Draxy looked at him wonderingly and with a little pain in her face.  To her serene nature, heaven and earth, this life and all the others which may follow it, had so long seemed one—­love and happiness and duty had become so blended in one sweet atmosphere of living in daily nearness to God, that she could not comprehend the Elder’s words.

“Why, Mr. Kinney, it’s all Christ,” she said, slowly and hesitatingly, slipping her hand into his, and looking up at him so lovingly that his face flushed, and he threw his arms around her, and only felt a thousand times more that heaven had come to mean but one thing to him.

“Darling,” he whispered, “would you feel so if I were to die and leave you alone?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Draxy, still more slowly, and turning very pale.  “You never can really leave me, and no human being can be really alone; it would still be all Christ, and it would be living His life and God’s still;” but tears rolled down her cheeks, and she began to sob.

“Oh, forgive me, Draxy,” exclaimed the Elder, wrung to the heart by the sight of her grief.  “I’m nothing but a great brute to say that to you just now; but, Draxy, you don’t know much about a man’s heart yet; you’re such a saint yourself, you can’t understand how it makes a man feel as if this earth was enough, and he didn’t want any heaven, when he loves a woman as I love you,” and the Elder threw himself on the ground at Draxy’s feet, and laid his face down reverently on the hem of her gown.  There were fiery depths in this man’s nature of which he had never dreamed, until this fair, sweet, strong womanhood crossed his path.  His love of Draxy kindled and transformed his whole consciousness of himself and of life; it was no wonder that he felt terrors; that he asked himself many times a day what had become of the simple-minded, earnest, contented worker he used to be.  He was full of vague and restless yearnings; he longed to do, to be, to become, he knew not what, but something that should be more of kin to this beautiful nature he worshipped—­something that should give her great joy—­something in which she could feel great pride.

“It ain’t right, I know it ain’t right, to feel so about any mortal,” he would say to himself; “that’s the way I used to feel about Jesus.  I wanted to do all for Him, and now I want to do all for Draxy,” and the great, tender, perplexed heart was sorely afraid of its new bliss.

They were sitting in the maple grove behind the house.  In the tree under which they sat was a yellow-hammer’s nest.  The two birds had been fluttering back and forth in the branches for some time.  Suddenly they both spread their wings and flew swiftly away in opposite directions.  Draxy looked up, smiling through her tears, and, pointing to the fast fading specks in the distant air, said,—­

“It would be like that.  They are both sent on errands.  They won’t see each other again till the errands are done.”