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Susanna and Sue. Illnstrated hy AucE Barb£B Stephens.

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BOSTON AND NEW YORK

SUSANNA AND SUE

SUSANNA AND SUE

By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

AND N. C. WYETH

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS
CAMBRIDGE : MDCCCGIX

eV

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY KATE DOUGLAS RIGGS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published October iqOQ

CONTENTS

I.

Mother Ann's Children

1

II.

A Son of Adam

23

III.

Divers Doctrines

43

IV.

Louisa's Mind

67

V.

The Little Quail Bird

87

VI.

Susanna speaks in Meeting

107

VII.

"The Lower Plane"

121

VIII.

Concerning Backsliders

141

IX.

Love Manifold

163

X.

Brother and Sister

177

XI.

"The Open Door"

195

XII.

The Hills of Home

211

ILLUSTRATIONS

Looking up into her mother's face expectantly
(page 102) Frontispiece

Do you remember the little Nelson girl and her
mother ? 12

Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha 112

Hetty looking at the lad with all her heart in her

eyes

130

I

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

IT was the end of May, when "spring goeth
all in white." The apple trees were scatter-
ing their delicate petals on the ground, drop-
ping them over the stone walls to the roadsides,
where in the moist places of the shadows they
fell on beds of snowy innocence. Here and
there a single tree was tinged with pink, but
so faintly, it was as if the white were blush-
ing. Now and then a tiny white butterfly
danced in the sun and pearly clouds strayed
across the sky in fleecy flocks.

Everywhere the grass was of ethereal green-
ness, a greenness drenched with the pale yel-
low of spring sunshine. Looking from earth to

SUSANNA AND SUE
sky and from blossom to blossom, the little
world of the apple orchards, shedding its falling
petals like fair-weather snow, seemed made
of alabaster and porcelain, ivory and mother-
of-pearl, all shimmering on a background of
tender green.

After you pass Albion village, with its
streets shaded by elms and maples and its
outskirts embowered in blossoming orchards,
you wind along a hilly country road that runs
between grassy JSlelds. Here the whiteweed is
already budding, and there are pleasant pas-
tures dotted with rocks and fringed with spruce
and fir ; stretches of woodland, -too, where the
road is lined with giant pines and you lift your
face gratefully to catch the cool -balsam breath
of the forest. Coming from out this splendid
shade, this silence too deep to be disturbed by
light breezes or vagrant winds, you find your-
self on the brow of a descending hill. The first
thing that strikes the eye is a lake that might
be a great blue sapphire dropped into the ver-

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

t dant hollow where it lies. When the eye reluc-
tantly leaves the lake on the left, it turns to rest
upon the little Shaker Settlement on the right
— a dozen or so large comfortable white barns,
sheds, and houses, standing in the wide orderly
spaces of their own spreading acres of farm
and timber land. There again the spring goeth
all in white, for there is no spot to fleck the
dazzling quality of Shaker paint, and their
apple, plum, and pear trees are so well cared
for that the snowy blossoms are fairly hiding
the branches.

The place is very still, although there are
signs of labor in all directions. From a window
of the girls' building a quaint little gray-clad
figure is beating a braided rug ; a boy in home-
spun, with his hair slightly long in the back
and cut in a straight line acrols the forehead,
is carrying milk-cans from the dairy to one of
the Sisters' Houses. Men in broad-brimmed
hats, with clean-shaven, ascetic faces, are
ploughing or harrowing here and there in the

ter of noble trees. That cluster of trees, did the
eye of the stranger realize it, was the very
starting-point of this Shaker Community, for
in the year 1785, the valiant Father James
Whittaker, one of Mother Ann Lee's earliest
English converts, stopped near the village of
Albion on his first visit to Maine. As he and
his Elders alighted from their horses, they
stuck into the ground the willow withes they
had used as whips, and now, a hundred years
later, the trees that had grown from these
slender branches were nearly three feet in
diameter.

From whatever angle you look upon the
Settlement, the first and strongest iinpression is
of quiet order, harmony, and a kind of austere
plenty. Nowhere is the purity of the spring so
apparent. Nothing is out of place ; nowhere is
any confusion, or appearance of loose ends, or
neglected tasks. As you come nearer, you feel

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

the more surely that here there has never been
undue haste nor waste ; no shirking, no putting
off till the morrow what should have been done
to-day. Whenever a shingle or a clapboard
was needed it was put on, where paint was
required it was used, — that is evident ; and a
look at the great barns stored with hay shows
how the fields have been conscientiously edu-
cated into giving a full crop.

To such a spot as this might d,ny tired or sin-
ful heart come for rest ; hoping somehow, in the
midst of such frugality and thrift, such self-
denying labor, such temperate use of God's
good gifts, such shining cleanliness of outward
things, to regain and wear "the white flower of
a blameless life." The very air of the place
breathed peace, so thought Susanna Hatha-
way; and little Sue, who skipped by her side,
thought nothing at all save that she was with
mother in the country ; that it had been rather
a sad journey, with mother so quiet and pale,
and that she would be very glad to see supper.

SUSANNA AND SUE

' should it rise like a fairy banquet in the midst
of these strange surroundings.

It was only a mile and a half from the rail-
way station to the Shaker Settlement, and
Susanna knew the road well, for she had driven
over it more than once as child and girl. A boy
would bring the little trunk that contained their
simple necessities later on in the evening, so
she and Sue would knock at the door of the
house where visitors were admitted, and be
undisturbed by any gossiping company while
they were pleading their case.

"Are we most there, Mardife.''" asked Sue
for the twentieth time. "Look at me! I'm
being a butterfly, or perhaps a white pigeon.
No, I 'd rather be a butterfly, and then I can
skim along faster and move my wings!"

The airy little figure, all lightness and
brightness, danced along the rfoad, the white
cotton dress rising and falling, the white-
stockinged legs much in evidence, the arms
outstretched as if in flight, straw hat falling oflf

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

yellow hair, and a little wisp of swansdown'
scarf floating out behind like the drapery of
a baby Mercury,

"We are almost there," her mother answered.
"You can see the buildings now, if you will
stop being a butterfly. Don't you like them?"

"Yes, I 'specially like them all so white. Is
it a town, Mardie.-'"

"It is a village, but not quite like other
villages. I have told you often about the
Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother
brought me once when I was just your age.
There was a thunder-storm ; they kept us all
night, and were so kind that I never forgot
them. Then your grandmother and I stopped
off once when we were going to Boston. I was
ten then, and I remember more about it.
The same sweet Eldress was there both times."

"What is an El-der-ess, Mardie.?"

"A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed
to be," Susanna responded, with a catch in her
breath.

SUSANNA

"I'd 'specially like
now, Mardie?"

"I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago.
I was ten and she was about forty, I should
think."

"Then o' course she'll be dead," said Sue,
cheerfully, "or either she'll have no teeth or
hair."

"People don't always die before they are
sixty, Sue."

"Do they die when they want to, or when
they must.?"

"Always when they must ; never, never when
they want to," answered Sue's mother.

"But o' course they would n't ever want to
if they had any little girls to be togedder with,
like you and me, Mardie .P" And Sue looked
up with eyes that were always like two inter-
rogation points, eager by turns and by turns
wistful, but never satisfied.

"No," Susanna replied brokenly, "of
course they would n't, unless sometimes they

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

' were wicked for a minute or two and for-
got."

"Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie,
or just once in a while ? And shall I see them
doit?"

" Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the
world to you while you are so little ; you really
must wait until you're more grown up. The
Shakers don't shake and the Quakers don't
quake, and when you're older, I'll try to make
you understand why they were called so and
why they kept the name."

"Maybe the El-der-ess can make me under-
stand right off now ; I'd 'specially like it." And
Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where
the North Family House stood in its stately,
white-and-green austerity.

Susanna followed, and as she caught up with
the impetuous Sue, the front door of the house
opened and a figure appeared on the threshold.
Mother and child quickened their pace and
went up the steps, Susanna with a hopeless

SUSANNA AND SUE
'burden of fear and embarrassment clogging
her tongue and dragging at her feet; Sue so
expectant of new disclosures and fresh experi-
ences that her face beamed like a full moon.

Eldress Abby (for it was Eldress Abby) had
indeed survived the heavy weight of her fifty-
five or sixty summers, and looked as if she
might reach a yet greater age. She wore the
simple Shaker afternoon dress of drab alpaca ;
an irreproachable muslin surplice encircled her
straight, spare shoulders, while her hair was
almost entirely concealed by the stiffly wired,
transparent white-net cap that served as a
frame to the tranquil face. The face itself was
a network of delicate, fine wriiikles ; but every
wrinkle must have been as lovely in God's
sight as it was in poor unhappy Susanna
Hathaway's. Some of them were graven by
self-denial and hard work; others perhaps
meant the giving up of home, of parents and
brothers or sisters ; perhaps some worldly love,
the love that Father Adam bequeathed to the

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

human family, had been slain in Abby's youth,
and the scars still remained to show the body's
suffering and the spirit's triumph. At all
events, whatever foes had menaced her purity
or her tranquillity had been conquered, and she
exhaled serenity as the rose sheds fragrance.

" Do you remember the little Nelson girl and
her mother that stayed here all night, years
ago.?" asked Susanna, putting out her hand
timidly.

"Why, seems to me I do," assented Eldress
Abby, genially. " So many comes and goes it's
hard to remember all. Did n't you come once
in a thunder-storm.?"

"Yes, one of your barns was struck by light-
ning and we sat up all night."

"Yee,yee.* I remember well ! Your mother
was a beautiful spirit. I could n't forget her."

"And we came once again, mother and I,
and spent the afternoon with you, and went
strawberrying in the pasture."

' " Yea " is always thus pronounced by the Shakers.

SUSANNA AND SUE

"Yee, yee, so we did; I hope your mother
continues in health."

"She died the very next year," Susanna
answered in a trembling voice, for the time of
explanation was near at hand and her heart
failed her.

"Won't you come into the sitting-room and
rest awhile ? You must be tired walking from
the deepot."

"No, thank you, not just yet, I'll step into
the front entry a minute. — ■ Sue, run and sit in
that rocking-chair on the porch and watch the
cows going into the big barn. — Do you re-
member, Eldress Abby, the second time I came,
how you sat me down in the kitchen with a
bowl of wild strawberries to hull for supper?
They were very small and ripe ; I did my best,
for I never meant to be careless, but the bowl
slipped and fell, — my legs were too short to
reach the floor, and I could n't make a lap, —
so in trying to pick up the berries I spilled juice
on my dress, and on the white fl.pron you had

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

tied on for me. Then my fingers were stained
and wet and the hulls kept falling in with the
soft berries, and when you came in and saw me
you held up your hands and said, 'Dear, dear!
you have made a mess of your work!' Oh,
Eldress Abby, they've come back to me all day,
those words. I've tried hard to be good, but
somehow I've made just such a mess of my
life as I made of hulling the berries. The bowl
is broken, I have n't much fruit to show, and I
am all stained and draggled. Eshould n't have
come to Albion on the five-o'clock train — that
was an accident; I meant to come at noon,
when you could turn me away if you wanted
to."

"Nay, that is not the Shaker habit," remon-
strated Abby. "You and the child can sleep in
one of the spare chambers at the Office Build-
ing and be welcome."

"But I want much more than that," said
Susanna, tearfully. "I want to come and live
here, where there is no marrying nor giving in

SUSANNA AND SUE

marriage. I am so tired with my disappoint-
ments and discouragements and failures that
it is no use to try any longer. I am Mrs. Hatha-
way, and Sue is my child, but I have left my
husband for good and all, and I only want to
spend the rest of my days here in peace and
bring up Sue to a more tranquil life than I have
ever had. I have a little money, so that I shall
not be a burden to you, and I will work from
morning to night at any task you set me."

"I will talk to the Family," said Eldress
Abby, gravely; "but there are a good many
things to settle before we can say yee to all
you ask."

" Let me confess everything freely and fully,"
pleaded Susanna, "and if you think I'm to
blame, I will go away at once,"

"Nay, this is no time for that. It is our duty
to receive all and try all ; then if you should be
gathered in, you would unburden your heart
to God through the Sister appointed to receive
your confession,"

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

"Will Sue have to sleep in the children's
'building away from me?"

"Nay, not now; you are company, not a
Shaker, and anyway you could keep the child
with you till she is a little older; that's not for-
bidden at first, though there comes a time
when the ties of the flesh must be broken ! All
you've got to do now's to be 'pure and peace-
able, gentle, easy to be entreated, and without
hypocrisy.' That's about all there is to the
Shaker creed, and that's enough to keep us all
busy."

Sue ran in from the porch excitedly and
caught her mother's hand.

"The cows have all gone into-the barn," she
chattered; "and the Shaker gentlemen are
milking them, and not one of them is shaking
the least bit, for I 'specially noticed; and I
looked in through the porch window, and there
is nice supper on a table — bread and butter
and milk and dried-apple sauce and ginger-
bread and cottage cheese. Is it for us, Mardie ? "

SUSANNA AND SUE

Susanna's lip was trembling and her face was
pale. She lifted her swimming eyes to the Sis-
ter's and asked, "Is it for us, Eldress Abby ?"

"Yee, it's for you," she answered; "there's
always a Shaker supper on the table for all who
want to leave the husks and share the feast.
Come right in and help yourselves. I will sit
down with you."

Supper was over, and Susanna and Sue were
lying in a little upper chamber under the stars.
It was the very one that Susanna had slept in
as a child, or that she had been put to bed in,
for there was little sleep that night for any one.
She had leaned on the window-sill with her
mother and watched the pillar of flame and
smoke ascend from the burning barn ; and once
in the early morning she had stolen out of bed,
and, kneeling by the open window, had watched
the two silent Shaker brothers who were guard-
ing the smoldering ruins, fearful lest the wind
should rise and bear any spark to the roofs of

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

the precious buildings they had labored so hard
to save.

The chamber was spotless and devoid of
ornament. The paint was robin's egg blue and
of a satin gloss. The shining floor was of the
same color, and neat braided rugs covered
exposed places near the bureau, washstand, and
bed. Various useful articles of Shaker manu-
facture interested Sue greatly: the exquisite
straw-work that covered the whisk-broom;
the mending-basket, pincushion, needle-book,
spool and watch cases, hair-^receivers, pin-
trays, might all have been put together by fairy
fingers.

Sue's prayers had been fervent, but a trifle
disjointed, covering all subjects from Jack and
Fardie, to Grandma in heaven and Aunt Louisa
at the farm, with special references to El-der-
ess Abby and the Shaker cows, and petitions
that the next day be fair so that she could see
them milked. Excitement at hei* strange, unac-
customed surroundings had put the child's

. SUSANNA AND SUE

mind in a very whirl, and she had astonished'
her mother with a very new and disturbing
version of the Lord's prayer, ending: "God
give us our debts and help us to forget our
debtors and theirs shall be the glory, Amen."
Now she lay quietly on the wall side of the
clean, narrow bed, while her mother listened
to hear the regular breathing that would mean
that she was off for the land Of dreams. The
child's sleep would leave the mother free to slip
out of bed and look at the stars ; free to pray and
long and wonder and suffer and repent, — not
wholly, but in part, for she was really at peace
in all but the innermost citadel of her con-
science. She had left her husband, and for the
moment, at all events, she was fiercely glad;
but she had left her boy, and Jack was only
ten. Jack was not the helpless, clinging sort;
he was a little piece of his father, and his favor-
ite. Aunt Louisa would surely take him, and
Jack would scarcely feel the difference, for he
had never shown any special affection for any-

MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN

' body. vStill he was her child, nobody could pos-
sibly get around that fact, and it was a stum-
bling-block in the way of forgeitulness or ease
of mind. Oh, but for that, what unspeakable
content she could feel in this quiet haven, this
self-respecting solitude ! To have her thoughts,
her emotions, her words, her self, to herself
once more, as she had had them before she was
married at seventeen. To go to sleep in peace,
without listening for a step she had once heard
with gladness, but that now sometimes stum-
bled unsteadily on the stair; or to dream as
happy women dreamed, without being roused
by the voice of the present John, a voice so
different from that of the past John that it
made the heart ache to listen to it.

Sue's voice broke the stillness : " How long
are we going to stay here, Mardie.''"

"I don't know, Sue ; I think perhaps as long
as they '11 let us."

"Will Fardie come and see us.''"

"I don't expect him."

SUSANNA AND SUE

"Who '11 take care of Jack, Mardie?"

"Your Aunt Louisa."

"She'll scold him awfully, but he never
cries; he just says, 'Pooh! what do I care?'
Oh, I forgot to pray for that very nicest Shaker
gentleman that said he'd let mehelp him feed
the calves ! Had n't I better get but of bed and
do it? I 'd 'specially like to."

"Very well. Sue; and then go to sleep."

Safely in bed again, there was a long pause,
and then the eager little voice began, "Who'll
take care of Fardie now?"

" He 's a big man; he does n't need anybody."

"What if he's sick?"

"We must go back to him, I suppose."

"To-morrow 's Sunday ; what if he needs us
to-morrow, Mardie?"

