of time in the world were dozing and closing with the full leave of the spirit.  Finally, when Father Boardman entered on the “improvement,” Dorcas, who had not heard a word, looked again in the direction of the Dorr pew.  Henry Mowers had succumbed to Morpheus half an hour before.  Still there flamed on the deep, bewitching eyes of Day; and as all the rest in her neighborhood had gone to sleep, and the young girl had really nothing specially to keep herself awake with, she looked up, too, and then down, and then rosily, and timidly, and consciously, and then at him once more.  By that time she blushed again, and a smile was just beginning to wake from its sleep in the corner of her mouth, when a rush, a rising, and a general clatter and banging of pew-seats announced the blessed news of suspended instruction.

In the fashion of sixty years ago, the congregation waited reverently, until the pastor walked down the broad-aisle and out at the door, before a soul stirred.  Then the men followed, and last of all the women.  In the crowd, there were frequent opportunities for whispered words, all the sweeter for the stealing; and in the crowd, after he had seen Henry Mowers jump into the wagon and drive off his three sisters half a mile to their home, and after seeing Jenny Post ride off on a pillion behind her old brother, as in the gone-by days when wide roads and wagons were not, Swan sauntered carelessly towards Dorcas, and said, in a tone too low for her parents to hear, but very distinctly,—­

“I must see you to-morrow night.”

“I can’t,” was the murmured reply.

“For the last time, Dorcas! come down to the old pear-tree to-morrow, before sunset,” he whispered, imploringly.

He was wise to turn suddenly away before her parents could hear him, touching on secular subjects, and before she could herself get up any new objection.  Her objections, truly, were very faint and few, and, being tossed about awhile, finally settled out of sight.  Henry would, she knew, come to his weekly wooing as soon as the setting sun proclaimed the Sabbath-day over.  After that time she was safe.  She could slip down the orchard to the pear-tree, and hear what was the important word, and what Swan meant by “the last.”

Eight or ten persons, who lived at a distance from “meeting,” were in the habit of partaking the hospitality of Colonel Fox, of a Sunday, as the hour’s intermission gave them no opportunity to return to their distant homes.  After the Puritan fashion, unlike enough to the present, families were restricted on Sunday to two meals, and those were provided with a Jewish regard to the fourth commandment.  All labor was scrupulously anticipated or postponed, but such hospitality as consisted with the strict observance of the Sabbath was at the service of their friends.

On coming in at the door of the square room, with its sanded floor, its old desk, its spare bed in the corner, and its cherry table with wavy outlines, which had belonged to Colonel Fox’s mother, Dorcas found the cloth already laid, and the bonnets and cardinals of half a dozen old friends on the bed.