prim lawns and glistening purple concrete pavements replaced the fields and narrow foot-paths; ornate shingled houses of strange colors, with complicated roofs, stood where the nut-trees had bordered the pastures; delicate laces draped the windows; long vines, brilliant in the reds and browns of autumn, hung from the porches; well-managed shrubbery served alike for seclusion and display, and there were neither boundary lines nor fences.

"Everybody seems to live in every

body else's front yard!" growled the old gentleman, disapprovingly.

He was Bishop of a golden territory, where men were particular as to boundaries, and he had come this long distance in order to preach that morning at the cathedral in the neighboring city, at the consecration of the recently elected Bishop of Macedonia. For months the old man had been looking forward to the leisurely refinement, the delicacy, the appreciation he would encounter in an older and more advanced civilization. With the needs of a cultivated, learned, brilliant community in his mind, he had for the first time in many years given himself the pleasure of preparing a thoroughly scholarly sermon, untrammelled by the limitations of comparatively illiterate hearers.

And yet, at intervals, during the past few days spent among these fresh surroundings, he had been assailed by doubts as to the fitness of this carefully studied discourse. Once or twice, as it lay on his table in its embroidered velvet case, a mad impulse had come over him to throw it, case and all, into the fire, and to preach from his heart, in plain, rough words, the thoughts that had haunted him in the wakeful silence of the previous nights. He had, however, not given way to the impulse; and now, his sermon on the seat before him, ill-content with it and himself, he sat staring from under his thick white eyebrows, frowning at the much-changed home of his early youth.

They were nearing a large suburban town which lay between them and the city beyond. The sidewalks were now

paved; the wide lawns had contracted to tiny patches of green in front of block after block of dreary brick houses; doctors' signs became frequent, and little shops grew and multiplied until whole rows of them stood together.

"Driver," said the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, "what part of the old town are we coming to?" "It is the old green, sir," was the

answer.

The Bishop glanced up and about him. They had entered a wide square, the cobblestone pavement of which was cut in every direction by intersecting curves of bright steel rails. Overhead Overhead stretched a spider-web of wires; tall shops with great glass windows stood on all the corners, and from the broad sidestreets shuttle-like cars dashed in and out, throwing up long iron feelers with a repulsive semblance of intelligence.

"The sooner you get out of it the better!" he called to the driver, peremptorily; for his nerves that morning were not in their normal condition; and although he would hardly acknowledge it, he felt much safer when they had left the tangle of tracks behind them. Coming out to the suburbs late on the night before his way had lain necessarily through a crowded portion of the city; repulsive faces had pressed against the carriage - windows, strange sights had half- revealed themselves; facts of which the old Bishop had often read unheeding suddenly leapt into horrible, vibrant reality, and later on he had found it impossible to sleep.

"And every evening men by hundreds retire to the ease and luxury of their homes, secure, content, unthinking, and leave a thing like that throbbing behind them!" he now growled aloud, for in the long, lonely rides across his half-savage diocese he had acquired a habit of talking to himself, and his thoughts had recurred to his chief preoccupation. "And what infernal industry have we here?"

The carriage had turned into one of the more crowded streets again, and a block of vehicles in the way had brought it to a stand-still. They were in front of a row of low wooden sheds with long roofs, raised here and there in ridges, to allow free play to the ponderous

monsters generated from the rumbling, clanking machinery beneath them.

Through the wide open doors and thin walls came a Babel of resonant noise, irregular and deafening, as heavy rivets were driven into hollow cylinders of ringing metal that stood, covered with black bosses, like hairless beasts. Away in the background, gigantic wheels whirled and wound incessantly behind a dancing screen of flames, and the red glare shone on the grimy moving figures of the workmen about it. They were rough fellows, huge and brawny, yet beside the frightful powers they were evoking they seemed sad and wan; moving spectres, silent in an evil din. The old Bishop sighed. A perfectly legitimate industry, of course,' he muttered, grudgingly, as the mass of vehicles in front of them moved slowly forward upon a long reach of causeway. "But what is this?" he said, turning a startled glance from one window of the carriage to the other. On either hand lay wide stretches of malodorous waste, where the refuse of that brutal complication we call civilization was slowly accumulating; gathering as if the rags and scraps, the bits of tin and strays of shard possessed a creeping magnetism for their kind.

"Filth, disease, cast-away uncleanliness of every species systematically set apart in carefully graded squares, and impudently advertised as a foundation for human habitation," cried the old Bishop, indignantly. And these are the marshes that rose green every day, fresh washed from the sea!--The whole region has become an abomination!"

They had come at last to a wide bridge under which the level gray water of a lazy tidal river crept sluggishly seaward, reflecting on its satin surface the misty spires, towers, and gilded dome of the city toward which they journeyed. Monotonous red buildings, tall, with many windows, lined the water-edge, and through the iron supports at the sides of the bridge the Bishop looked down upon the dully floating craft towed by the sooty tugboats below. Near the channel squat, rhythmically moving machines plunged long, jointed beams into the ooze of the river-bed, drawing up a pouring black

mass and slowly turning it into the flat-boats ready to receive it; every board and railing was crusted thick with a frightful black slime, and the brimming buckets turned, and dipped, and rose again, with a certain satisfaction and shameless complacency. "And men live by this!" said the Bishop, and turned away.

Far down toward the mouth of the river, above the heavy outlines of the buildings, a forest of masts intermingled against the sky, looking fleeting and impermanent, telling of wider, freer things, impatient to be gone. Before the old man's eyes arose visions of the blowing grass on vast reaches of prairie, of far clear mountains, and of wild, unfettered lives spent in the open air. "I am going back to-night!" he promised himself.