" I don't know, I don't know ! Oh, Sue, Sue,
don't ask your wretched mother any more
questions, for she cannot bear Ihem to-night.
Cuddle up close to her ; love her and forgive her
and help her to know what 's right."

11

WHEN Susanna Nelson at seventeen
married John Hathaway, she had the
usual cogent reasons for so doing, with some
rather more unusual ones added thereto. She
was alone in the world, and her life with an
uncle, her mother's only relative, was an un-
happy one. No assistance in the household
tasks that she had ever been able to render
made her a welcome member of the family or
kept her from feeling a burden, and she be-
longed no more to the little circle at seventeen,
than she did when she became a part of it at
twelve. The hope of being independent and
earning her own living had sustained her

SUSANNA AND SUE

through the last year ; but it was a very timid,
self-distrustful, love-starved little heart that
John Hathaway stormed and carried by as-
sault. Her girl's life in a country school and
her uncle's very rigid and orthbdox home had
been devoid of emotion or experience ; still, her
mother had early sown seeds in her mind and
spirit that even in the most arid soil were cer-
tain to flower into beauty when the time for
flowering came; and intellectually Susanna
was the clever daughter of clever parents. She
was very immature, because, after early child-
hood, her environment had not been favorable
to her development. At seventeen she began to
dream of-a future as bright as the past had been
dreary and uneventful. Visions of happiness,
of goodness, and of service haunted her, and
sometimes, gleaming through the mists of
dawning womanhood, the figure, all luminous,
of The Man!

When John Hathaway appeared on the hori-
zon, she promptly clothed him in all the beau-

A SON OF ADAM

tif ul garments of her dreams ; they were a gro-
tesque misfit, but when we intimate that women
have confused the dream and the reality before,
and may even do so again, we make the only
possible excuse for poor little Susanna Nelson.
John Hathaway was the veiSy image of the
outer world that lay beyond Susanna's village.
He was a fairly prosperous, genial, handsome
young merchant, who looked upon life as a place
furnished by Providence in which to have "a
good time." His parents had frequently told
him that it was expedient for him to "settle
down," and he supposed that he might finally
do so, if he should ever find a girl who would
tempt him to relinquish his liberty. (The line
that divides liberty and license was a little
vague to John Hathaway!) It is curious that
he should not have chosen for his life-partner
some thoughtless, rosy, romping young person,
whose highest conception of connubial happi-
ness would have been to drive twenty miles to
the seashore on a Sunday, and having par-

SUSANNA AND SUE

taken of all the season's delicacies, solid and
liquid, to come home hilarious by moonlight.
That, however, is not the way the little love-
imps do their work in the world ; or is it pos-
sible that they are not imps at all who provoke
and stimulate and arrange these strange mar-
riages — not imps, but honest, chastening little
character-builders ? In any event, the moment
that John Hathaway first beheld Susanna Nel-
son was the moment of his surrender ; yet the
wooing was as incomprehensible as that of
a fragile, dainty little hummingbird by a pom-
pous, greedy, big-breasted robin.

Susanna was like a New England anemone.
Her face was oval in shape and as smooth and
pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very
heavy, and as soft as a child's. Her lips were
delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool gray, —
clear, steady, and shaded by. darker lashes.
When John Hathaway met her shy, maidenly
glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it
is strange he did not see that there was a bit

A SON OF ADAM

too much saint in her to make her a willing"
comrade of his gay, roistering life. But as a
matter of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at
all; nothing but that Susanna Nelson was a
lovely girl and he wanted her for his own. The
type was one he had never met before, one that
allured him by its mysteries and piqued him
by its shy aloofness.

John had a "way with him," — a way that
speedily won Susanna ; and after all there was
a best to him as well as a worst. He had a
twinkling eye, an infectious laugh, a sweet dis-
position, and while he was over-susceptible to
the charm of a pretty face, he had a chivalrous
admiration for all women, coupled, it must be
confessed, with a decided lack of discrimina-
tion in values. His boyish light-heartedness
had a charm for everybody, including Susanna ;
a charm that lasted until she discovered that
his heart was light not only when it ought to
be light, but when it ought to be heavy.

He was very much in love with her, but there

SUSANNA AND SUE
I was nothing particularly exclusive, unique, in-
dividual, or interesting about his passion at that
time. It was of the every-day sort which carries
a well-meaning man to the altar, and some-
times, in cases of exceptional fervor and dura-
tion, even a little farther. Stoek sizes of this
article are common and inexpensive, and John
Hathaway's love when he married Susanna
was, judged by the highest standards, about
as trivial an affair as Cupid ever put upon the
market or a man ever offered to a woman.
Susanna on the same day offered John, or
the wooden idol she was worshiping as John,
her whole self — mind, body, heart, and spirit.
So the couple were united, and smilingly signed
the marriage-register, a rite by which their love
for each other was supposed to be made
eternal.

"Will you love me?" said hp.
"Will you love me?" said she.

Then they answered together : —
"Through foul and fair weather.

From sunrise to moonrise,

From moonrise to sunrise,

By heath and by harbour.

In orchard or arbour.

In the time of the rose.

In the time of the snows.

Through smoke and through smother

We'll love one another!"

Cinderella, when the lover-p¥ince discovers
her and fits the crystal slipper to her foot,
makes short work of flinging away her rags ;
and in some "such pretty, airy, unthinking way
did Susanna fling aside the dullness, inhospi-
tality, and ugliness of her uncle's home and
depart in a cloud of glory on her wedding
journey. She had been lonely, now she would
have companionship. She had been of no con-
sequence, now she would be queen of her own
small domain. She had been last with every-
body, now she would be first with one, at least.
She had worked hard and received neither
compensation nor gratitude ; henceforward her
service would be gladly rendered at an altar
where votive offerings would not be taken as a

SUSANNA AND SUE

matter of course. She was only a slip of a girl
now; marriage and housewifely cares would
make her a woman. Some time perhaps the
last great experience of life would come to her,
and then what a crown of joys "would be hers,
— love, husband, home, children ! What a
vision it was, and how soon the chief glory of
it faded !

Never were two beings more hopelessly
unlike than John Hathaway single and John
Hathaway married, but the bliss lasted a few
years, nevertheless : partly because Susanna's
charm was deep and penetrating, the sort
to hold a false man for a time and a true
man forever; partly because she tried, as a
girl or woman has seldom tried before, to
do her duty and to keep her own ideal unshat-
tered.

John had always been convivial, but Su-
sanna at seventeen had been at once too in-
nocent and too ignorant to judge a man's
tendencies truly, or to rate his pharacter at its

A SON OF ADAM

real worth. As time went on, his earlier lean-
ings grew more definite ; he spent on pleasure
far more than he could afford, and his conduct
became a byword in the neighborhood. His
boy he loved. He felt on a level with Jack,
could understand him, play with him, punish
him, and make friends with him; but little Sue
was different. She always seemed to him the
concentrated essence of her mother's soul, and
when unhappy days came, he never looked in
her radiant, searching eyes without a con-
sciousness of inferiority. The little creature had
loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at
first, even though she feared him ; but of late
she had grown shy, silent, and timid, for his
indifference chilled her and she flung herself
upon her mother's love with an almost unchild-
like intensity. This unhappy relation between
the child and the father gave Susanna's heart
new pangs. She still loved her husband, — not
dearly, but a good deal; and over and above
that remnant of the old love which still en-

SUSANNA AND SUE

dured she gave him unstinted care and hopeful '
maternal tenderness.

The crash came in course of time. John
transcended the bounds of his wife's patience
more and more. She made her last protests;
then she took one passionate day to make up
her mind, — a day when John atid the boy were
away together ; a day of complete revolt against
everything she was facing in the present, and,
so far as she could see, everything that she had
to face in the future. Prayer for light left her in
darkness, and she had no human creature to
advise her. Conscience was overthrown; she
could see no duty save to her own outraged
personality. Often and often during the year
just past she had thought of the peace, the
grateful solitude and shelter 6f that Shaker
Settlement hidden among New England or-
chards; that quiet haven where there was
neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Now
her bruised heart longed for such a life of
nun-like simplicity and consecration, where

A SON OF ADAM

I men and women met only as brothers and sis-
ters, where they worked side by side with no
thought of personal passion or personal gain,
but only for the common good of the commu-
nity.

Albion village was less than three hours dis-
tant by train. She hastily gathered her plainest
clothes and Sue's, packed them in a small
trunk, took her mother's watch, her own little
store of money and the twenty-dollar gold
piece John's senior partner had given Sue on
her last birthday, wrote a letter of good-by to
John, and went out of her cottage gate in a
storm of feeling so tumultuous that there was
no room for reflection. Besides, she had re-
flected, and reflected, for months and months,
so she would have said, and the time had come
for action. Susanna was not unlettered, but
she certainly had never read Meredith or she
would have learned that "love is an affair of
two, and only for two that can be as quick, as
constant in intercommunicatioil as are sun and

SUSANNA AND SUE

earth, through the cloud, or face to face. They
take their breath of life from each other in
signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incen-
tives to admiration. But a solitary soul drag-
ging a log must make the log a God to rejoice
in the burden." The demigod that poor, blind
Susanna married had vanished, and she could
drag the log no longer, but she made one mis-
take in judging her husband, in that she re-
garded him, at thirty- two, as a finished pro-
duct, a man who was finally this and that, and
behaved thus and so, and would never be any
different.

The "age of discretion" is a movable feast
of extraordinary uncertainty, and John Hatha-
way was a little behindhand in overtaking it.
As a matter of fact, he had never for an instant
looked life squarely in the face. He took a
casual glance at it now and then, after he was
married, but it presented no very distinguish-
able features, nothing to make him stop and
think, nothing to arouse in him 'any special

A SON OF ADAM

' sense of responsibility. Boys have a way of
"growing up," however, sooner or later, at
least most of them have, and that possibility
was not sufficiently in the foreground of Su-
sanna's mind when she finished what she con-
sidered an exhaustive study of her husband's
character.

"I am leaving you, John [she wrote], to see
if I can keep the little love I have left for you
as the father of my children. I seem to have
lost all the rest of it living with you. I am not
perfectly sure that I am right in going, for
everybody seems to think that women, mothers
especially, should bear anything rather than
desert the home. I could not take Jack away,
for you love him and he will be a comfort to
you. A comfort to you, yes, but what will you
be to him now that he is growing older .'' That
is the thought that troubles me, yet I dare not
take him with me when he is half yours. You
will not miss me, nor will the loss of Sue make
any difference. Oh, John! how can you help

SUSANNA AND SUE

loving that blessed little creature, so much bet-
ter and so much more gifted than either of us
that we can only wpnder how we came to be
her father and mother ? Your sin against her is
greater than that against me, for at least you
are not responsible for bringing me into the
world. I know Louisa will take care of Jack,
and she lives so near that you can see him as
often as you wish. I shall let her know my ad-
dress, which I have asked her to keep to her-
self. She will write to me if you or Jack should
be seriously ill, but not for any other reason.

"As for you, there is nothing more that I
can say except to confess freely that I was not
the right wife for you and that mine was not
the only mistake. I have tried my very best
to meet you in everything that was not abso-
lutely wrong, and I have used all the argu-
ments I could think of, but it only made mat-
ters worse. I thought I knew you, John, in the
old days. How comes it that we have traveled
so far apart, we who began together ? It seems

ADAM

; some time you must come to your
take up your. life seriously, for this
is not life, the sorry thing you have lived lately,
but I cannot wait any longer ! I am tired, tired,
tired of waiting and hoping, too tired to do
anything but drag myself away from the sight
of your folly. You have wasted -our children's
substance, indulged your appetites until you
have lost the respect of your best friends, and
you have made me — who was your choice,
your wife, the head of your house, the woman
who brought your children into the world —
you have made me an object of pity; a poor,
neglected thing who could not meet her neigh-
bors' eyes without blushing."

When Jack and his father returned from
their outing at eight o'clock in the evening,
having had supper at a wayside hotel, the boy
went to bed philosophically, lighting his lamp
for himself, the conclusion being that the two
other members of the household were a little
late, but would be in presently.

SUSANNA AND SUE

The next morning was bright and fair. Jack
waked at cockcrow, and after calling to his
mother and Sue, jumped out of bed, ran into
their rooms to find them empty, then bounced
down. the stairs two at a time, going through
the sitting-room on his way to find Ellen in the
kitchen. His father was sitting at the table
with the still-lighted student lamp on it; the
table where lessons had been learned, books
read, stories told, mending done, checkers and
dominoes played ; the big, round walnut table
that was the focus of the family life — but
mother's table, not father's.

John Hathaway had never left his chair nor
taken off his hat. His cane leaned against his
knee, his gloves were in his left hand, while
the right held Susanna's letter.

He was asleep, although his lips twitched
and he stirred uneasily. His face was haggard,
and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the
centre of thought and memory, a train of fiery
words burned in an ever- widening circle, round

A SON OF ADAM

and round and round, ploughing, searing their j
way through some obscure part of him that
had heretofore been without feeling, but was
now all quick and alive with sensation.

"You have made me — who was your
choice, your wife, the head of your house, the
woman who brought your children into the
world — you have made me an object of pity ; a
poor, neglected thing who could not meet her
neighbors' eyes without blushing."

Any one who wished to pierce John Hatha-
way's armor at that period of his life would
have had to use a very sharp and pointed
arrow, for he was well wadded with the belief
that a man has a right to do what he likes.
Susanna's shaft was tipped with truth and
dipped in the blood of her outraged heart.
The stored-up force of silent years went into
the speeding of it. She had never shot an
arrow before, and her skill was instinctive
rather than scientific, but the powers were on
her side and she aimed better than she knew

SUSANNA AND SUE

— those who took note of John Hathaway's
behavior that summer would have testified
willingly to that. It was the suiiamer in which
his boyish irresponsibility slipped away from
him once and for all; a summer in which the
face of life ceased to be an indistinguishable
mass of meaningless events and disclosed an
order, a reason, a purpose hitherto unseen and
undefined. The boy "grew up," rather tardily
it must be confessed. His soul had not added
a cubit to its stature in sunshine, gayety, and
prosperity; it took the shock of grief, hurt
pride, solitude, and remorse to make a man of
John Hathaway.

IT was a radiant July moaiing in Albion
village, and when Sue first beheld it from
the bedroom window at the Shaker Settlement,
she had wished ardently that it might never,
never grow dark, and that Jack and Fardie
might be having the very same sunshine in
Farnham. It was not noon yet, but experience
had in some way tempered the completeness
of her joy, for the marks of tears were on her
pretty little face. She had neither been scolded
nor punished, but she had been dragged away
from a delicious play without any adequate
reason. She had disappeared after breakfast,
while Susanna was helping Sister Tabitha with

SUSANNA AND SUE

the beds and the dishes, but as she was the most
docile of children, her mother never thought of
anxiety. At nine o'clock Eldress Abby took
Susanna to the laundry house, and there under
a spreading maple were Sue and the two
youngest little Shakeresses, children of seven
and eight respectively. Sue was directing the
plays ; chattering, planning, ordering, and
suggesting expedients to her slower-minded
and less -experienced companions. They had
dragged a large box from one of the sheds and
set it up under the tree. The interior had been
quickly converted into a commodious resi-
dence, one not in the least of a Shaker type.
Small bluing-boxes served for bedstead and
dining-table, bits of broken china for the
dishes, while tiny flat stones were the seats,
and four clothes-pins, tastefully clad in hand-
kerchiefs, surrounded the table.

"Do they kneel in prayer before they eat,
as all Believers do.!*" asked Shaker Mary.

"I don't believe Adam and Eve was Be-

DIVERS DOCTRINES

'cause who would have taught the
to be?" replied Sue; "still we might let them
pray, anyway, though clothes-pins don't kneel
nicely."

"I've got another one all dressed," said
little Shaker Jane.

" We can't have any more ; Adam and Eve
did n't have only two children in my Sunday-
school lesson, — Cain and Abel," objected
Sue.

"Can't this one be a company.''" pleaded
Mary, anxious not to waste the clothes-pin.

"But where could comp'ny come from.?"
queried Sue. "There was n't any more people
anywheres but just Adam and Eve and Cain
and Abel. Put the clothes-pin in your apron-
pocket, Jane, and bimeby we'll let Eve have a
little new baby, and I'll get Mardie to name it
right out of the Bible. Now let's begin. Adam
is awfully tired this morning; he says, 'Eve,
I've been workin' all night and I can't eat my
breakfuss.' Now, Mary, you be Cain, he's a

say,

SUSANNA AND SUE

and you must say, 'Fardie,
little with me, please!' and Fardie
'Child'en should n't talk at the — '"

What subjects of conversation would have
been aired at the Adamic family board before
breakfast was finished will never be known,
for Eldress Abby, with a firm but not unkind
grasp, took Shaker Jane and Mary by their
little hands and said, "Morning's not the time
for play; run over to Sister Martha and help
her shell the peas ; then there '11 be your seams
to oversew."

Sue watched the disappearing children and
saw the fabric of her dream fade into thin air ;
but she was a person of considerable individual-
ity for her years. Her lip quivered, tears rushed
to her eyes and flowed silently down her
cheeks, but without a glance at Eldress Abby
or a word of comment she walked slowly away
from the laundry, her chin high.

