building any kind of a church, as Louisville had done.  The widow Broadnax had replied in her loudest, roughest voice, that she supposed the people there, as well as elsewhere, could keep on getting married two or three times, and mixing up families that otherwise might have lived in peace, just as well without a church as with one.  But the girl listened listlessly and unsmilingly, hardly hearing what was said.  Going out of the room she sat for a long time on the doorstep, watching the forest path with patient wistfulness.  But there was no sign of the young doctor’s coming back and it was a relief when David came up the river bank.  He reminded her that she had asked him to go with her to the Sisters’ house, and she arose and went indoors to get her bonnet.

“You’d just as well take the orphans one of the biggest fatty gourds of maple sugar,” sighed Miss Penelope.  “Ten to one none of us will ever live to eat much of anything, with that comet a-hanging over us.  It’s just as well to get ready as soon as you can, when you’ve been warned.  I know what to look for when I’ve dreamt of wading through muddy water three times a-hand-running.  Tell the Sisters that all the maple sugar that was ever poured into fatty gourds couldn’t hurt the children’s teeth now.  The poor little things, and all of us, will have mighty little use for teeth—­or stomachs either, for that matter—­if things don’t take a turn for the better a good deal sooner than I think they will.  For my part, I don’t see what else anybody can expect with that big black ring round the comet’s head a-getting bigger and blacker every night of our miserable lives.”

She called all the small cup-bearers,—­for some unknown reason she never called one or two without calling all,—­and sent them running to the smoke-house to fetch the fatty gourd.  She threatened them fiercely in her dovelike tones, saying what she would do if they loitered, or stopped to put their little black paws in the sugar.  But the cup-bearers knew Miss Penelope quite as well as she knew them, and when they came back with the fatty gourd they waited, as a matter of course, till she gave each one of them a generous handful of the sugar, before handing the gourd to David.

The Sisters’ house was within walking distance, and Ruth and David had gone about half the way when they met Father Orin and Toby.  These co-workers were not moving with their usual speed on account of an unwieldy burden.  Tied on behind the priest’s saddle was a great bag, containing the weekly mail for the neighborhood.  He went to the postoffice oftener than any one else, and it had become his custom to fetch the mail to the chapel once a week, and distribute it after service on Sundays.  When possible, he sent the letters of those who were not of his congregation by some neighbor who was present; but he often rode miles out of his way to deliver them with his own hand.  It was in carrying the mail on a bitter winter’s day, when the earth was a glittering sheet of ice, that he had fallen and broken his arm.  It was a serious accident, and would have disabled any one else for a long time, but he was out again and as busy as ever within a few days, though he had to carry his arm in a sling for several weeks.  He now hailed the two young people with his kind, merry greeting.