The Mettle of the Pasture

years being too firmly entrenched to give way at on

like myriads of swallows deep-buried and slumbrous in quiet and in soot, are the countless thoughts which lately winged the wide heaven of conscious day. Alike through dreaming and through dreamless hours Life moves among these, handling and considering each of the unredeemable multitude; and when morning light strikes the dark chimneys again and they rush forth, some that entered young have matured; some of the old have become infirm; many of which have dro

amid the ruins of the old; she awoke already engaged with the duties of the new. At sundown she was a girl who had never confessed her love; at sunrise she was a woman who had disca

now so freighted with significance. Then his letters and notes, how many, how many they were! Thus ever about her rooms s

traversing the distance for years; so old can sorrow grow during a little sleep. When she went down they were seated as she had left them the evening before, grandmother, aunt, cousin; and they looked up with the same pride and fondness. But affection has

em the evening before that never again could they be the same to her or she the same to them. But then she had expected to return isolated by incommunicable happiness; now she had returned

surrounded by things that she loved but that could not observe h

morning it filled the grounds of Isabel's home with early warmth. Quickened by the heat, summoned by the blue, drenched with showers and

all, soon sat in a secluded spot, motionless and listless with her unstanched and desperate wound. Everything seemed happy but herself; the very brilliancy of the day

imneys of the town and exploding in the crystal air above her head like balls of m

the town clock: they sounded the hour. She had been too untroubled du

the strictest ceremonial but in no wise any spiritual training. The first conscious awakening of this beautiful unearthly sense had not taken place until the night of her confirmation-a wet April evening when the early green of the earth

friend of her father's, having approached her in the long line of young and old, had la

e may continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spi

herever she went, shed straight from Eternity. She had avoided her grandm

garden, they reawoke the spiritual impulses which had stirred within her at confirmation. First heard whispering then, the sacred annunciati

e house and after quick simpl

It is the sorrowful and the old who head the human host in its march toward Paradise: Youth and Happiness loiter far behind and are sat

ived. Here indeed was the refuge she had craved; here the wounded eye of the soul could open unhurt and unafraid; and she sank to her knees with a quick prayer of the heart, scarce of the lips, for Isab

ew door by some careful hand; the grating of wheels on the cobblestones outside as a carriage was dri

oke, would wait outside when she entered those doors: so dark a spirit would surely not stalk behind her into the very splendor of the Spotless. But as she now let her eyes wander down the isle to the chancel railing where she had

altar, that you had expected to kneel beside him and be blessed in your marriage. In years to come, sitting where you now sit, you may live to see him kneel here with another,

ich the lights of the stained glass windows were joyously playing, gave herself up to memories o

children and watch the procession of the brides-all mysterious under their white veils, and following one and another so closely during springs and autumns that in truth they were almost a procession. Or with what excitement

y to each other a little sadly perhaps, that love and marriage were destined to be the

t she witnessed bound her more sacredly to him. Only a few months before this, at the wedding of the Osborns-Kate being her closest friend, and George Osborn being Rowan's-he and she ha

ore marriage or afterwards-by the man she had loved? Was it for some such reason that one had been content to fold her hands over her breast before the birth of her child? Was this why another lived on, sad y

How fresh and sweet they looked as they drifted gracefully down the aisles this summer morning! How light-hearted! How fa

ng for her mother. As she seated herself, she lifted her veil halfway, turned and slipped a hand over the pew into Isabel's. The tremulous p

ife's side. When she a few moments later leaned toward him with timidity and hesitation, offering him an open prayer-book, he took it coldly and

feeling that she could not bear to see him come in with his mother and younger brother, she had started to leave the church. But just then her grandmother had bustled richly in, followed by her aunt;

n the aisle as usual, opened the pew for his mother and brother with

y, "will you let me pass! I am not

nd with her eyes fixed upon th

continued her satisfying scr

. Resolved to control herself from this time on, she unclasped her prayer-book, f

afterwards to think of this as soldier, priest, prophet, care-worn king, and fallible judge over men-with time enough to think of what his days of nature had been when he tended sheep gr

like physical pain; where all her life she had been repeating mere wo

my substance being yet imperfect . . . look well if there be any wickedness in me; and lead me in the way eve

general movement throu

nced to the reading d

him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and befo

human wastes between

other words of the O

d the prayer of David

l-the ever-falling

her knees and started to repeat the words, "We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep." Then she st

threshold and enters do we realize the terrors of our mortality. All our lives we repeat with dull indifference that man is erring; but only when the soul most loved and trusted has gone astray, do we begin

o the subject, she would have perhaps admitted the necessity of these rules for men and women ages ago. Some one of them might have meant much to a girl in those dim days: to Rebecca pondering who

Isabel for the first time awoke to realization of how close they are still-those voices from the far land of Shinar; how all the men and women around her in that church still waged thei

laintive and aggrieved. She could hear Kate's needy and wounded. In imagination she could hear his proud, noble mother's; his younger brother's. Against the sound o

gly sweet; and borne outward on it

weary, art

sore di

saith one;

t re

at brought her in a

ighted; Rowan, the guilty, had been considered and comforted. David had his like in mind and besought pardon for him; the prophet of old knew of a case like his and blessed him; the apostle centuries afterward looked on and did not condemn; Christ himself had in a way told the multitude the same

n himself!-in her anger and suffering she could think of him in no other way than as enjoying this immortal chorus of anxiety on his account; as hearing it all with complacency a

l casuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spu

ispered, "I shall not

took her way slowly homeward through the deserted st