" Sue meant all right, she was only playing
the plays of the world," said Eldress Abby,

DIVERS DOCTRINES

•"but you can well understand, Susanna, that
'we can't let our Shaker children play that way
and get wrong ideas into their heads at the be-
ginning. We don't condemn an honest, orderly
marriage as a worldly institution, but we claim
it has no place in Christ's kingdom ; therefore
we leave it to the world, where it belongs. The
world's people live on the lower plane of Adam ;
the Shakers try to live on the Christ plane,
in virgin purity, long-suffering, jmeekness, and
patience."

"I see, I know," Susanna answered slowly,
with a little glance at 'injured Sue walking
toward the house, " but we need n't leave the
children unhappy this morning, for I can
think of a play that will comfort them and
please you. — Come back, Sue ! Wait a minute,
Mary and Jane, before you go to Sister
Martha! We will play the story that Sister
Tabitha told us last week. Do you remember
about Mother Ann Lee in the English prison ?
The soap-box will be her cell, for it was so

side of the box. Do you see the large brown
spot in one of them, Mary? Push that very
hard with a clothes-pin and there'll be a hole
through the shingle; — that's right! Now,
Sister Tabitha said that Mother Ann was kept
for days without food, for people thought she
was a wicked, dangerous woman, and they
would have been willing to let her die of
starvation. But there was a great key-hole in
the door, and James Whittaker, a boy of nine-
teen, who loved Mother Ann and believed in
her, put the stem of a clay pipe in the hole and
poured a mixture of wine and milk through it.
He managed to do this day after day, so that
when the jailer opened the cell door, expecting
to find Mother Ann dying for lack of food, she
walked out looking almost as strong and well
as when she entered. You can play it all out,
and afterwards you can make the ship that
brought Mother Ann and the other Shakers

DIVERS DOCTRINES

from Liverpool to New YorK. The clothes-
pins can be — who will they be, Jane ?"

"William Lee, Nancy Lee, James Whit-
taker, and I forget the others," recited Jane,
like an obedient parrot.

"And it will be splendid to have James
Whittaker, for he really came to Albion," said
Mary.

"Perhaps he stood on this very spot more
than once," mused Abby. "It was Mother
Ann's vision that brought them to this land,
— a vision of a large tree with outstretching
branches, every leaf of which .shone with the
brightness of a burning torch! Oh! if the
vision would only come true ! If Believers
would only come to us as many as the leaves
on the tree," she sighed, as she and Susanna
moved away from the group of chattering chil-
dren, all as eager to play the history of Shaker-
ism as they had been to dramatize the family
life of Adam and Eve.

"There must be so many nien and women

SUSANNA AND SUE

without ties, living useless lives, with no aim or*)
object in them," Susanna said, "I wonder that
more of them do not find their way here. The
peace and goodness and helpfulness of the life
sink straight into my heart. The Brothers and
Sisters are so friendly and cheery with one an-
other; there is neither gossip nor hard words;
there is pleasant work, and your thoughts
seem to be all so concentrated upon right
living that it is like heaven -below, only I
feel that the cross is there, bravely as you all
bear it."

" There are roses on my cross most beautiful to see.
As I turn from all the dross from which it sets me free,"

quoted Eldress Abby, devoutly.-

"It is easy enough for me," continued Su-
sanna, "for it was no cross for me to give up my
husband at the time ; but oh, if & woman had a
considerate, loving man to live with, one who
would strengthen her and help her to be good,
one who would protect and cherish her, one
who would be an example to his children and

DIVERS DOCTRINES

I bring them up in the fear of the Lord — that
would be heaven below, too; and how could
she bear to give it all up when it seems so good,
so true, so right ? Might n't two people walk
together to God if both chose the same path ?"

"It's my belief that one can find the road
better alone than when somebody else is going
alongside to distract them. Not that the Lord
is going to turn anybody away, not even when
they bring Him a lot of burned-out trash for a
gift," said Eldress Abby, bluntly. "But don't
you believe He sees the difference between a
person that comes to Him when there is no-
where else to turn — a person that's tried all
and found it wanting — and one that gives up
freely pleasure, and gain, and husband, and
home, to follow the Christ life?"

"Yes, He must. He must," Susanna an-
swered faintly. "But the children, Eldress
Abby ! If you had n't any, you could perhaps
keep yourself from wanting them; but if you
had, how could you give them up ? Jesus was

SUSANNA AND SUE

the great Saviour of mankind, but next to Him
it seems as if the children had been the Httle
saviours, from the time the first one was born
until this very day!"

"Yee, I've no doubt they keep the worst
of the world's people, those that are living in
carnal marriage without a thought of godliness,
— I've no doubt children keep that sort from
going to the lowest perdition," allowed Eldress
Abby ; " and those we bring up in the Commu-
nity make the best converts ; but to a Shaker,
the greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory.
I wish you was gathered in, Susanna, for your
hands and feet are quick to serve, your face is
turned toward the truth, and your heart is all
ready to receive the revelation."

"I wish I needn't turn my back on one
set of duties to take up another," murmured
Susanna, timidly.

" Yee; no doubt you do. Your business is to
find out which are the higher duties, and then
do those. Just make up your mind whether

DIVERS DOCTRINES

)u'd rather replenish earth, as you've been

sing, or replenish heaven, as we're trying to
do. — But I must go to my work ; ten o'clock
in the morning's a poor time to be discussing
doctrine! You're for weeding, Susanna, I
suppose?"

Brother Ansel was seated at a grindstone
under the apple trees, teaching (intermittently)
a couple of boys to grind a scythe, when Su-
sanna came to her work in the hesrb-garden, Su©
walking discreetly at her heels.

Ansel was a slow-moving, humorously-
inclined, easy-going Brother, who was drifting
into the kingdom of heaven without any special
effort on his part.

"I'd 'bout as lives be a Shaker as anything
else," had been his rather dubious statement
of faith when he requested admittance into
the band of Believers. "No more crosses,
accordin' to my notion, an' consid'able more
chance o' crowns!"

His experience of life " on the Adamic plane,"

SUSANNA AND SUE
' the holy estate of matrimony, being the chief
sin of this way of thought, h^d disposed him to
regard woman as an apparently necessary, but
not especially desirable, being. The theory of
holding property in common had no terrors
for him. He was generous, unambitious, frugal-
minded, somewhat lacking in energy, and just
as actively interested in his brother's welfare
as in his own, which is perhaps not saying
much. Shakerism was to him not a craving of
the spirit, not a longing of the soul, but a simple,
prudent theory of existence, lessening the vari-
ous risks that man is exposed tq in his journey
through this vale of tears.

" Women-folks makes splendid Shakers," he
was wont to say. " They're all right as Sisters,
'cause theiiT belief makes 'em safe. It kind o'
shears 'em o' their strength; tames their sper-
its; takes the sting out of 'em an' keeps 'em
from bein' sassy an' domineerin'. Jest as long
as they think marriage is right, they '11 marry
ye spite of anything ye can do or say — four of

DIVERS DOCTRINES

'em married my father one after another,
though he fit 'em off as hard as he knew how.
But if ye can once get the faith o' Mother Ann
into 'em, they 're as good afterwards as they
was wicked afore. There's no stoppin' women-
folks once ye get 'em started ; they don't keer
whether it's heaven or the other place, so long
as they get where they want to go!"

Elder Daniel Gray had heard Brother Ansel
state his religious theories more than once when
he was first "gathered in," aaid secretly la-
mented the lack of spirituality in the new con-
vert. The Elder was an instrument more finely
attuned ; sober, humble, pure-minded, zealous,
consecrated to the truth as he sa,w it, he labored
in and out of season for the faith he held so
dear; yet as the years went on, he noted that
Ansel, notwithstanding his eccentric views,
lived an honest, temperate, God-fearing life,
talking no scandal, dwelling in unity with his
brethren and sisters, and upholding the banner
of Shakerism in his own peculiar way.

SUSANNA AND SUE

As Susanna approached him, Ansel called
out, ' The yairbs are all ready for ye, Susanna ;
the weeds have been on the rampage sence
yesterday's rain. Seems like the more use-
lesser a thing is, the more it flourishes. The
yairbs grow ; oh, yes, they make out to grow;
but you don't see 'em come leapin' an' tearin'
out o' the airth like weeds. Then there 's the
birds! I've jest been stoppin' my grindin' to
look at 'em carry on. Take 'em all in all,
there ain't nothin' so lazy an' aimless an'
busy'boutnothin' as birds. They go kitin'
'roun' from tree to tree, hoppiri' an' chirpin',
flyin' here an' there 'thout no airthly objeck
'ceptin' to fly back ag'in. There 's a heap o'
useless critters in the univarse, but I guess
birds are 'bout the uselyest, 'less it's grass-
hoppers, mebbe."

" I don't care what you say about the grass-
hoppers, Ansel, but you shan'tabuse the birds,"
said Susanna, stooping over the beds of tansy
and sage, thyme and summer savory. "Weeds

DIVERS DOCTRINES

I or no weeds, we're going to have a great crop
'of herbs this year, Ansel!"

"Yee, so we be! We sowed more'n usual
so's to keep the two ' jiners ' at work long's we
could. — Take that scythe over to the barn,
Jacob, an' fetch me another, an' step spry."

"What's ajiner, Ansel.?"

"Winter Shakers, I call 'em. They're reg'lar
constitooshanal dyed-in-the-wool jiners, jinin'
most anything an' hookin' on most anywheres.
They jine when it comes on too cold to sleep
outdoors, an' they onjine when it comes on
spring. Elder Gray 's always hopin' to gather
in new souls, so he gives the best of 'em a few
months' trial. How are ye, Hannah.'*" he
called to a Sister passing through the orchard
to search for any possible green apples under
the trees. " Make us a good old-fashioned
deep-dish pandowdy an' we'll all do our best
to eat it!"

"I suppose the 'jiners' get discouraged and
fear they can't keep up to the standard. Not

SUSANNA AND SUE

everybody is good enough to lead a self-denying
Shaker life," said Susanna, pushing back the
close sunbonnet from her warm face, which
had grown younger, smoother, and sweeter in
the last few weeks.

"Nay, I s'pose likely; 'less they 're same as
me, a born Shaker," Ansel replied. "I don't
hanker after strong drink ; don't like tobaccer
(always could keep my temper 'thout smokin'),
ain't partic'lar 'bout meat-eatin', don't keer
'bout heapin' up riches, can't 'stand the ways
o' worldly women-folks, jest as lives confess my
sins to the Elder as not, 'cause I hain't sinned
any to amount to anything sence I made my
first confession ; there I be, a natural f ollerer
o' Mother Ann Lee."

Susanna drew her Shaker bonnet forward
over her eyes and turned her back to Brother
Ansel under the pretense of reaching over to
the rows of sweet marjoram. Bhe had never
supposed it possible that she could laugh again,
and indeed she seldom felt like it, but Ansel's

DIVERS DOCTRINES

interpretations of Shaker doctrine were almost
too much for her latent sense of humor.

"What are you smiling at, and me so sad,
Mardie?" quavered Sue, piteously, from the
little plot of easy weeding her mother had given
her to do. "I keep remembering my game ! It
was such a Christian game, too. Lots nicer
than Mother Ann in prison ; for Jane said her
mother and father was both Believers, and no-
body was good enough to pour milk through
the key-hole but her. I wanted to give the
clothes-pins story names, like Hilda and Percy,
but I called them Adam and Eve and Cain and
Abel just because I thought the Shakers would
'specially like a Bible play. I love Elderess
Abby, but she does stop my happiness, Mar-
die. That's the second time to-day, for she
took Moses away from me when I was kiss-
ing him because he pinched his thumb in the
window."

"Why did you do that. Sue ?" remonstrated
her mother softly, remembering Ansel's prox-

SUSANNA AND SUE

imity. "You never used to kiss strange little"
boys at home in Farnham."

" Moses is n't a boy ; he's only six, and that's
a baby; besides, I like him better than any
little boys at home, and that 's the reason I
kissed him; there's no harm in boy-kissing, is
there, Mardie?"

"You don't know anybody here very well
yet; not well enough to kiss them," Susanna
answered, rather hopeless as to the best way of
inculcating the undesirability of the Adamic
plane of thought at this early age. " While we
stay here, Sue, we ought both to be very careful
to do exactly as the Shakers do."

By this time mother and child had reached
the orchard end of a row, and Brother Ansel
was thirstily waiting to deliver a little more
of the information with which his mind was
always teeming.

"Them Boston people that c6me over to our
public meetin' last Sunday," he began, "they
was dretful scairt 'bout what would become o'

DIVERS DOCTRINES

the human race if it should all turn Shakers.
*I guess you need n't worry,' I says; 'it'll take
eonsid'able of a spell to convert all you city
folks,' I says, 'an' after all, what if the world
should come to an end ? ' I says. ' If half we hear
is true 'bout the way folks carry on in New
York and Chicago, it's 'bout time it stopped,'
I says, 'an' I guess the Lord could do a eon-
sid'able better job on a second one,' I says,
' after findin' out the weak places in this.' They
can't stand givin' up their possessions, the
world's folks; that's the principal trouble with
'em ! If you don't have nothin' to give up, —
like some o' the tramps that happen along here
and convince the Elder they're jest bustin'
with the fear o' God, — why, o' course 't ain't
no trick at all to be a Believer."

"Did you have much to give up. Brother
Ansel.?" Susanna asked.

" 'Bout's much as any sinner ever had that
jined this Community," replied Ansel, com-
placently. "The list o' what I consecrated to

SUSANNA AND SUE

this Society when I was gathered in was : One '
horse, one wagon, one two-year-old heifer, one
axe, one saddle, one padlock, one bed and bed-
ding, four turkeys, eleven hens, one pair o'
plough-irons, two chains, and eleven dollars in
cash. — Can you beat that?"

"Oh, yes, things I" said Susanna, absent-
mindedly. "I was thinking of family and
friends, pleasures and memories and ambi-
tions and hopes."

"I guess it don't pinch yoU any worse to
give up a hope than it would a good two-year-
old heifer," retorted Ansel; "but there, you
can't never tell what folks '11 hang on to the
hardest! The man that drove them Boston
folks over here last Sunday, — did you notice
him ? the one that had the sister with a bright
red dress an' hat on .'' — Land ! I could think
just how hell must look whenever my eye
lighted on that girl's git-up ! -^ Well, I done
my best to exhort that driver, bein' as how we
had a good chance to talk while we was hitchin'

DIVERS DOCTRINES

i' unhitchin' the team; an' Elder Gray al-
ways says I ain't earnest enough in preachin'
the faith ; — but he did n't learn anything
from the meetin'. Kep' his eye on the Shaker
bunnits, an' took notice o' the marchin' an'
dancin', but he did n't care nothin' 'bout doc-
trine.

" ' I draw the line at bein' ja, cerebrate,' he
says. 'I'm willin' to sell all my goods an'
divide with the poor,' he says, 'but I ain't
goin' to be no cerebrate. If I don't have no
other luxuries, I will have a wife,' he says.
'I've hed three, an' if this one don't last me
out, I'll get another, if it's only to start the
kitchen fire in the mornin' an' put the cat in
the shed nights!'"

IV
LOUISA'S MIND

LOUISA, otherwise Mrs. Adlai Banks, the
elder sister of Susanna's husband, was
a rock-ribbed widow of forty-five summers, —
forty-five winters would seem a better phrase
in which to assert her age, — who resided on a
small farm twenty miles from the manufactur-
ing town of Farnham,

When the Fates were bestowing qualities of
mind and heart upon the Hathaway babies,
they gave the more graceful, genial, likable
ones to John, — not realizing, perhaps, what
bad use he would make of them, — and en-
dowed Louisa with great deposits of honesty,
sincerity, energy, piety, and frugality, all so

SUSANNA AND SUE

mysteriously compounded that they turned to
granite in her hands. If she had been consulted,
it would have been all the same. She would
never have accepted John's charm of person-
ality at the expense of being saddled with his
weaknesses, and he would not have taken her
cast-iron virtues at any price whatsoever.

She was sweeping her porch on that day in
May when Susanna and Sue had wakened in
the bare upper chamber at the Shaker Settle-
ment — Sue clear-eyed, jubilant, expectant,
unafraid; Susanna pale from her fitful sleep,
weary with the burden of her heart.

Looking down the road, Mrs. Banks espied
the form of her brother John walking in her
direction and leading Jack by the hand.

This was a most unusual sight, for John's
calls had been uncommonly few of late years,
since a man rarely visits a lady relative for
the mere purpose of hearing " a piece of her
mind." This piece, large, solid, highly flavored
with pepper, and as acid as paental vinegar

LOUISA'S MIND

could make it, was Louisa Banks's only con-
tribution to conversation when she met her
brother. She could not stop for any airy persi-
flage about weather, crops, or politics when
her one desire was to tell him what she thought
of him.

" Good-morning, Louisa. Shake hands with
your aunt. Jack."

" He can't till I 'm through sweeping. Good-
morning, John; what brings you here.?"

John sat down on the steps, and Jack flew
to the barn, where there was generally an
amiable hired man and a cheerful cow, both
infinitely better company than his highly re-
spected and wealthy aunt.

