“There’s your beau, Miriam,” she said, as she darted into the sitting room.

Soon after, Eben brought the family pung and his chubby red mare to the door for Mollie.  He had not as yet attained to the dignity of a cutter of his own.  That was for his elder brother, Robert, who presently came out in his new fur coat and drove dashingly away with bells and glitter.

“Thinks he’s the people,” remarked Eben, with a fraternal grin.

The rich winter twilight was purpling over the white world as they drove down the lane under the over-arching wild cherry trees that glittered with gemmy hoar-frost.  The snow creaked and crisped under the runners.  A shrill wind was keening in the leafless dogwoods.  Over the trees the sky was a dome of silver, with a lucent star or two on the slope of the west.  Earth-stars gleamed warmly out here and there, where homesteads were tucked snugly away in their orchards or groves of birch.

“The church will be jammed to-night,” said Eben.  “It’s so fine that folks will come from near and far.  Guess it’ll be exciting.”

“If only father would testify!” sighed Mollie, from the bottom of the pung, where she was snuggled amid furs and straw.  “Miriam can say what she likes, but I do feels as if we were all disgraced.  It sends a creep all over me to hear Mr. Bentley say, ‘Now, isn’t there one more to say a word for Jesus?’ and look right over at father.”

Eben flicked his mare with his whip, and she broke into a trot.  The silence was filled with a faint, fairy-like melody from afar down the road where a pungful of young folks from White Sands were singing hymns on their way to meeting.

“Look here, Mollie,” said Eben awkwardly at last, “are you going to stand up for prayers to-night?”

“I—­I can’t as long as father acts this way,” answered Mollie, in a choked voice.  “I—­I want to, Eb, and Mirry and Bob want me to, but I can’t.  I do hope that the evangelist won’t come and talk to me special to-night.  I always feels as if I was being pulled two different ways, when he does.”

Back in the kitchen at home Mrs. Bell was waiting for her husband to bring the horse to the door.  She was a slight, dark-eyed little woman, with thin, vivid-red cheeks.  From out of the swathings in which she had wrapped her bonnet, her face gleamed sad and troubled.  Now and then she sighed heavily.

The cat came to her from under the stove, languidly stretching himself, and yawning until all the red cavern of his mouth and throat was revealed.  At the moment he had an uncanny resemblance to Elder Joseph Blewett of White Sands—­Roaring Joe, the irreverent boys called him—­when he grew excited and shouted.  Mrs. Bell saw it—­and then reproached herself for the sacrilege.

“But it’s no wonder I’ve wicked thoughts,” she said, wearily.  “I’m that worried I ain’t rightly myself.  If he would only tell me what the trouble is, maybe I could help him.  At any rate, I’d KNOW.  It hurts me so to see him going about, day after day, with his head hanging and that look on his face, as if he had something fearful on his conscience—­him that never harmed a living soul.  And then the way he groans and mutters in his sleep!  He has always lived a just, upright life.  He hasn’t no right to go on like this, disgracing his family.”