On the other side of the river they joined the endless procession of all sorts of conveyances that was moving forward into the din and roar of the city. A crowd of idle men with villainous faces and in cheap, showy clothing, lingered on the pavement; a brass band played at one side of the street, and further on, standing in the gutter, a huge hand-organ ground and pounded to a furious accompaniment on the tamOn all the walls, in all the windows of the little shops adjacent, even swung across the street itself, flaunted great colored posters, advertising in gaudy tints and outrageous outlines the human creatures who show themselves for hire. The Bishop looked at them as he passed, incredulously, almost imploringly.

"And the least horrible of these," he said, with a break in his voice as his eye wandered from hideous monstrosities to half-veiled vice, "the least horrible of these are those whom their God has contorted!"

Slowly the patient coachman wended his way in and out among the thronging press. As they neared the more prosperous part of the city, the quality of the buildings improved and the shops and theatres assumed a better character; but the din increased until it became intolerable, and traffic blocked the narrow streets at every turn. Iron trucks loaded with swaying bars of

clanking metal made the air vibrate painfully in the ears; mingled with the increasing roar of wheels and the clamor of innumerable bells, came the wild cries of countless hawkers, attuned in harmony with Bedlam; and overhead the long droning shriek of the electric wires rose and fell persistently as the gaudy painted cars hurled to and fro, while the foot-passengers fled on the crossings.

The sidewalks swarmed with people, dividing the way in two opposing streams of close-wedged humanity, a veritable dance of death. Shoulder to shoulder with painted vice went youth and innocence, ignorant of the horror of the contact. Wealth and ease jostled against want and misery, and because privation was universal believed that it could not pinch; for custom had hardened the whole world.

It seemed to the old Bishop as if in each vacant doorway, and at the entrances of all the squalid alleys, creatures of every type of human wretchedness stood doggedly selling worthless wares; hungry women, tired men, reckless girls, little children, with the evil eyes of hoary iniquity shining out of gaunt baby faces; the blind, the lame, the wicked, and the aged, all of them ranging in expression from sodden misery to brazen effrontery, all of them worn and hollow-eyed, and all stamped into one terrific likeness by the leaden die of poverty.

Enormous windows piled high with tawdry uselessness lined the way; damaged goods, flimsy silks, half-made toys, spurious jewelry, and imperfect china, arranged with infinite attractiveness. On all sides were imitations of richer things; cunningly graded traps to excite the covetousness of every creature, and adjusted to the limits of every purse. The world, up from the veriest poverty-stricken imp in the gutters, seemed bent on acquisition, and the sight of all this worthlessness created a demand that strengthened with the growth of the ever-increasing supply, until it ended in a frenzied race for possession.

"Oh! the agony of being shepherd to this flock!" cried the old man, indignantly. "For all this is built up,

one thing upon another, until it seems as if it never could cease or be bettered. To cure one abuse is only to inaugurate ten others in its place. To stop one fabrication but throws upon the world the starving, helpless fabricators -to do worse things."

He leaned forward, and taking up the manuscript of his sermon began to look it over, his dissatisfaction increasing with every page. He was going first to the house of a brotherhood where the young Bishop - elect had spent the last few years of his priesthood, and thence they were to drive together to the cathedral.

"How old must a man be," he said, suddenly casting the papers back on to the seat in front of him, "how old must a man be before he ceases to add to the number of his lost opportunities?"

The coachman was turning the horses in toward the sidewalk. They had stopped in front of a high black wall; toward the middle of it was an archway surmounted by a cross; behind rose the tower of a little church. A narrow door in the archway opened inward, and the Bishop-elect of Macedonia crossed the sidewalk and entered the carriage. At first, beyond a brief word of greeting, they did not speak; there was something in the worn, intent expression of the younger face that told of watching, of struggle, and of prayer; it was the look of one still in the shadow of another world whose silence is sacred.

A pang shot through the old man's heart. This life is telling upon you horribly," he said, at last. "You show yourself no mercy."

The other shook his head. "There is no question of mercy," he answered, "no question of anything but of God's will. Tell me, am I blind in that I feel that He has called me? Have I, after all, no right to enter upon this service? At this last moment, I am filled with doubts where hitherto my way seemed clear. And yet I dare not withdraw. I have concealed nothing, extenuated nothing

The old Bishop started. "Under the circumstances that was wholly unnecessary!" he exclaimed, hastily.

"It was right."

The old Bishop turned away and looked out of the carriage-window. "You know it was right," the younger man persisted, gently.

"Yes, God bless you! It was right, it was right!" said the older impetuously, wiping his eyes. "But I doubt whether I should have done it myself. What did they say?"

They-they said nothing but what you have just said yourself; some of them broke down completely. But, answer me, you have loved me, I know, beyond measure, from my boyhood. You know my life, you know my-sin. Is it fitting that I should enter upon this work? Think."

The old Bishop put his hand over his eyes, his lips moved, there was a long silence.

"I know your life," he said, at last; "I know your sin; far be it from me to palliate or condone. You, yourself, have never flinched in condemnation; no lapse of time has softened the rigor of your judgment, and that has been just; for a man's sin is measured by the distance of his fall, and among God's chosen you stood high. And yet, to turn back now would but add to your guilt. For the good of God's cause and the welfare of your fellowmen, you may not, dare not, falter. Who can execute the plans which you have originated? Who can wield your influence? Who fill your place?"

The young man stretched out his hand, and the old Bishop took it in both of his, retaining it a moment as he asked a question.

"About Winstead?" For a moment the young Bishop did not answer. "You must leave Winstead to me," he said at last, gently.

What is there to leave?" asked the old man, quickly. Has he refused to present the papers?"

"He has said nothing to the Committee."

"Does he mean to be present?"
"He does."

"If he is present," said the old Bishop, "he means to behave himself, for Winstead, however vindictive, is not wholly without honor; and this is one