"I came because I had to bnng the boy to
the only relation I've got in the world," John
answered tersely. "My wife's left me."

"Well, she's been a great while doing it,"
remarked Louisa, digging her broom into the
cracks of the piazza floor and making no pause
for reflection. " If she had n't had the patience

SUSANNA AND SUE

of Job and the meekness of Moses, she'd have,
gone long before. Where'd she go?"

"I don't know; she did n't say."

"Did you take the trouble to look through
the house for her.? I ain't certain you fairly
know her by sight nowadays, do jou?"

John flushed crimson, but bit his lip in an
attempt to keep his temper. "She left a let-
ter," he said, "and she took Sue with her."

"That was all right; Sue's a nervous little
thing and needs at least one parent ; she has n't
been used to more, so she won't miss anything.
Jack's like most of the Hathaways ; he'll grow
up his own way, without anybody's help or
hindrance. What are you going to do with
him.?"

" Leave him with you, of course. What else
could I do.?"

"Very well, I'll take him, and while I'm
about it I'd like to give you a piece of my
mind."

John was fighting for self-control, but he

LOUISA'S MIND

was too wretched and remorseful for rage to
have any real sway over him.

" Is it the same old piece, or a different one ?"
he asked, setting his teeth grimly. " I should n't
think you'd have any mind left, you've given
so many pieces of it to me already."

"I have some left, and plenty, too," an-
swered Louisa, dashing into the house, banging
the broom into a corner, coming out again like
a breeze, and slamming the door behind her.
"You can leave the boy here and welcome;
I'll take good care of him, and if you don't
send me twenty dollars a month for his food
and clothes, I'll turn him outdoors. The more
responsibility other folks rid you of, the more
you'll let 'em, and I won't take a feather's
weight off you for fear you'll sink into everlast-
ing perdition."

"I did n't expect any sympathy from you,"
said John, drearily, pulling himself up from the
steps and leaning against the honeysuckle
trellis. "Susanna's just the same. Women are

SUSANNA AND SUE

1 as hard as the nether millstone. They 're

ird if they 're angels, and hard if they 're
devils; it does n't make much difference."

"I guess you 've found a few soft ones, if
report says true," returned Louisa, bluntly.
"You'd better go and get some of their sym-
pathy, the kind you can buy and pay for. The
way you've ruined your life turns me fairly
sick. You had a good father aiid mother, good
education and advantages, enough money to
start you in business, the best of wives, and
two children any man could be proud of, one of
'em especially. You've thrown 'em all away,
and what for ? Horses and cards and gay comr
pany, late suppers, with wine, and for aught I
know, whiskey, — you the son of a man who
did n't know the taste of ginger beer! You've
spent your days and nights with a pack of
carousing men and women that would take
your last cent and not leave you enough for
honest burial."

"It's a pity we didn't make a traveling

LOUISA'S MINt)

preacher of you ! " exclaimed John, bitterly.
"Lord Almighty, I wonder how such women
as you can live in the world, you know so little
about it, and so little about men."

"I know all I want to about 'em," retorted
Louisa, " and precious little that 's good.
They 're a gluttonous, self-indulgent, extrava-
gant, reckless, pleasure-loving lot! My hus-
band was one of the best of 'em, and he
would n't have amounted to a hill of beans if
I had n't devoted fifteen years to disciplining,
uplifting, and strengthening him!"

" You managed to strengthen him so that he
died before he was fifty!"

"It don't matter when a man dies," said
the remorseless Mrs. Banks, " if he 's suc-
ceeded in living a decent, God-fearing life. As
for you, John Hathaway, I'll tell you the truth
if you are my brother, for Susanna's too much
of a saint to speak out."

"Don't be afraid; Susanna's spoken out at
last, plainly enough to please even you!"

SUSANNA AND SUE

"I'm glad of it, for I did n't suppose she had
spunk enough to resent anything. I shall be
sorry to-morrow, 's likely as not, for freeing my
mind as much as I have, but my temper's up
and I'm going to be the humble instrument of
Providence and try to turn you from the error
of your ways. You've defaced and degraded
the temple the Lord built for you, and if He
should come this minute and try to turn out the
crowd of evil-doers you've kept in it, I doubt if
He could!"

"I hope He'll approve of the way you've
used your 'temple,'" said John, with stinging
emphasis. "I should n't want to live in such a
noisy one myself; I'd rather be a bat in a bel-
fry. Good-by; I've had a pleasant call, as
usual, and you've been a real sister to me in
my trouble. You shall have the twenty dollars
a month. Jack's clothes are in that valise, and
there'll be a trunk to-morrow. Susanna said
she 'd write and let you know her whereabouts."

So saying, John Hathaway strode down the

LOUISA'S MIND

path, closed the gate behind him, and walked '
rapidly along the road that led to the station.
It was a quiet road and he met few persons.
He had neither dressed nor shaved since the
day before ; his face was haggard, his heart was
like a lump of lead in his breast. Of what use
to go to the empty house in Farnham when he
could stifle his misery by a night with his
friends ?

No, he could not do that, either! The very
thought of them brought a sense of satiety and
disgust; the craving for what they would give
him would come again in time, no doubt, but
for the moment he was sick to fhe very soul of
all they stood for. The feeling of complete
helplessness, of desertion, of being alone in
mid-ocean without a sail or a star in sight,
mounted and swept over him. Susanna had
been his sail, his star, although he had never
fully realized it, and he had cut himself adrift
from her pure, steadfast love, blinding himself
with cheap and vulgar charmsi.

SUSANNA AND SUE

The next train to Farnham was not due for
an hour. His steps faltered ; he turned into a
clump of trees by the wayside and flung him-
self on the ground to cry like a child, he who
had not shed a tear since he was a boy of ten.

If Susanna could have seen that often
longed-for burst of despair and remorse, that
sudden recognition of his sins against himself
and her, that gush of penitent tears, her heart
might have softened once again; a flicker of
flame might have lighted the ashes of her dying
love; she might have taken his head on her
shoulder, and said, "Never mind, John ! Let's
forget, and begin all over again!"

Matters did not look any brighter for John
the next week, for his senior partner, Joel
Atterbury, requested him to withdraw from the
firm as soon as matters could be legally ar-
ranged. He was told that he had not been
doing, nor earning, his share; that his way of
living during the year just past had not been

LOUISA'S MIND

any credit to " the concern," and that he, Atter-
bury, sympathized too heartily with Mrs. John
Hathaway to take any pleasure in doing busi-
ness with Mr. John.

John's remnant of pride, completely hum-
bled by this last withdrawal of confidence,
would not suffer him to tell At'terbury that he
had come to his senses and bidden farewell to
the old life, or so he hoped and believed.

To lose a wife and child in a way infinitely
worse than death ; to hear the unwelcome truth
that as a husband you have grown so offensive
as to be beyond endurance ; to have your own
sister tell you that you richly deserve such treat-
ment ; to be virtually dismissed from a valua-
ble business connection; — all this is enough
to sober any man above the grade of a moral
idiot, and John was not that; he was simply
a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, thoughtless,
willful fellow, without any great amount of prin-
ciple. He took his medicine, however, said no-
thing, and did his share of the business from

SUSANNA AND SUE

day to day doggedly, keeping .away from his
partner as much as possible.

Ellen, the faithful maid of all work, stayed
on with him at the old home ; Jack wrote to him
every week, and often came to spend Sunday
with him.

"Aunt Louisa's real good to me," he told his
father, "but she's not like mother. Seems to
me mother's kind of selfish staying away from
us so long. When do you expect her back.''"

"I don't know; not before winter, I'm
afraid; and don't call her selfish, I won't
have it! Your mother never knew she had
a self."

"If she'd only left Sue behind, we could have
had more good times, we three together!"

"No, our family is four, Ja9k, and we can
never have any good times, one, two, or three of
us, because we 're four ! When one 's away,
whichever it is, it's wrong, but it's the worst
when it's mother. Does your Aunt Louisa
write to her.^*"

LOUISA'S MIND

"Yes, sometimes, but she never lets me post
the letters."

"Do you write to your mother? You ought
to, you know, even if you don't have time for
me. You could ask your aunt to enclose your
letters in hers."

"Do you write to her, father. .?"

"Yes, I write twice a week," John answered,
thinking drearily of the semi-weekly notes
posted in Susanna's empty work-table upstairs.
Would she ever read them.? He doubted it,
unless he died, and she came back to settle his
affairs ; but of course he should n't die, — no
such good luck. Would a man die who break-
fasted at eight, dined at one, supped at six, and
went to bed at ten.? Would a man die who
worked 'in the garden an hour every after-
noon, with half a day Saturday; that being
the task most disagreeable to him and most
appropriate therefore for penance ?

Susanna loved flowers and had always
wanted a garden, but John had been too much

SUSANNA AND SUE

occupied with his own concerns to give her the^
needed help or money so that she could carry
out her plans. The last year she had lost heart
in many ways, so that little or nothing had been
accomplished of all she had dreamed. It would
have been laughable, had it not been pathetic,
to see John Hathaway dig, delve, grub, sow,
water, weed, transplant, generally at the wrong
moment, in that dream-garden of Susanna's.
He asked no advice and read rio books. With
feverish intensity, with complete ignorance of
Nature's laws and small sympathy with their
intricacies, he dug, hoed, raked, fertilized, and
planted during that lonely summer. His ab-
sent-mindedness caused some expensive fail-
ures, as when the wide expanse of Susanna's
drying ground, which was to be velvety lawn,
"came up" curly lettuce; but he rooted out
his frequent mistakes and patiently planted
seeds or roots or bulbs over and over and over
and over, until something sprouted in his beds,
whether it was what he intended or not. While

LOUISA'S MIND

'he weeded the brilliant orange nasturtiums,
growing beside the magenta portulacca in a
friendly proximity that certainly would never
have existed had the mistress of the house been
the head-gardener, he thought of nothing but
his wife. He knew her pride, her reserve, her
sensitive spirit; he knew her love of truth and
honor and purity, the standards of life and
conduct she had tried to hold, him to so val-
iantly, and which he had so dragged in the dust
during the blindness and the insanity of the
last two years.

He, John Hathaway, was a deserted hus-
band; Susanna had crept away all wounded
and resentful. Where was s^he living and
how supporting herself and Sue, when she
could not have had a hundred dollars in the
world.'' Probably Louisa was the source of
income ; conscientious, infernally disagreeable
Louisa !

Would not the rumor of his changed habit of
life reach her by some means in her place of

SUSANNA AND SUE

hiding, sooner or later ? Would she not yearn
for a sight of Jack ? Would she not finally give
him a chance to ask forgiveness, or had she
lost every trace of affection for him, as her
letter seemed to imply ? He walked the garden
paths, with these and other unanswerable
questions, and when he went to his lonely
room at night, he held the lamp up to a bit
of poetry that he had cut from a magazine and
pinned to the looking-glass. If John Hathaway
could be brought to the reading of poetry, he
might even glance at the Bible in course of
time, Louisa would have said. , It was in May
that Susanna had gone, and the first line of
verse held his attention.

"May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes;
All the earth is glad again,
Kind and fair to me.

"May comes, day comes, i
One who was away comes;
Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be.

'May comes, day comes.
One who was away comes;
Higher are the hills of home.
Bluer is the sea."

The Hathaway house was in the suburbs,
on a rise of ground, and as John turned to the
window he saw the full moon hanging yellow
in the sky. It shone on the verdant slopes and
low wooded hills that surrounded the town,
and cast a glittering pathway on the ocean that
bathed the beaches of the near-by shore.

"How long shall I have to wait," he won-
dered, "before my hills of home look higher,
and my sea bluer, because Susanna has come
back to 'hearth and board'!"

e

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

SUSANNA had helped at various house-
hold tasks ever since her arrival at the
Settlement, for there was no room for drones
in the Shaker hive ; but after a few weeks in
the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had
been assigned to her as her particular province,
the Sisters thinking her better fitted for it than
for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or the
basket- weaving that needed special apprentice-
ship.

The Shakers were the first people to raise,
put up, and sell garden seeds in our present-
day fashion, and it was they, too, who began
the preparation of botanical medicines, rais-

SUSANNA AND SUE

ing, gathering, drying, and preparing herbs"
and roots for market; and this industry,
driven from the field by modern machinery,
was still a valuable source of income in
Susanna's day. Plants had always grown for
Susanna, and she loved them like friends,
humoring their weakness, nourishing their
strength, stimulating, coaxing, disciplining
them, until they could do no less than flourish
under her kind and hopeful hand.

Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little
garden of herbs, with its wholesome fra-
grances ! Healing lay in every root and stem,
in every leaf and bud, and the strong aro-
matic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or
her aching head, after the sleepless nights in
which she tried to decide her future life and
Sue's.

The plants were set out in „neat rows and
clumps, and she soon learned to know the
strange ones — chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot,
wormwood, lovage, boneset, lemon and sweet

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

balm, lavender and rue, as well as she knew
the old acquaintances familiar to every coun-
try-bred child — pennyroyal, peppermint or
spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort.

There was hoeing and weeding before the
gathering and drying came ; then Brother Cal-
vin, who had charge of the great press, would
moisten the dried herbs and press them into
quarter and half-pound cakes ready for Sister
Martha, who would superintend the younger
Shakeresses in papering and labeling them for
the market. Last of all, when harvesting was
over. Brother Ansel would mount the newly
painted seed-cart and leave on his driving trip
through the country. Ansel was a capital sales-
man, but Brother Issachar, who once took his
place and sold almost nothing, brought home
a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward became
a shining light in the community. ("Thus,"
said Elder Gray, "does God teach us the
diversity of gifts, whereby all may be un-
ashamed.")

SUSANNA AND SUE

If the Albion Shakers were honest and
ardent in faith, Susanna thought that their
"works" would indeed bear the strictest ex-
amination. The Brothers made brooms, floor
and dish mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and
indeed almost every trade was represented
in the various New England Communities.
Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers,
sheriffs, policemen, constables, or soldiers, just
as there were no courts or sajoons or jails.
Where there was perfect equality of possession
and no private source of gain, it amazed Su-
sanna to see the cheery labor, often continued
late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the
earnest desire to make the Settlement pros-
perous. While the Brothers were hammering,
nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seed-
ing, the Sisters were carding and spinning
cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of
linen, straw Shaker bonnets, and dozens of
other useful marketable things, =not forgetting
their famous Shaker apple sauce.

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna
wondered ; yet with all the early rising, constant
labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and
hardier than she had been for years. The
Shaker palate was never tickled with delicacies,
yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently
varied. At first there had been the winter
vegetables : squash, yellow turnips, beets, and
parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker
dinner of salt codfish, potatoes, onions, and
milk gravy. Each Sister served her turn as
cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with
flour, and the whole-wheat bread, cookies,
ginger cake, and milk puddings were marvels
of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean
the novitiate Shaker from a too riotous de-
votion to meat-eating better than most peo-
ple, for every dish she sent to the table was
delicate, savory, and attractive.

Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Su-
sanna learned to love her as they worked to-
gether in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where

S

SUSANNA AND SUE

I the cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and
pan and spoon might have served as a mirror !
Martha had joined the Society in her mother's
arms, being given up to the Lord and placed
in "the children's order" before she was one
year old.

"If you should unite with us, Susanna," she
said one night after the early supper, when
they were peeling apples together, "you'd be
thankful you begun early with your little Sue,
for she's got a natural attraction to the world,
and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving,
obedient little soul ; but when she's among the
other young ones, there's a flyaway look about
her that makes her seem more like a fairy than
a child."

"She's having rather a hard time learning
Shaker ways, but she'll do better in time,"
sighed her mother. "She came to me of her
own accord yesterday and asked: 'Bettent I
have my curls cut off, Mardie ? ' "

"i never put that idea into her head,"

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

Martha interrupted. "She's a visitor and can
wear her hair as she's been brought up to
wear it."

"I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other
than religious reasons. 'I get up so early,
Mardie,' she said, — ' and it takes so long to
unsnarl and untangle me, and I get so hot when
I'm helping in the hayfield, — and then I have
to be curled fOr dinner, and curled again for
supper, and so it seems like wasting both our
times ! ' Her hair would be all the stronger
for cutting, I thought, as it's so long for her
age ; but I could n't put the shears to it when
the time came, Martha. I had to take her to
Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little
looking-glass as still as a mouse, while the curls
came off, but when the last one fell into Abby's
apron, she suddenly put her hands over her
face and cried : ' Oh, Mardie, we shall never be
the same togedder, you and I, after this !' — She
seemed to see her ' little past,' her childhood,
slipping away from her, all in an instant. I

"You did wrong," rebuked Martha. "You
should n't make an idol of your child or your
child's beauty."

"You don't think God might put beauty
into the world just to give His children joy,
Martha?"

Martha was no controversialist. She had
taken her opinions, ready-made, from those
she considered her superiors, and although
she was willing to make any sacrifice for
her religion, she did not wish to be confused
by too many opposing theories of God's in-
tentions.

