Another, whose family refused to follow him, had been enabled—­such was his gift of holy fortitude—­to leave them to the mercy of the world.  The youngest of the elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from infancy in a Shaker village, and was said never to have clasped a woman’s hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie than the cold fraternal one of the sect.  Old Father Ephraim was the most awful character of all.  In his youth he had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers.  Tradition whispered at the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could be purified from earthly passions.

However that might be, poor Martha had a woman’s heart, and a tender one, and it quailed within her as she looked round at those strange old men, and from them to the calm features of Adam Colburn.  But, perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath and again spoke.

“With what strength is left me by my many troubles,” said she, “I am ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it.”

“My children, join your hands,” said Father Ephraim.

They did so.  The elders stood up around, and the father feebly raised himself to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great chair.

“I have bidden you to join your hands,” said he, “not in earthly affection, for ye have cast off its chains for ever, but as brother and sister in spiritual love and helpers of one another in your allotted task.  Teach unto others the faith which ye have received.  Open wide your gates—­I deliver you the keys thereof—­open them wide to all who will give up the iniquities of the world and come hither to lead lives of purity and peace.  Receive the weary ones who have known the vanity of earth; receive the little children, that they may never learn that miserable lesson.  And a blessing be upon your labors; so that the time may hasten on when the mission of Mother Ann shall have wrought its full effect, when children shall no more be born and die, and the last survivor of mortal race—­some old and weary man like me—­shall see the sun go down nevermore to rise on a world of sin and sorrow.”

The aged father sank back exhausted, and the surrounding elders deemed, with good reason, that the hour was come when the new heads of the village must enter on their patriarchal duties.  In their attention to Father Ephraim their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew paler and paler, unnoticed even by Adam Colburn.  He, indeed, had withdrawn his hand from hers and folded his arms with a sense of satisfied ambition.  But paler and paler grew Martha by his side, till, like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the feet of her early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could endure the weight of its desolate agony no longer.