“What is it, Deacon? out with it.  I can’t possibly tell unless you make it plainer.”

Thus encouraged, good Deacon Plummer went on:  “Well, Mis’ Kinney, it’s jest this:  Elder Williams has jest sent word he can’t come an’ preach to-morrer, and there ain’t nobody anywhere’s round thet we can get; and De’n Swift ‘n me, we was a thinkin’ whether you wouldn’t be willin’ some of us should read one o’ the Elder’s old sermons.  O Mis’ Kinney, ye don’t know how we all hanker to hear some o’ his blessed words agin.”

Draxy stood still.  Her face altered so that the little children crowded round her in alarm, and Reuby took hold of her hand.  Tears came into her eyes, and she could hardly speak, but she replied,—­

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Plummer, I should be very glad to have you.  I’ll look out a sermon to-night, and you can come up to the house in the morning and get it.”

“O Mis’ Kinney, do forgive me for speakin’.  You have allers seem so borne up, I never mistrusted that’t’d do any harm to ask yer,” stammered the poor Deacon, utterly disconcerted by Draxy’s tears, for she was crying hard now.

“It hasn’t done any harm, I assure you.  I am very glad to do it,” said Draxy.

“Yes, sir, my mamma very often cries when she’s glad,” spoke up Reuby, his little face getting very red, and his lips quivering.  “She’s very glad, sir, if she says so.”

This chivalrous defense calmed poor Draxy, but did not comfort the Deacon, who hurried away, saying to himself,—­

“Don’t believe there was ever such a woman nor such a boy in this world before.  She never shed a tear when we brought the Elder home dead, nor even when she see him let down into the very grave; ‘n’ I don’t believe she’s cried afore anybody till to-day; ‘n’ that little chap a speakin’ up an’ tellin’ me his ma often cried when she was glad, an’ I was to believe her spite of her crying!  I wish I’d made Job Swift go arter her.  I’ll make him go arter that sermon anyhow.  I won’t go near her agin ’bout this bisness, that’s certain;” and the remorse-stricken, but artful deacon hastened to his brother deacon’s house to tell him that it was “all settled with Mis’ Kinney ‘bout the sermon, an’ she was quite willin’;” and, “O,” he added, as if it were quite a second thought, “ye’d better go up an’ git the sermon, Job, in the mornin,’ ye’re so much nearer, an’ then, ‘s ye’ve to do the readin,’ maybe she’ll have somethin’ to explain to ye about the way it’s to be read; th’ Elder’s writin’ wan’t any too easy to make out, ’s fur ’s I remember it.”

Next morning, just as the first bells were ringing, Deacon Swift knocked timidly at the door of the Elder’s study.  Draxy met him with a radiant face.  She had been excited by reading over the sermon she had after long deliberation selected.  The text was,—­

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.”  The sermon had been written soon after their marriage, and was one of her husband’s favorites.  There were many eloquent passages in it, which seemed now to take on a new significance, as coming from the lips of the Elder, absent from his flock and present with Christ.