would have done so.  Dorcas was very young in experience.

In those days of freedom there was no such word as “engaged”; least of all, did the parties concerned violate all their own notions of decorum by “announcing an engagement.”  The lists were free to all to enter, and the bravest won the day.  After weeks and months of shy “company-keeping,” it was “expected it would be a match” by the keen-sighted or deeply interested.  Sometimes the dissolution of an engagement was mentioned as “a shame! after keeping company so many years, and she had got all her quilts made and everything!” But best of all was for the parties to be married outright, by a justice of the peace, without a word of public warning, and then to enjoy the pleasure of outwitting the neighbors, and coming down like a thunderclap on a social sunshine unsuspicious of banns, which had been published on some three literally public days, but when nobody was hearing.  That was something worth doing, and very much worth remembering!

The sun set.  The Sabbath was done.  The Colonel heaved a sigh of relief.  The Colonel’s wife took her knitting-work; and the Colonel’s daughter looked up with a shy smile at Henry Mowers fastening his horse by the corn-barn.  It was time Sunday was over, indeed!  Such a long supper! but it must end sometime!—­and then prayers, and then Dorcas had amused herself with Bel and the Dragon and Tobit awhile.  All would not do, and the family had been obliged to resort to the sweet restorer for the last ten minutes.  Now they could think their own thoughts in peace, and talk of what interested them,—­cattle, people, and the like.  Poor Dorcas! what with Father Boardman’s preaching, and the Westminster Catechism, she associated religion with all that was dull and inexplicable, though she did not doubt it was good in case of dying.  In the Nature and life that surrounded her she had not seen God, but a refuge from Him.  In the crimson floods of sunshine, in the brilliant moonrise, or the pulsating stars of a winter night, she found a sort of guilty relief from the dulness of what she supposed was Revelation.  But she never thought of questioning or doubting any teachings, in the pulpit or out.  A woman cannot, like a man, fight a subject down.  Her intellect shrinks from being tossed and pierced on the pricks of doctrine.  She is gentle and cowardly.  She sets the matter aside, and is contented to wait till she dies to find out.  But the men in Walton were all theologians, and sharp at polemics.  In the bar-room the spirit of liberty throve, which was crushed in the pulpit.  In that small New-England town, where, like a great white sheep, Father Boardman now led his docile flock to the fold, whoever looked long enough would see many new folds and many new shepherds.  Every shape of religious thinking will have its exponent, and the widest liberty be claimed and enjoyed.  Though he slept through Father Boardman’s sermons, it is doubtful if Henry Mowers did not in his dreams lay the corner-stone of the new meeting-house on the hill.