“It is a great responsibility, Deacon Plummer,” she said, “and I feel afraid all the time.  But my father thinks I ought to do it, and I am so happy in it, it seems as if it could not be a mistake.”

As months went on, her misgivings grew less and less; and her impulses to add words of her own to her husband’s sermons grew more and more frequent.  She could not but see that she held the hearts of the people in her hands to mould them like wax; and her intimate knowledge of their conditions and needs made it impossible for her to refrain from sometimes speaking the words she knew they ought to hear.  Whenever she did so at any length, she laid her manuscript on the table, that they might know the truth.  Her sense of honesty would not let her do otherwise.  It was long before anybody but Angy Plummer understood the meaning of these intervals.  The rest supposed she knew parts of the sermon by heart.

But at last came a day when her soul was so stirred within her, that she rose up boldly before her people and said,—­

“I have not brought any sermon of Mr. Kinney’s to read to you to-day.  I am going to speak to you myself.  I am so grieved, so shocked at events which have taken place in this village, the past week, that I cannot help speaking about them.  And I find among Mr. Kinney’s sermons no one which meets this state of things.”

The circumstances to which Draxy alluded had been some disgraceful scenes of excitement in connection with the Presidential election.  Party spirit had been growing higher and higher in Clairvend for some years; and when, on the reckoning of the returns on this occasion, the victorious party proved to have a majority of but three, sharp quarreling had at once broken out.  Accusations of cheating and lying were freely bandied, and Deacon Plummer and George Thayer had nearly come to blows on the steps of the Town House, at high noon, just as the school-children were going home.  Later in the afternoon there had been a renewal of the contest in the village store, and it had culminated in a fight, part of which Draxy herself had chanced to see.  Long and anxiously she pondered, that night, the question of her duty.  She dared not keep silent.

“It would be just hypocrisy and nothing less,” she exclaimed to herself, “for me to stand up there and read them one of Seth’s sermons, when I am burning to tell them how shamefully they have behaved.  But I suppose it will be the last time I shall speak to them.  They’ll never want to hear me again.”

She did not tell her father of her resolution till they were near the church.  Reuben started, but in a moment he said, deliberately,—­

“You’re quite right, daughter; may the Lord bless you!”

At Draxy’s first words, a thrill of astonishment ran over the whole congregation.  Everybody knew what was coming.  George Thayer colored scarlet to the roots of his hair, and the color never faded till the sermon was ended.  Deacon Plummer coughed nervously, and changed his position so as to cover his mouth with his hand.  Angy put her head down on the front of the pew and began to cry.