"You know I never argue when I've got
anything baking," she said; and taking the
spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she
opened the oven door and delicately plunged it
into the loaf. Then, gazing at the straw as she
withdrew it, she said : "You must talk doctrine
with Eldress Abby, Susanna^ not with me;

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

'but I guess doctrine won't help you so much
as thinking out your hfe for yourself."

"No one can sing my psalm ioi me,
Reward must come from labor,
I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth
God's mercy and His favor !"

Martha was the chief musician of the Com-
munity, and had composed many hymns and
tunes — some of them under circumstances
that she believed might entitle them to be con-
sidered directly inspired. Her clear full voice
filled the kitchen and floated out into the air
after Susanna, as she called Sue and, darning-
basket in hand, walked across the road to the
great barn.

The herb-garden was one place where she
could think out herlife, although no decisionhad
as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.

Another spot for meditation was the great
barn, relic of the wonderful earlier days, and
pride of the present Settlement. A hundred
and seventy-five feet long and three and a half

SUSANNA AND SUE

stories high, it dominated the landscape. First,
there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell,
to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm
lands ; then came the first floor, where the stalls
for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls on
either side. Then came the second floor, where
hay was kept, and to reach this a bridge forty
feet long was built on stone piers ten feet in
height, sloping up from the ground to the
second story. Over the easy slope of this bridge
the full haycarts were driven, to add their
several burdens to the golden haymows. High
at the top was an enormous grain room, where
mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor
to ceiling ; and at the back was a great window
opening on Massabesic Pond and Knights'
Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue
or snow-capped in the distance. There was an
old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed
Shaker chair in front of the open window, a
chair as uncomfortable as Shaker doctrines to
the daughter of Eve, and therf;. Susanna often

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

sat with her sewing or mending. Sue at her feet
building castles out of corn-cobs, plaiting the
husks into little mats, or taking out basting
threads from her mother's work.

"My head feels awfully undressed without
my curls, Mardie," she said. "I'm most afraid
Fardie won't like the looks of me ; do you think
we ought to have asked him before we shingled
me? — He does despise un-pretty things so!"

"I think if we had asked him he would have
said, 'Do as you think best.' "

" He always says that when he does n't care
what you do," observed Sue, ^ith one of her
startling bursts of intuition. "Bister Martha
has a printed card on the wall in the chil-
dren's dining-room, and I've got to learn all
the poetry on it because I need it worse than
any of the others : —

"What we deem good order, we're willing to state.
Eat hearty and decent, and clear put your plate;
Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
And not make a mixture or compound to leave.

SUSANNA AND SUE

"We often find left on the same China dish,

Meat, applesauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
Another 's replenished with butter and cheese.

With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these."

"You say it very nicely," commended
Susanna.

" There's more : —

"Now if any virtue in this can be shown.

By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
We freely will forfeit whatever we've said.

And call it a virtue to waste mfe3,t and bread."

"There's a great deal to learn when you're
being a Shaker," sighed Sue, as she finished her
rhyme.

"There's a great deal to learn everywhere,"
her mother answered. "What verse did El-
dress Abby give you to-day?"

" For little tripping maids may follow God
Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,"

quoted the child. "Am I a tripping maid,
Mardie?" she continued.
"Yes, dear."

suppose S(

"Is tripping the same as skipping?"

"About the same."

"Is it polite to tripanskip when you're fol-
lowing God?"

"It could n't be impolite if ydu meant to be
good. A tripping maid means just a young one."

"What is a maid?"

"A little girl."

"When a maid grows up, what is she?"

"Why — she's a maiden, I suppose."

"When a maiden grows up, what is she?"

" Just a woman, Sue."

"What is saintly feet?"

"Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder
Gray; feet of people who have always tried to
do right."

"Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?"

"He's a good, kind, hard- working man."

"Is good - kind - hard - working same as
saintly?"

SUSANNA AND SUE

"Well, it's not so very diiferent, perhaps. —
Now, Sue, I've asked you before, don't let your
mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every
instant ; it is n't good for you, and it certainly
is n't good for me!"

"All right; but 'less I gropeanwag some-
times, I don't see how I'll ever learn the things
I 'specially want to know?" sighed Sue the
insatiable.

"Shall I tell you a Shaker Story, one that
Eldress Abby told me last evening .P"

"Oh, do, Mardie!" cried Sue, crossing her
feet, folding her hands, and looking up into her
mother's face expectantly.

"Once there was a very good Shaker named
Elder Calvin Green, and some one wrote him a
letter asking him to come a long distance a,nd
found a Settlement in the western part of New
York State. He and some other Elders and
Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at
the house of a certain Joseph Pelham to spend
Sunday and hold a meeting. On Monday

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

morning, very tired, and wondering where to
stay and begin his preaching, the Elder went
out into the woods to pray for guidance. When
he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and
lighter-hearted, a young quail came up to him
so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit
afraid, neither did the old parent birds who
were standing near by show any sign of fear,
though they are very timid creatures. The
Elder smoothed the young bird's feathers a
little while and then let it go, but he thought
an angel seemed to say to him, ' The quail is
a sign; you will know before night what it
means, and before to-morrow people will be
coming to you to learn the way to God.'

"Soon after, a jflock of these shy little birds
alighted on Joseph Pelham's house, and the
Elders were glad, and thought it signified the
flock of Believers that would gather in that
place; for the Shakers see more in signs than
other people. Just at night a young girl of
twelve or thirteen knocked at the door and told

SUSANNA AND SUE

)Elder Calvin that she wanted to become a
Shaker, and that her father and mother were
wilUng.

"'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder,
and indeed she was the first who flocked to the
meetings and joined the new Community.

"On their return to their old home across
the state the Elders took the little quail girl
with them. It was November then, and the
canals through which they traveled were
clogged with ice. One night, having been fer-
ried across the Mohawk River, they took their
baggage and walked for miles before they
could find shelter. Finally, when they were
within three miles of their home, Elder Calvin
shortened the way by going across the open
fields through the snow, up and down the hills
and through the gullies and over fences, till
they reached the house at midnight, safe and
sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged
beside them the whole distance, carrying her
tin pail."

THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD

Sue was transported with interest, her lips
parted, her eyes shining, her hands clasped.

"Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail
girl, Mardie! What became of her?"

"Her name was Polly Reed, and when she
grew up, she became a teacher of the Shaker
school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher.
I don't know what kind of a little quail girl you
would make. Sue; do you think you could walk
for miles through the ice and snow uncom-
plainingly .'' "

"I don' know's I could," sighed Sue; "but,"
she added hopefully, "perhaps I could teach
or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as
much as ever I liked." Then, after a lengthy
pause, in which her mind worked feverishly,
she said, " Mardie, I was just groping a little
bit, but I won't do it any more to-night. If the
old quail birds in the woods where Elder Cal-
vin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker
birds, there would n't have been any little
quail birds, would there, because Shakers

SUSANNA AND SUE

don't have children, and then perhaps there
would n't have been any little Polly Reed."

Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bot-
tomed chair and folded her work. "I'll go up
and help you undress now," She said; "it's
seven o'clock, and I must go to the family
meeting."

VI

IT was the Sabbath day and the Believers
were gathered in the meetiijg-house. Breth-
ren and Sisters seated quietly on their separate
benches, with the children by themselves in
their own place. As the men entered the room
they removed their hats and coats and hung
them upon wooden pegs that lined the sides
of the room, while the women took off their
bonnets; then, after standing for a moment
of perfect silence, they seated themselves.

In Susanna's time the Sunday costume for
the men included trousers of deep blue cloth
with a white line and a vest of darker blue,
exposing a full-bosomed shirt that had a wide

SUSANNA AND SUE

turned-down collar fastened with three but-
tons. The Sisters were in pure white dresses,
with neck and shoulders covered with snOwy
kerchiefs, their heads crowned with their white
net caps, and a large white pocket handker-
chief hung over the left arm. Their feet were
shod with curious pointed- toed cloth shoes of
ultramarine blue — a fashion long since gone
by.

Susanna had now become accustomed to
the curious solemn march or dance in which
of course none but the Believers ever joined,
and found in her present exalted mood the
songs and the exhortations strangely interest-
ing and not unprofitable.

Tabitha, the most aged of the group of Al-
bion Sisters, confessed that she missed the old
times when visions were common, when the
Spirit manifested itself in extraordinary ways,
and the gift of tongues descended. Sometimes,
in the Western Settlement where she was gath-
ered in, the whole North Family would march

SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING

into the highway in the fresh morning hours,
and while singing some sacred hymn, would
pass on to the Centre Family, and together
in solemn yet glad procession thby would mount
the hillside to "Jehovah's Chosen Square,"
there to sing and dance before the Lord.

"I wish we could do something like that
now!" sighed Hetty Arnold, a pretty young
creature, who had moments of longing for the
pomps and vanities. "If we have to give up
all worldly pleasures, I think we might have
more religious ones ! "

"We were a younger church in those old
times of which Sister Tabitha speaks," said
Eldress Abby. "You must remember, Hetty,
that we were children in faith, and needed signs
and manifestations, pictures and object-les-
sons. We've been trained to think and reason
now, and we've put away some of our picture-
books. There have been revelations to tell us
we needed movements and exeEcises to quicken
our spiritual powers, and to give energy and

SUSANNA AND SUE

unity to our worship, and there have been reve- '
lations telling us to give them up; revelations
bidding us to sing more, revelations telling us
to use wordless songs. Then anthems were
given us, and so it has gone ©n, for we have
been led of the Spirit."

"I'd like more picture-books," pouted Hetty,
under her breath.

To-day the service began with a solemn
song, followed by speaking and prayer from a
visiting elder. Then, after a long and pro-
found silence, the company rose and joined in
a rhythmic dance which signified the onward
travel of the soul to full redemption ; the open-
ing and closing of the hands meaning the scat-
tering and gathering of blessing. There was no
accompaniment, and both the .music and the
words were the artless expression of fervent
devotion.

Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged
Tabitha, who would never dance again before
the Lord, though her quavering voice joined

SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING
)in the chorus. The spring floor rose and fell
under the quick rhythmic tread of the worship-
ers, and with each revolution about the room
the song gained in power and fervor.

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The steps grew slower and more sedate, the
voices died away, the arms siank slowly by

SUSANNA AND SUE

the sides, and the hands ceased their move-
ment.

Susanna rose to her feet, she knew not how
or why. Her cheeks were flushed, her head
bent.

"Dear friends," she said, "I have now been
among you for nearly three months, sharing
your life, your work, and your worship. You
may well wish to know whether I have made
up my mind to join this Community, and I can
only say that although I have p*ayed for light,
I cannot yet see my way clearly. I am happy
here with you, and although I have been a
church member for years, I have never before
longed so ardently to present my body and soul
as a sacrifice unto the Lord. I have tried not to
be a burden to you. The small weekly sum
that I put, into the treasury I will not speak of,
lest I seem to think that the 'gift of God may
be purchased with money,' as the Scriptures
say ; but I have endeavored to be loyal to your
rules and customs, your aims and ideals, and to

SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING

the confidence you have reposed in me. Oh, '
my dear Sisters and Brothers, pray for me that
I be enabled to see my duty more plainly. It is
not the flesh-pots that will call me back to the
world ; if I go, it will be because the duties I
have left behind take such shape that they draw
me out of this shelter in spite of myself. I
thank you for the help you have given me these
last weeks ; God knows my gratitude can never
be spoken in words."

Elder Gray's voice broke the silence that
followed Susanna's speech. "I only echo the
sentiments of the Family when I say that our
Sister Susanna shall have such time as she re-
quires before deciding to unite with this body
of Believers, No pressure shall be brought to
bear upon her, and she will be, as she ever has
been, a welcome guest under our roof. She has
been an inspiration to the children, a comfort
and aid to the Sisters, an intelligent comrade
to the Brethren, and a sincere and earnest
student of the truth. May the Spirit draw

'Yee and amen!" exclaimed Eldress Abby,
devoutly: "For thus saith the Lord of hosts:
I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the
sea, and the dry land ; and I will shake all na-
tions, and the desire of all nations shall come :
and I will fill this house with glory, saith the
Lord of hosts."

" O Virgin Church, how great thy light,
What cloud can dim thy way?"

sang Martha from her place at the end of a
bench; and all the voices took up the hymn
softly as the company sat with bowed heads.

Then Brother Issachar rose from his cor-
ner, saying : " Jesus called upon his disciples
to give up everything : houses, lands, relation-
ships, and even the selfishness of their own
lives. They could not call their lives their
own. 'Lo! we have left all and followed thee,'
said Peter; 'fathers, mothers, wives, children,
houses, lands, and even our own lives also.'

"Yee, we do," said Brother Thomas Scat-
tergood, devoutly. "To him that overcometh
shall the great prize be given."

"God help the weaker brethren!" mur-
mured young Brother Nathan, in so low a
voice that few could hear him.

Moved by the same impulse, Tabitha, Abby,
and Martha burst into one of the most tri-
umphant of the Shaker songs, one that was
never sung save when the meeting was "full
of the Spirit" : —

"I draw no blank nor miss the prize,
I see the work, the sacrifice.
And I'll be loyal, I'll be wise,
A faithful overcomer!"

The company rose and began again to
march in a circle around the centre of the room,
the Brethren two abreast leading the col-
umn, the Sisters following after. There was a
waving movement of the hands by drawing

SUSANNA AND SUE

inward as if gathering in spiritual good and*
storing it up for future need. In the march-
ing and countermarching the worshipers fre-
quently changed their positions, ultimately
forming into four circles, symbolical of the four
dispensations as expounded in Shakerism, the
first from Adam to Abraham ; the second from
Abraham to Jesus; the third from Jesus to
Mother Ann Lee ; and the fourth the millennial
era.

The marching grew livelier; the bodies of
the singers swayed lightly with emotion, the
faces glowed with feeling.

Over and over the hymn was sung, gathering
strength and fullness as the Believers entered
more and more into the spirit of their worship.
Whenever the refrain came in with its militant
fervor, crude, but sincere and effective, the
singers seemed faith-intoxicated; and Sister
Martha in particular might have been tread-
ing the heavenly streets instead of the meet-
ing-house floor, so complete was her absorp-

SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING

tion. The voices at length grew softer, and the *
movement slower, and after a few moments'
reverent silence the company filed out of the
room solemnly and without speech.

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"The Lord ain't shaken Susanna hard
enough yet," thought Brother Ansel shrewdly
from his place in the rear. "She ain't alto-
gether gathered in, not by no manner o' means.

SUSANNA AND SUE

lecause of that unregenerate son of Adam
she's left behind; but there's the makin's of a
pow'ful good Shaker in Susanna, if she finally
takes holt!"

"What manner of life is my husband living,
now that I have deserted him ? Who is being
a mother to Jack?" These were the thoughts
that troubled Susanna Hathaway's soul as she
crossed the grass to her own building.

VII
'THE LOWER PLANE

VII

BROTHER Nathan Bennett was twenty
years old and Sister Hetty Arnold was
eighteen. They had been left with the Shakers
by their respective parents ten years before, and,
growing up in the faith, they formally joined
the Community when they reached the age of
discretion. Thus they had known each other
from early childhood, never in th« familiar way
common to the children of the world, but with
the cool, cheerful, casual, wholly impersonal
attitude of Shaker friendship, a relation seem-
ingly outside of and superior to sex, a relation
more like that of two astral bodies than the more
intimate one of a budding Adam and Eve.

SUSANNA AND SUE
When and where had this relationship
changed its color and meaning ? Neither Na-
than nor Hetty could have told. For years
Nathan had sat at his end of the young men's
bench at the family or the public meeting,
with Hetty exactly opposite him at the end
of the girls' row, and for years they had looked
across the dividing space at each other with
unstirred pulses. The rows of Sisters sat in
serene dignity, one bench behind another,
and each Sister was like unto every other
in Nathan's vague, dreamy, boyishly indif-
ferent eyes. Some of them were seventy and
some seventeen, but each modest figure sat
in its place with quiet folded hands. The stiff
caps hid the hair, whether it was silver or
gold ; the white surplices covered the shoulders
and concealed beautiful curves as well as angu-
lar outlines ; the throats were scarcely visible,
whether they were yellow and wrinkled or
young and white. The Sisters were simply
sisters to fair-haired Nathan, ^nd the Bro-

THE LOWER PLANE

' thers were but brothers to little black-eyed
Hetty.

Once — was it on a Sunday morning ? —
Nathan glanced across the separating space
that is the very essence and sign of Shakerism.
The dance had just ceased, arid there was a
long, solemn stillness when God indeed seemed
to be in one of His holy temples and the earth
was keeping silence before Him. Suddenly
Hetty grew to be something more than one of
the figures in a long row : she chained Nathan's
eye and held it.

"Through her garments the grace of her
glowed." He saw that, in spite of the way her
hair had been cut and stretched back from the
forehead, a short dusky tendril, softened and
coaxed by the summer heat, had made its way
mutinously beyond the confines of her cap.
Her eyes were cast down, but the lashes that
swept her round young cheek were quite diiBfer-
ent from any other lashes in the Sisters' row.
Her breath came and went softly after the

SUSANNA AND SUE

exertion of the rhythmic movements, stirring'
the white muslin folds that wrapped her from
throat to waist. He looked and looked, until
his body seemed to be all eyes, absolutely un-
aware of any change in himself; quite obliv-
ious of the fact that he was regarding the girl
in any new and dangerous way.

The silence continued, long and profound,
until suddenly Hetty raised her beautiful lashes
and met Nathan's gaze, the gaze of a boy just
turned to man: ardent, warm, compelling.
There was a startled moment of recognition,
a tremulous approach, almost an embrace, of
regard ; each sent an electric current across the
protective separating space, the two pairs of
eyes met and said, "I love you," in such clear
tones that Nathan and Hetty marveled that
the Elder did not hear them. Somebody says
that love, like a scarlet spider, can spin a thread
between two hearts almost in an instant, so fine
as to be almost invisible, yet it will hold with
the tenacity of an iron chain. The thread had

THE LOWER PLANE

been spun; it was so delicate that neither*
Nathan nor Hetty had seen the scarlet spider
spinning it, but the strength of both would not
avail to snap the bond that held them together.

The moments passed. Hetty's kerchief rose
and fell, rose and fell tumultuously, while her
face was suffused with color. Nathan's knees
quivered under him, and when the Elder rose,
and they began the sacred march, the lad could
hardly stand for trembling. He dreaded the
moment when the lines of Believers would
meet, and he and Hetty would walk the length
of the long room almost beside each other.
Could she hear his heart beating, Nathan
wondered; while Hetty was palpitating with
fear lest Nathan see her blushes and divine
their meaning. Oh, the joy of it, the terror of
it, the strange exhilaration and the sudden sen-
sation of sin and remorse!

The meeting over, Nathan flung himself on
the haymow in the great barn, while Hetty sat
with her "Synopsis of Shaker Theology" at

SUSANNA AND SUE

' an open window ^of the girls' building, seeing
nothing in the lines of print but visions that
should not have been there. It was Nathan
who felt most and sujBPered most and was most
conscious of sin, for Hetty, at first, scarcely
knew whither she was drifting.

She went into the herb-garden with Susanna
one morning during the week that followed the
fatal Sunday. Many of the plants to be used
for seasoning — sage, summer savory, sweet
marjoram, and the like — were quite ready for
gathering. As the two women were busy at
work, Susanna as full of her thoughts as Hetty
of hers, the sound of a step was heard brushing
the grass of the orchard. Hetty gave a ner-
vous start; her cheeks grew so crimson and
her breath so short that Susanna noticed the
change.

"It will be Brother Ansel coming along to
the grindstone," Hetty stammered, burying her
head in the leaves.

"No," Susanna answered, "it is Nathan.

THE LOWER PLANE

He has a long pole with a saw on the end. He '
must be going to take the dead branches off
the apple trees ; I heard Ansel tell him yester-
day to do it."

"Yee, that will be it," said Hetty, bending
over the plants as if she were afraid to look
elsewhere.

Nathan came nearer to the herb-garden. He
was a tall, stalwart, handsome enough fellow,
even in his quaint working garb. As the Sisters
spun and wove the cloth as well as cut and
made the men's garments, and as the Brothers
themselves made the shoes, there was naturally
no great air of fashion about the Shaker rai-
ment; but Nathan carried it better than most.
His skin was fair and rosy, the down on his
upper lip showed dawning manhood, and
when he took off his broad-brimmed straw hat
and stretched to his full height to reach the
upper branches of the apple trees, he laade a
picture of clean, wholesome, vigorous youth.

Suddenly Susanna raised her head and sur-

SUSANNA AND SUE

prised Hetty looking at the lad with all her'
heart in her eyes. At the same moment Nathan
turned, and before he could conceal the telltale
ardor of his glance, it had sped to Hetty. With
the instinct of self-preservation he stooped in-
stantly as if to steady the saw on the pole, but
it was too late to mend matters : his tale was
told so far as Susanna was concerned; but it
was better she should suspect than one of the
Believers or Eldress Abby.

Susanna worked on in silent anxiety. The
likelihood of such crises as this had sometimes
crossed her mind, and knowing how frail
human nature is, she often marveled that in-
stances seemed so infrequent. Her instinct told
her that in every Community the risk must
exist, even though all were doubly warned and
armed against the temptations that flesh is heir
to ; yet no hint of danger had showed itself dur-
ing the months in which she had been a mem-
ber of the Shaker family. She had heard the
Elder's plea to the young converts to take up

tened to Eldress Abby when she told them that
the natural life, its thoughts, passions, feelings,
and associations, must be turned against once
and forever; but her heart melted in pity for
the two poor young things struggling help-
lessly against instincts of which- they hardly
knew the meaning, so cloistered had been the
life they lived. The kind, conscientious hands
that had fed them would now seem hard and
unrelenting; the place that had been home
would turn to a prison ; the life that Elder Gray
preached, "the life of a purer godliness than
can be attained by marriage," had seemed dif-
ficult, perhaps, but possible; and now how
cold and hopeless it would appear to these two
young, undisciplined, flaming hearts !

"Hetty dear, talk to me!" whispered Su-
sanna, softly touching her shoulder, and won-
dering if she could somehow find a way to
counsel the girl in her perplexity.

Hetty started rebelliously to her feet as

about me to Eldress Abby, I'll run away this
very day. Nobody has any right to speak to
me, and I just want to be let alone! It's all
very well for you," she went oft passionately.
"What have you had to give up? Nothing but
a husband you did n't love and a home you
did n't want to stay in. Like as not you'll be
a Shaker, and they'll take you for a saint; but
anyway you'll have had your life."

"You are right, Hetty," said Susanna,
quietly; "but oh! my dear, the world outside
is n't such a Paradise for young girls like you,
motherless and fatherless and penniless. You
have a good home here ; can't you learn to like
it.?"

" Out in the world people can do as they like
and nobody thinks of calling them wicked!"
sobbed Hetty, flinging herself down, and put-
ting her head in Susanna's aproned lap. " Here
you've got to live like an angpl, and if you

THE LOWER PLANE

'don't, you've got to confess every wrong
thought you've had, when the time comes."

"Whatever you do, Hetty, be open and
aboveboard ; don't be hasty and foolish, or you
may be sorry forever afterwards."

Hetty's mood changed again suddenly to
one of mutiny, and she rose to her feet.

"You have n't got any right to interfere with
me anyway, Susanna; and if, you think it's
your duty to tell tales, you'll only make mat-
ters worse" ; and so saying she took her basket
and fled across the fields like a hunted hare.

That evening, as Hetty left the infirmary,
where she had been sent with a bottle of lini-
ment for the nursing Sisters, she came upon
Nathan standing gloomily under the spruce
trees near the back of the building. It was
eight o'clock and quite dark. It had been rain-
ing during the late afternoon and the trees were
still dripping drearily. Hetty came upon
Nathan so suddenly, that, although he had
been in her thoughts, she gave a frightened

SUSANNA AND SUE

little cry when he drew her peremptorily under '
the shadow of the branches. The rules that
govern the Shaker Community are very strict,
but in reality the true Believer 'never thinks of
them as rules, nor is trammeled 'by them. They
are fixed habits of the blood, as common, as
natural, as sitting or standing, eating or drink-
ing. No Brother is allowed to hold any
lengthy interview with a Sister, nor to work,
walk, or drive with her alone ; but these protec-
tive customs, which all are bound in honor to
keep, are too much a matter of every-day life
to be strange or irksome.

"I must speak to you, Hetty," whispered
Nathan. "I cannot bear it any longer alone.
What shall we do.?"

"Do.?" echoed Hetty, trembling.

"Yes, do." There was no pretense of asking
her if she loved or suffered, or lived in torture
and suspense. They had not uttered a word to
each other, but their eyes had "shed mean-
mgs.

THE LOWER PLANE

"You know we can't go on like this," he
continued rapidly. "We can't eat their food,
stay alongside of them, pray their prayers and
act a lie all the time, — we can't ! "

" Nay, we can't ! " said Hetty. " Oh, Nathan,
shall we confess all and see if they will help
us to resist temptation .'' I know that 's what
Susanna would want me to do, but oh! I
should dread it."

"Nay, it is too late," Nathan answered
drearily. "They could not help us, and we
should be held under suspicion forever after."

"I feel so wicked and miserable and un-
faithful, I don't know what to do!" sobbed
Hetty.

"Yee, so do I!" the lad answered. "And I
feel bitter against my father, too. He brought
me here to get rid of me, because he did n't
dare leave me on somebody's doorstep. He
ought to have come back when I was grown a
man and asked me if I felt inclined to be a
Shaker, and if I was good enough to be one ! "

SUSANNA AND SUE

"And my stepfather wouldn't have me in
the house, so my mother had to give me away ;
but they're both dead, and I'm alone in the
world, though I've never felt it, because the
Sisters are so kind. Now they will hate me —
though they don't hate anybody."

"You've got me, Hetty! We must go away
and be married. We'd better go to-night to
the minister in Albion."

"What if he would n't do it.?"

" Why should n't he ? Shakers take no vows,
though I feel bound, hand and foot, qut of
gratitude. If any other two young folks went
to him, he would marry them; and if he re-
fuses, there are two other ministers in Albion,
besides two more in Buryfield, five miles
farther. If they won't marry us to-night, I'll
leave you in some safe home and we'll walk to
Portland to-morrow. I'm young and strong,
and I know I can earn our living somehow."

"But we have n't the price of a lodging or
a breakfast between us," Hetty said tearfully.

THE LOWER PLANE

"Would it be sinful to take some of my basket-
work and send back the money next week?"

"Yee, it would be so," Nathan answered
sternly. "The least we can do is to go away
as empty-handed as we came. I can work for
our breakfast."

"Oh, I can't bear to disappoint Eldress
Abby," cried Hetty, breaking anew into tears.
"She'll say we've run away to live on the
lower plane after agreeing to fcrucify Nature
and follow the angelic life!"

"I know; but there are five hundred people
in Albion all living in marriage, and we shan't
be the only sinners!" Nathan argued. "Oh,
Sister Hetty, dear Hetty, keep up your spirits
and trust to me!"

Nathan's hand stole out and met Hetty's in
its warm clasp, the first hand touch that the
two ignorant young creatures had ever felt.
Nathan's knowledge of life had been a journey
to the Canterbury Shakers in New Hampshire
with Brother Issachar; Hetty's was limited to

SUSANNA AND SUE

a few drives into Albion village, and half a'
dozen chats with the world's people who came
to the Settlement to buy basket-work.

"I am not able to bear the Shaker life!"
sighed Nathan. "Elder Gray allows there be
such!"

"Nor I," murmured Hetty. "Eldress Har-
riet knows I am no saint!"

Hetty's head was now on Nathan's shoulder.
The stiff Shaker cap had resisted bravely, but
the girl's head had yielded to the sweet proxim-
ity. Youth called to youth triumphantly; the
Spirit was unheard, and all the theories of celi-
bacy and the angelic life that had been poured
into their ears vanished into thin air. The
thick shade of the spruce tree hid the kiss that
would have been so innocent^ had they not
given themselves to the Virgin Church; the
drip, drip, drip of the branches on their young
heads passed unheeded.

Then, one following the other silently along
the highroad, hurrying along in the shadows

THE LOWER PLANE

of the tall trees, stealing into the edge of the
woods, or hiding behind a thicket of alders at
the fancied sound of a footstep or the distant
rumble of a wagon, Nathan and Hetty forsook
the faith of Mother Ann and went out into the
world as Adam and Eve left the garden, with
the knowledge of good and evil implanted in
their hearts. The voice of Eldress Abby pur-
sued Hetty in her flight like the voice in a
dream. She could hear its clear impassioned
accents, saying, "The children of this world
marry; but the children of the .resurrection do
not marry, for they are as the angels." The
solemn tones grew fainter and fainter as
Hetty's steps led her farther and farther away
from the quiet Shaker village and its drab-clad
Sisters, and at last they almost died into silence,
because Nathan's voice was nearer and Na-
than's voice was dearer.

vm

VIII

THERE was no work in the herb-garden
now, but there was never a moment
from dawn till long after dusk when the busy
fingers of the Shaker Sisters were still. When
all else failed there was the knitting : socks for
the Brothers and stockings for the Sisters and
socks and stockings of every size for the chil-
dren. One of the quaint sights of the Settle-
ment to Susanna was the cluitip of young Sis-
ters on the porch of the girls' building, knit-
ting, knitting, in the afternoon sun. Even little
Shaker Jane and Mary, Maria and Lucinda,
had their socks in hand, and plied their short
knitting-needles soberly and not unskillfully.

SUSANNA AND SUE

The sight of their industry incited the impetu-
ous Sue to effort, and under the patient tutelage
of Sister Martha she mastered the gentle art.
Susanna never forgot the hour when, coming
from her work in the seed-room, she crossed
the grass with a message to Martha, and saw
the group of children and girls on the western
porch, a place that caught every ray of after-
noon sun, the last glint of twilight, and the first
hint of sunset glow. Sister Martha had been
reading the Sabbath-school lesson for the next
day, and as Susanna neared the building,
Martha's voice broke into a hymn. Falteringly
the girls' voices followed the lead, uncertain at
first of words or tune, but gaining courage and
strength as they went on : —

'As the waves of the mighty ocean
Gospel love we will circulate.

And as we give, in due proportion,
We of the heavenly life partake.

Heavenly Life, Glorious Life,
Resurrecting, Soul-Inspiring,

The clear, innocent treble sounded sweetly
in the virgin stillness and solitude of the Settle-
ment, and as Susanna drew closer she stopped
under a tree to catch the picture — Sister
Martha, grave, tall, discreet, singing with all
her soul and marking time with her hands,
so accustomed to the upward and downward
movement of the daily service. The straight,
plain dresses were as fresh and smooth as per-
fect washing could make them, and the round
childlike faces looked quaint and sweet with
the cropped hair tucked under the stiff little
caps. Sue was seated with Mary and Jane on
the steps, and Susanna saw with astonishment
that her needles were moving to and fro and
she was knitting as serenely and correctly as a
mother in Israel; singing, too, in a delicate
little treble that was like a skylark's morning
note. Susanna could hear her distinctly as she
delightedly flung out the long words so dear

SUSANNA AND SUE

'to her soul and so difficult to dull little Jane
and Mary : —

" Res-ur-rect-ing, SouI-In-spir-ing,
Re-gen-er-a-ting Gospel Life,^

It lead-eth a-way from all sin and strife."

Jane's cap was slightly unsettled, causing its
wearer to stop knitting now and then and pull
it forward or push it back ; and in one of these
little feminine difficulties Susanna saw Sue
reach forward and deftly transfer the cap to
her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather
slow to wrath and equally slow in ingenuity.
Sue looked a delicious Shaker with her delicate
face, her lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown
into soft rings ; and quite intoxicated with her
cap, her knitting, and the general air of holi-
ness so unexpectedly emanating from her, she
moved her little hands up and down, as the
tune rose and fell, in a way that would have
filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's heart
beat fast, and she wondered for a moment, as
she went back to her room, whether she could

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free
from danger than the life she was now living.
She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack
on reaching her room, and they lay in her lap
under a pile of towels, to be read and reread
while her busy needle flew over the coarse
crash. Sue stole in quietly, kissed her mother's
cheek, and sat down on her stool by the win-
dow, marveling, with every "under" of the
needle and "over" of the yarn, that it was she,
Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stock-
ing.

Jack's pen was not that of an especially
ready writer, but he had a practical way of
conveying considerable news. His present con-
tributions, when freed from .their phonetic
errors and spelled in Christian fashion, read
somewhat as follows : —

Father says I must write to you every week,
even if I make him do without, so I will. I am
well, and so is Aunt Louisa, and any boy that

good and has fine things to eat every
meal. What did Sue get for her birthday?
I got a book from father and one from Aunt
Louisa and the one from you that you told her
to buy. It is queer that people will give a boy
books when he has only one knife, and that a
broken one. There's a book prize to be given
at the school, and I am pretty afraid I will get
that, too; it would be just my luck. Teachers
think about nothing but books and what good
they do, but I heard of a boy that had a grand
knife with five sharp blades and a corkscrew,
and in a shipwreck he cut all the ropes, so the
sail came down that was carrying them on to
the rocks, and then by boring a hole with his
corkscrew all the water leaked out of the ship
that had been threatening to sink the sailors.
I could use a little pocket money, as Aunt
Louisa keeps me short. ... I have been
spending Sunday with father, and had a pretty
good time, not so very. Father will take me

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

about more when he stops going to the store,'
which will be next week for good. The kitchen
floor is new painted, and Ellen says it sticks,
and Aunt Louisa is going to make Ellen clean
house in case you come home. Do you like
where you axe? Our teacher told the girls'
teacher it seemed a long stay for any one who
had a family, and the boys at school call me
a half orphan and say my mother has left me
and so my father has to board me in the coun-
try. My money is run out again, I sat down
in a puddle this afternoon, but it dried up
pretty, quick and did n't hurt my clothes, so
no more from your son

Jack.

This was the sort of message that had been
coming to Susanna of late, bringing up little
pictures of home duties and responsibilities,
homely tasks and trials. "John giving up the
store for good"; what did that mean.'' Had.
he gone from bad to worse in the solitude that

ways,

she should die, what then would become of
the children? Would Louisa accept the bur-
den of Jack, for whom she had never cared ?
Would the Shakers take Sue? She would be
safe; perhaps she would always be happy;
but brother and sister would "be divided and
brought up as strangers. Would little Sue,
grown to big Sue, say some time or other, "My
mother renounced the world for herself, but
what right had she to renounce it for me ? Why
did she rob me of the dreams pf girlhood and
the natural hopes of wbmen, when I was too
young to give consent?" These and other
unanswerable questions continually drifted
through Susanna's mind, disturbing its bal-
ance and leaving her like a shuttlecock bandied
to and fro between conflicting blows.

"Mardie," came a soft little voice from
across the room; "Mardie, what is a back-
slider?"

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

"Where did you hear that long word, Sue ?'
asked Susanna, rousing herself from her dream.

" 'T is n't so long as * regenerating' and more
easier."

"Regenerating means 'making over,' you
know."

" There 'd ought to be children's words and
grown-up words, — that's what I think," said
Sue, decisively; "but what does 'backslider'
^^^.. .

"A backslider is one who has been climbing
up a hill and suddenly begins to slip back."

"Doesn't his feet take hold right, or why
does he slip.''"

"Perhaps he can't manage his feet; perhaps
they just won't climb."

"Yes, or p'raps he just doesn't want to
climb any more ; but it must be frightensomej
sliding backwards."

"I suppose it is."

"Is it wicked.?"

"Why, yes, it is, generally; perhaps always."

SUSANNA AND SUE

"Brother Nathan and Sister Hetty were
backsliders; Sister Tabitha said so. She told
Jane never to speak their names again any
more than if they was dead."

"Then you had better not speak of them,
either."

"There's so many things better not to speiak
of in the world, sometimes I think 't would be
nicer to be an angel."

"Nicer, perhaps, but one has to be very
good to be an angel."

"Backsliders could n't be angels, I s'pose.-'"

"Not while they were backsliders; but per-
haps they 'd begin to climb again, and then in
time they might grow to be angels."

"I shouldn't think likely," remarked Sue,
decisively, clicking her needles as one who
could settle most spiritual problems in a jiffy.
" I think the sliding kind is diff'rent from the
climbing kind, and they don't make easy an-
gels."

A long pause followed this expression of

sently the untiring voice broke thfe stillness again.

"Nathan and Hetty slid back when they
went away from here. Did we backslide when
we left Fardie and Jack.?"

"I'm not sure but that we did," said poor
Susanna.

"There's children-Shakers, and brother-and-
sister Shakers, but no father-and-mother Shak-
en?"

"No; they think they can do just as much
good in the world without being mothers and
fathers."

"Do you think so?"

" Ye-es, I believe I do."

"Well, are you a truly Shaker, or can't you
be till you wear a cap.?"

"I'm not a Shaker yet, Sue."

"You're just only a mother?"

"Yes, that's about all."

"Maybe we'd better go back to where there's

SUSANNA AND SUE

not so many Sisters and more mothers, so you '11
have somebody to climb togedder with?"

"I could climb here. Sue, and so could you."

"Yes, but who'll Fardie and Jack climb
with? I wish they 'd come and see us. Brother
Ansel would make Fardie laugh, and Jack
would love farm-work, and we 'd all be so
happy. I miss Fardie awfully! He didn't
speak to me much, but I liked to look at his
curly hair and think how lovely it would be if
he did take notice of me and play with me."

A sob from Susanna brought Sue, startled,
to her side.

"You break my heart. Sue! You break it
every day with the things you say. Don't you
love me. Sue?"

"More'n tongue can tell!" cried Sue, throw-
ing herself into her mother's arms. "Don't
cry, darling Mardie! I won't talk any more,
not for days and days ! Let me wipe your poor
eyes. Don't let Elder Gray see you crying, or
he'll think I've been naughty. He's just going

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

in downstairs to see Eldress Abby. Was it"
wrong what I said about backsliding, or what,
Mardie ? We'll help each udder climb, an' then
we'll go home an' help poor lonesome Fardie;
shall we?"

"Abby!" called Elder Gray, stepping into
the entry of the Office Building.

" Yee, I'm coming," Eldress Abby answered
from the stairway. "Go right out and sit down
on the bench by the door, where I can catch a
few minutes more light for my darning; the
days seem to be growing short all to once. Did
Lemuel have a good sale of basket-work at the
mountains .'' Rosetta has n't done so well for
yeais at Old Orchard. We seem to be prosper-
ing in every material direction, Daniel, but my
heart is heavy somehow, and I have to be in-
stant in prayer to keep from discouragement."

"It has n't been an altogether good year with
us spiritually," confessed Daniel-; "perhaps we
needed chastening."

SUSANNA .AND SUE

"If we needed it, we've rec'eived it," Abby'
ejaculated, as she pushed her daming-bali into
the foot of a stocking. "Nothing has happened
since I came here thirty years ago that has trou-
bled me like the running away of Nathan and
Hetty. If they had been new converts, we should
have thought the good seed had n't. got fairly
rooted, but those children were brought to us
when Nathan was eleven and Hetty nine."

"I well remember, for the boy's father and
the girl's mother came on the same train; a
most unusual occurrence to receive two children
in one day."

"I have cause to remember Hetty in her first
month, for she was as wild as a young hawk.
She laughed in meeting the first Sunday, and
when she came back, I told her to sit behind me
in silence for half an hour while I was reading
my Bible. *Be still now, Hetty, and labor to
repent,' I said. When the time was up, she said
in a meek little mite of a voice, 'I think I'm
least in the Kingdom now. Eldress Abby!'

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

I 'Then run outdoors,' I said. She kicked up her
heels like a colt and was through the door in a
second. Not long afterwards I put my hands
behind me to tie my apron tighter, and if that
child hadn't taken my small scissors lying on
the table and cut buttonholes all up and down
my strings, hundreds of them, while she was
'laboring to repent.' "

Elder Gray smiled reminisceMly, though he
"had often heard the story before. "Neither of
the children came from godly families," he
said, "but at least the parents never interfered
with us nor came here putting false ideas into
their children's heads."

"That's what I say," continued Abby; "and
now, after ten years' training and discipline in
the angelic life, Hetty being especially promis-
ing, to think of their going away together, and
worse yet, being married in Albion village right
at our very doors ; I don't hardly dare to go to
bed nights for fear of hearing in the morning
that some of the other young folks have been

SUSANNA AND SUE

Med astray by this foolish performance of Hetty's ;
I know it was Hetty's fault ; Nathan never had
ingenuity enough to think and plan it all out."

"Nay, nay, Abby, don't be too hard on the
girl; I've watched Nathan closely, and he has
been in a dangerous and unstable state, even
as long ago as his last confession ; but this piece
of backsliding, grievous as it is, does n't cause
me as much sorrow as the fall of Brother
Ephraim. To all appearance he had conquered
his appetite, and for five years he has led a
sober life. I had even great hopes of him for
the ministry, and suddenly, like a great cloud
in the blue sky, has come this terrible visitation,
this reappearance of the old Adam. 'Ephraim
has returned to his idols.' "

"How have you decided to deal with him,
Daniel.?"

"It is his first offense since he cast in his lot
with us ; we must rebuke, chastise, and forgive."

"Yee, yee, I agree to that; but how if he
makes us the laughing-stock of the community

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

and drags our sacred banner in the dust? We
can't aflford to have one of our order picked up
in the streets by the world's people."

" Have the world's people found an infallible
way to keep those of their order out of the gut-
ters?" asked Elder Gray. "Ephraim seems
repentant; if he is willing to try again, we must
be willing to do as much."

" Yee, Daniel, you are right. Another matter
that causes me anxiety is Susanna. I never
yearned for a soul as I yearn for hers! She
has had the advantage of more education and
more reading than most of us have ever en-
joyed ; she 's gifted in teaching and she wins
the children. She 's discreet and spiritually
minded; her life in the world, even with the
influence of her dissipated husband, has n't
really stained, only humbled her; she would
make such a Shaker, if she was once 'con-
vinced,' as we have n't gathered in for years
and years; but I fear she's slipping, slipping
away, Daniel!"

SUSANNA AND SUE

"What makes you feel so now, particu-
larly?"

"She's diflE'rent as time goes on. She's had
more letters from that place where her boy is ;
she cries nights, and though she does n't relax
a mite with her work, she drags about some-
times like a bird with one wing."

Elder Daniel took off his broad-brimmed
hat to cool his forehead and hair, lifting his
eyes to the first pale stars that were trembling
in the sky, hesitating in silver and then quietly
deepening into gold.

Brother Ansel was a Believer because he had
no particular love for the world and no great
susceptibility to its temptations ; but what had
drawn Daniel Gray from the -open sea into
this quiet little backwater of a Shaker Settle-
ment?

After an adventurous early life, in which,
as if youth-intoxicated, he had plunged from
danger to danger, experience to experience, he
suddenly found himself in a society of which

CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS

he had never so much as heard, a company'^
of celibate brothers and sisters holding all
goods and possessions in common, and trying
to live the "angelic life" on earth. Illness de-
tained him for a month against his w^ill, but at
the end of that time he had joined the Com-
munity; and although it had been twenty-five
years since his gathering in, he was still stead-
fast in the faith.

His character was of puritanical sternness ;
he was a strict disciplinarian, and insisted upon
obedience to the rules of Shaker life, "the sa-
cred laws of Zion," as he was wont to term
them. He magnified his office, yet he was
of a kindly , disposition easily approached by
children, and not without a quaint old-time
humor.

There was a long pause while the two faith-
ful leaders of the little flock were absorbed in
thought; then the Elder said: "Susanna's all
you say, and the child, — well, if she could
be purged of her dross, I never saw a creature

SUSANNA AND SUE

better fitted to live the celestial life ; but we '
must not harbor any divided hearts here.
When the time comes, we must dismiss her
with our blessing."

"Yee, I suppose so," said Eldress Abby,
loyally, but it was with a sigh. Had she and
Tabitha been left to their own instincts, they
would have gone out into the highways and
hedges, proselyting with the fervor of Mother
Ann's day and generation.

"After all, Abby," said the Elder, rising to
take his leave, still in a sort of mild trance, —
"after all, Abby, I suppose the Shakers don't
own the whole of heaven. I'd like to think so,
but I can't. It's a big place, and it belongs to
God."

IX
LOVE MANIFOLD

THE woods on the shores of Massabesic
Pond were stretches of tapestry, where
every shade of green and gold, olive and brown,
orange and scarlet, melted the one into the
other. The sombre pines made a deep-toned
background; patches of sumach gave their
flaming crimson ; the goldenrod grew rank and
tall in glorious profusion, and the maples out-
side the Office Building were balls of brilliant
carmine. The air was like crystal, and the land-
scape might have been bathed in liquid amber,
it was so saturated with October yellow.

Susanna caught her breath as she threw her
chamber window wider open in the early

morning ;

had been painted during the frosty night.

"Throw your little cape round your shoul-
ders and come quickly. Sue ! " she exclaimed.

The child ran to her side. "Oh, what a
goldy, goldy morning!" she cried.

One crimson leaf with a long heavy stem
that acted as a sort of rudder, came down to
the window-sill with a sidelong scooping flight,
while two or three gayly painted ones, parted
from the tree by the same breeze, floated airily
along as if borne on unseen wings, finally
alighting on Sue's head and shoulders like
tropical birds.

"You cried in the night, Mardie!" said Sue.
"I heard you sniff erling and getting up for
your hank'chief ; but I did n't speak 'cause it's
so dreadful to be catched crying,"

"Kneel down beside me and give me part of
your cape," her mother answered. "I'm go-
ing to let my sad heart fly right out of the
window into those beautiful trees."

the child suggested.

" Maybe. — Oh ! we must cuddle close and
be still ; Elder Gray 's going to sit down under
the great maple ; and do you see, all the Bro-
thers seem to be up early this morning, just as
we are.'*"

"More love. Elder Gray!" called Issachar,
on his way to the tool-house.

"More love, Brother Issachar!"

"More love, Brother Ansel!"

"More love, Brother Calvin!"

"More love!" "More love!" "More love!"
So the quaint but not uncommon Shaker
greeting passed from Brother to Brother; and
as Tabitha and Martha and Rosetta met on
their way to dairy and laundry and seed-house,
they, too, hearing the salutation, took up the
refrain, and Susanna and Sue heard again from
the women's voices that beautiful morning
wish, "More love!" "More love!" speeding
from heart to heart and lip to lip.

SUSANNA AND SUE

Mother and child were very quiet.

"More love, Sue!" said Susanna, clasping
her closely.

"More love, Mardie!" whispered the child,
smiling and entering into the spirit of the salu-
tation. "Let's turn our heads Farnham way!
I'll take Jack and you take Fardie, and we'll
say togedder, 'More love'; shall we?"

"More love, John."

"More love, Jack."

The words floated out over the trees in the
woman's trembling voice and the child's treble.

"Elder Gray looks tired though he's just got
up," Sue continued.

"He is not strong," replied her mother, re-
membering Brother Ansel's statement that the
Elder "wa'n't diseased anywheres, but did n't
have no durability."

"The Elder would have a lovely lap," Sue
remarked presently.

"What?"

"A nice lap to sit in. Fardie has a nice lap,

hard lap. I love Elder Gray, and I climbed on
his lap one day. He put me right down, but
I'm sure he likes children. I wish I could take
right hold of his hand and walk all over the
farm, but he would n't let me, I S'pose. — More
love, Elder Gray!" she cried suddenly, bobbing
up above the window-sill and shaking her
fairy hand at him.

The Elder looked up at the sotind of the glad
voice. No human creature could have failed
to smile back into the roguish face or have
treated churlishly the sweet, confident little
greeting. The heart of a real man must have
an occasional throb of the father, and when
Daniel Gray rose from his seat under the maple
and called, "More love, child!" there was
something strange and touching in his tone.
He moved away from the tree to his morning
labors with the consciousness of something
new to conquer. Long, long ago he had risen

SUSANNA AND SUE

victorious above many of the temptations that^
flesh is heir to. Women were his good friends,
his comrades, his sisters; they' no longer trou-
bled the waters of his soul; but here was a
child who stirred the depths; who awakened
the potential father in him so suddenly and so
strongly that he longed for the sweetness of a
human tie that could bind him to her. But the
current of the Elder's being was set towards
sacrifice and holiness, and the common joys of
human life he felt could never and must never
be his ; so he went to the daily round, the com-
mon task, only a little paler, a little soberer
than was his wont.

"More love, Martha!" said Susanna when
she met Martha a little later in the day.

"More love, Susanna!" Martha replied
cheerily. "You heard our Shaker greeting, I
see ! It was the beautiful weather, the fine air
and glorious colors, that brought the inspira-
tion this morning, I guess ! It took us all out of
doors, and then it seemed to get into the blood.

LOVE MANIFOLD

I Besides, to-morrow 's the Day of Sacrifice, and
'that takes us all on to the mountain-tops of
feeling. There have been times when I had to
own up to a lack of love."

"You, Martha, who have such wonderful
influence over the children, such patience, such
affection!"

"It was n't always so. When I was first put
in charge of the children, I did n't like the
work. They did n't respond to me somehow,
and when they were out of my sight they
were ugly and disobedient. My natural mother,
Maria Holmes, took care of the girls' clothing.
One day she said to me, ' Martha, do you love
the girls.'''

" ' Some of them are very unlovely,' I replied.

"'I know that,' she said, 'but you can never
help them unless you love thenj,'

"I thought mother very critical, for I strove
scrupulously to do my duty. A few days after
this the Elder said to me : Martha, do you love
the girls.?' I responded, 'Not very much.'

SUSANNA AND SUE

'"You cannot save them unless you love
them,' he said.

"Then I answered, 'I will labor for a gift of
love.'

"When the work of the day was over, and
the girls were in bed, I would take off my shoes
and spend several hours of the night walking
the floor, kneeling in prayer that I might ob-
tain the coveted gift. For five Weeks I did this
without avail," when suddenly one night when
the moon was full and I was kneeling by the
window, a glory seemed to overshadow the crest
of a high mountain in the distance. I thought
I heard a voice say: 'Martha, I baptize you
into the spirit of love ! ' I sat there trembling
for more than an hour, and when I rose, I felt
that I could love the meanest human being that
ever walked the earth. I have never had any
trouble with children since that night of the
vision. They seem diiferent to me, and I dare
say I am different to them."

"I wish I could see visions!" exclaimed

all mist, whichever way I turn, I'd like to be
lifted on to a high place where I could see
clearly."

She leaned against the frame of the open
kitchen door, her delicate face quivering with
emotion and longing, her attitude simplicity
and unconsciousness itself. The baldest of
Shaker prose turned to purest poetry when
Susanna dipped it in the alembic of her own
imagination.

"Labor for the gift of sight!" said Martha,
who believed implicitly in spirits and visions.
"Labor this very night."

It must be said for Susanna that she had
never ceased laboring in her own way for many
days. The truth was that she felt herself turn-
ing from marriage. She had lived now so long
in the society of men and women who regarded
it as an institution not compatible with the
highest spiritual development that uncon-

SUSANNA AND SUE

'sciously her point of view had changed;
changed all the more because she had been so
unhappy with the man she had chosen. Curi-
ously enough, and unfortunately enough for
Susanna Hathaway's peace of mind, the greater
aversion she felt towards the burden of the old
life, towards the irksomeness of guiding a
weaker soul, towards the claims of husband
on wife, the stronger those claims appeared.
If they had never been assumed ! — Ah, but
they had ; there was the rub ! One sight of little
Sue sleeping tranquilly beside her; one mem-
ory of rebellious, faulty Jack; one vision of
John, either as needing or missing her, the
rightful woman, or falling deeper in the wiles
of the wrong one for very helplessness ; — any
of these changed Susanna the would-be saint,
in an instant into Susanna the wife and mother.
"Speak to me for Thy Compassion's sake,"
she prayed from the little book of Confessions
that her mother had given her. "/ will follow
after Thy Voice!"

LOVE MANIFOLD

"Would you betray your trust?" asked con-
science.

"No, not intentionally."

"Would you desert your post.''"

"Never, willingly."

"You have divided the family; taken a little
quail bird out of the home-nest and left sorrow
behind you. Would God justify you in that?"

For the first time Susanna's " No " rang
clearly enough for her to hear it plainly; for
the first time it was followed by no vague mis-
givings, no bewilderment, no unrest or inde-
cision. "/ turn hither and thither; Thy pur-
poses are hid from me, but I commend my soul
to Thee ! "

Then a sentence from the dear old book
came into her memory: "And thy dead things
shall revive, and thy weak things shall be made
whole"

She listened, laying hold of every word, till
the nervous clenching of her hands subsided,
her face relaxed into peace. Then she lay down

SUSANNA AND SUE

beside Sue, creeping close to her for the warmth '
and comfort and healing of her innocent touch,
and, closing her eyes serenely, knew no more till
the morning broke, the Sabbath morning of
Confession Day.

IF Susanna's path had grown more difficult,
more filled with anxieties, so had John
Hathaway 's. The protracted absence of his
wife made the gossips conclude that the break
was a final one. Jack was only half contented
with his aunt, and would be fairly mutinous
in the winter, while Louisa's general attitude
was such as to show clearly that she only kept
the boy for Susanna's sake.

Now and then there was a terrifying hint of
winter in the air, and the days of Susanna's ab-
sence seemed eternal to John Ha&away. Yet he
was a man about whom there would have been
but one opinion : that when deprived of a rather

SUSANNA AND SUE

superior and high-minded wife and the steady-
ing influence of home and children, he would go
completely "to the dogs," whither he seemed
to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage
failed. That he had done precisely the opposite
and the unexpected thing, shdws us perhaps
that men are not on the whole as capable of
estimating the forces of their fellow men as is
God the maker of men, who probably expects
something of the worst of them up to the very
last.

It was at the end of a hopeless Sunday when
John took his boy back to his aunt's towards
night. He wondered drearily how a woman
dealt with a ten-year-old boy who from sunrise
to sunset had done every mortal thing he ought
not to have done, and had left undone every-
thing that he had been told to do ; and, as if
to carry out the very words of the church ser-
vice, neither was there any health in him ; for
he had an inflamed throat and a whining, irri-
table, discontented temper that could be borne

BROTHER AND SISTER

' only by a mother, a father being wholly inad-
equate and apparently never destined for the
purpose.

It was a mild evening late in October, and
Louisa sat on the porch with her pepper-and-
salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette"
tied over her head. Jack, very sulky and unre-
signed, was dispatched to bed under the care
of the one servant, who was provided with a
cupful of vinegar, salt, and water, for a gargle.
John had more than an hour to wait for a re-
turning train to Famham, and although ordi-
narily he would have preferred to spend the time
in the silent and unreproachful cemetery rather
than in the society of his sister Louisa, he was
too tired and hopeless to do anything but sit
on the steps and smoke fitfully in the semi-
darkness.

Louisa was much as usual. She well knew —
who better .'' — her brother's changed course
of life, but neither encouragement nor compli-
ment were in her line. Why should a man be

SUSANNA AND SUE

praised for living a respectable life ? That John'
had really turned a sort of moral somersault
and come up a different creature, she did not
realize in the least, nor the difficulties sur-
mounted in such a feat; but she did give him
credit secretly for turning about face and be-
having far more decently than she could ever
have believed possible. She had no conception
of his mental torture at the time, but if he kept
on doing well, she privately intended to inform
Susanna and at least give her a chance of try-
ing him again, if absence had diminished her
sense of injury. One thing that she did not
know was that John was on the eve of losing
his partnership. When Jack had said that his
father was not going back to the store the next
week, she thought it meant simply a vacation.
Divided hearts, broken vows, ruined lives —
she could bear the sight of these with consider-
able philosophy, but a lost income was a very
different, a very tangible thing. She almost
lost her breath when her brother knocked the

BROTHER AND SISTER

ashes from his meerschaum and curtly told'
her of the proposed change in his business rela-
tions.

"I don't know what I shall do yet," he said,
"whether I shall set up for myself in a small
way or take a position in another concern —
that is, if I can get one — my stock of popular-
ity seems to be pretty low just now in Famham.
I'd move away to-morrow and cut the whole
gossipy, deceitful, hypocritical lot of 'em if
I was n't afraid of closing the house and so
losing Susanna, if she should ever feel like
coming back to us."

These words and the thought back of them
were too much for John's self-control. The
darkness helped him and his need of comfort
was abject. Suddenly he burst out, "Oh,
Louisa, for heaven's sake, give me a little
crumb of comfort, if you have any! How can
you stand like a stone all these months and see
a man suflfering as I have suffered, without
giving him a word.-*"

SUSANNA AND SUE

"You brought it on yourself," said Louisa,
'in self -exculpation.

"Does that make it any easier to bear?"
cried John. "Don't you suppose I remember
it every hour, and curse myself the more ? You
know perfectly well that I'm a diflferent man
to-day. I don't know what made me change;
it was as if something had been injected into
my blood that turned me against everything
I had liked best before. I hate the sight of the
men and the women I used to go with, not be-
cause they are any worse, but because they re-
mind me of what I have lost. I Jiave reached
the point now where I have got to have news
of Susanna or go and shoot myself."

"That would be about the only piece of
foolishness you haven't committed already!"
replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would
have made any man let go of the trigger in case
he had gone so far as to begin pulling it.

"Where is she?" John went on, without
anger at her sarcasm, "Where is she, how is

was at nrst, does she ever speak
of coming back ? — Tell me something, tell me
anything. I will know something. I say I
wiUI"

Louisa's calm demeanor began to show a little
agitation, for she was not used to the sight of
emotion.

"I can't tell you where Susanna is, for I
made her a solemn promise I would n't unless
you or Jack were in danger of some kind; but
I don't mind telling you this much, that she 's
well and in the safest kind of a shelter, for
she's been living from the first in a Shaker
Settlement."

"Shaker Settlement!" cried John, starting
up from his seat on the steps. "What's that?
I know Shaker egg-beaters and garden-seeds
and rocking-chairs and — oh, yes, I remember
their religion's against marriage. That's the
worst thing you could have told me ; that ends
all hope ; if they once get hold of a woman like

SUSANNA AND SUE

Susanna, they'll never let go of her; if they'
don't believe in a woman's marrying a good
man, they'd never let her go back to a bad one.
Oh, if I had only known this before; if only
you'd told me, Louisa, perhaps I could have
done something. Maybe they take vows or
sign contracts, and so I have lost her alto-
gether."

"I don't know much about their beliefs, and
Susanna never explained them," returned
Louisa, nervously, "but now that you've got
something to offer her, why don't you write and
ask her to come back to you ? I '11 send your
letter to her."

"I don't dare, Louisa, I don't. dare," groaned
John, leaning his head against one of the pil-
lars of the porch. "I can't tell you the fear I
have of Susanna after the way I've neglected
her this last year. If she should come in at the
gate this minute, I could n't meet her eyes ; if
you'd read the letter she left m^, you'd feel the
same way. I deserved it, to the last word, but

BROTHER AND SISTER

oh, it was like so many separate strokes of
lightning, and every one of them burned. It
was nothing but the truth, but it was cut in
with a sharp sword. Unless she should come
back to me of her own accord, and she never
will, I have n't got the courage to ask her ; just
have n't got the courage, that's all there is to
say about it." And here John buried his head
in his hands.

A very queer thing happened to Louisa
Banks at this moment. A half-second before
she would have murmured : —

"This rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!"

when all at once, and without warning, a
strange something occurred in the organ she
had always regarded — and her opinion had
never been questioned — as a good, tough,
love-tight heart. First there was a flutter and
a tremor running all along her spine ; then her
eyes filled ; then a lump rose in her throat and
choked her ; then words trembled on her tongue

SUSANNA AND 'SUE

and refused to be uttered ; then something
like a bird — could it have been the highly
respectable good-as-new heart ? — throbbed
under her black silk Sunday waist; then she
grew like wax from the crown of her head to
the soles of her feet ; then in a twinkling, and
so unconsciously as to be unashamed of it,
she became a sister. You have seen a gray No-
vember morning melt into an 'Indian summer
noon? Louisa Banks was like that, when, at
the sight of a man in sore trouble, sympathy
was born in her to soften the rockiness of her
original make-up.

"There, there, John, don't be so down-
hearted," she stammered, drawing her chair
closer and putting her hand on his shoulder.
"We'll bring it round right, you see if we don't.
You 've done the most yourself already, for I 'm
proud of the way you've acted, stiffening right
up like an honest man and showing you 've got
some good sensible Hathaway stuff in you,
after all, and ain't ashamed to turn your back

BROTHER AND SISTER

on your evil ways. Susanna ain't one to refuse
forgiveness."

" She forgave for a long time, but she refused
at last. Why should she change now.''" John
asked.

" You remember she has n't heard a single
word from you, nor about you, in that out-of-
the-way place where she's been living," said
Louisa, consolingly. "She thihks you're the
same as you were, or worse, maybe. Perhaps
she 's waiting for you to make some sign
through me, for she don't know that you care
anything about her, or are pining to have her
back."

" Such a woman as Susanna must know bet-
ter than that!" cried John. "She ought to
know that when a man got used to living with
anybody like her, he could never endure any
other kind."

"How should she know all that.'' Jack's
been writing to her and telling her the news for
the last few weeks, though I have n't said a

SUSANNA AND SUE

' word about you because I did n't know how
long your reformation was going to hold out;
but I won't let the grass grow under my feet
now, till I tell her just how things stand!"

"You're a good woman, Louisa; I don't see
why I never noticed it before."

"It 's because I 've been concealing my
goodness too much. Stay here with me to-
night and don't go back to brood in that dis-
mal, forsaken house, We'll see how Jack is in
the morning, and if he's all right, take him
along with you, so's to be all there together if
Susanna comes back this week, as I kind of
hope she will. Make Ellen have the house all
nice and cheerful from top to bottom, with a
good supper ready to put on the table the night
she comes. You'd better pick your asters and
take 'em in for the parlor, then I'll cut the
chrysanthemums for you in the middle of the
week. The day she comes I'll happen in, and
stay to dinner if you find it's going to be mor-
tifying for you ; but if everything is as I expect

BROTHER AND SISTER

it will be, and the way Susanna always "did
have things, I'll make for home and leave you
to yourselves. Susanna ain't one to nag and
hector and triumph over a mjan when he 's
repented."

John hugged Louisa, pepper-and-salt shawl,
black rigolette, and all, when she finished this
unprecedented speech; and when he went to
sleep that night in the old north chamber, the
one he and Louisa had been born in, the one
his father and mother had died in, it was with
a little smile of hope on his lips.

"Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be!"

These were the last words that crossed his
waking thoughts.

Before Louisa went to her own bed, she
wrote one of her brief and characteristic epis-
tles to Susanna, but it did not reach her, for
the "hills of home" had called John's wife so
insistently on that Sunday, that the next day
found her on her way back- to Famham,

SUSANNA AND SUE

Dear Susanna [so the letter read], — \
There's a new man in your house at Farn-
ham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's
made all over and it was high time. I say it's
the hand of God ! He won't own up that it is,
but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quar-
reling, though I don't like to see a man get
religion and deny it, for all the world like Peter
in the New Testament. If you have n't used
up the last one of your seventy- times-sevens, I
think you'd better come back and forgive your
husband. If you don't, you'd better send for
your son, I'm willing to bear the burdens the
Lord intends specially for me, but Jack be-
longs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he
is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if he -i* a
Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that
ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the
bung-hole till he grows up; but of course I'm
not used to children's ways.

Be as easy with John at first as you can. I
know you'll say / never was with my husband,

BKOTHER AND SISTER

but he was dififereut. He got to like a bracing^
treatment, Adiai did. Many's the time he said
to me, " Louisa, when you make up our minds,
I'm always contented." But John is n't made
that way. He's a changed man; now, what
we've got to do is to keep him changed. He
does n't bear you any grudge for leaving him,
so he won't reproach you.

Hoping to see you before long, I am.
Yours as usual,

Louisa Banks.

XI

ON the Saturday evening before the yearly
Day of Sacrifice the spiritual heads of
each Shaker family call upon all the Believers
to enter heartily next day into the humiliations
and blessings of open confession.

The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and sol-
emn household. Footfalls are hushed, the chil-
dren's chatter is stilled, and all go to the morn-
ing meal in silence. There is a strange quiet,
but it is not sadness ; it is a hush, as when in
Israel's camp the silver trumpets sounded and
the people stayed in their tents. "Then,"
Elder Gray explained to Susanna, " a summons
comes to each Believer, for all have been

SUSANNA AND SUE

searching the heart and scanning the life of the
months past. Softly the one called goes to the
door of the one appointed by the Divine Spirit,
the human representative who is to receive the
gift of the burdened soul. Woman confesses to
woman, man to man ; it is the open door that
leads to God."

Susanna lifted Eldress Abby's latch and
stood in her strong, patient presence ; then all
at once she knelt impulsively and looked up
into her serene eyes.

"Do you come as a Believer, Susanna?"
tremblingly asked the Eldress.^

"No, Eldress Abby. I come as a child of the
world who wants to go back to her duty, and
hopes to do it better than she ever did before.
She ought to be able to, because you have
chastened her pride, taught her the lesson of
patience, strengthened her will, purified her
spirit, and cleansed her soul from bitterness
and wrath. I waited till afternoon when all the
confessions were over. May I speak now?"

THE OPEN DOOR

Eldress Abby bowed, but she looked weak
and stricken and old.

"I had something you would have called a
vision last night, but I think of it as a dream,
and I know just what led to it. You told me
Polly Reed's story, and the little quail bird had
such a charm for Sue that I've repeated it to
her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to
see a mother quail with a little one beside her.
The two were always together, happily flying
or hopping about under the trees; but every
now and then I heard a sad little note, as of a
deserted bird somewhere in the wood. I walked
a short distance, and parting the branches,
saw on the open ground another parent bird
and a young one by its side darting hither and
thither, as if lost; they seemed to be restlessly
searching for something, and always they ut-
tered the soft, sad note, as if the nest had disap-
peared and they had been parted from the little
flock. Of course my brain had changed the
very meaning of the Shaker story and trans-

SUSANNA AND SUE

lated it Into different terms, but when I woke
this morning, I could think of nothing but my
Jiusband and my boy. The two of them seemed
to me to be needing me, searching for me in the
dangerous open country, while I was hidden
away in the safe shelter of the wood — I and
the other little quail bird I had taken out of
the nest."

"Do yoii think you could persuade your hus-
band to unite with us?" asked Abby, wiping
her eyes.

The tension of the situation was tdo tightly
drawn for mirth, or Susanna could have
smiled, but she answered soberly, " No ; if John
could develop the best in himself, he could be
a good husband and father, a good neighbor
and citizen, and an upright business man, but
never a Shaker."

" Did n't he insult your wifely honor and dis-
grace your home.'*"

"Yes, in the last few weeks before I left him.
AH his earlier offenses were more against him-

many a
time, but I am not certain it was the seventy
times seven that the Bible bids us. I am not
free from blame myself. I was hard the last
year, for I had lost hope and my pride was
trailing in the dust. I left him a bitter letter,
one without any love or hope or faith in it, just
because at the moment I believed I ought, once
in my life, to let him know how I felt toward
him."

"How can you go back and live under his
roof with that feeling.'' It's degradation."

"It has changed. I was morbid then, and so
wounded and weak that I cpuld not fight any
longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck
has come back, and my strength. I've learned
a good deal here about casting out my own
devils ; now I am going home and help him to
cast out his. Perhaps he won't be there; per-
haps he does n't want me, though when he was
his very best self he loved me dearly ; but that
was long, long ago!" sighed Susanna, drearily.

SUSANNA AND SUE

" Oh, this thing the world's people call love ! "
groaned Abby.

"There is love and love, even in the world
outside; for if it is Adam's world it is God's,
too, Abby ! The love I gave my husband was
good, I think, but it failed somewhere, and I
am going back to try again. I -am not any too
happy in leaving you and taking up, perhaps,
heavier burdens than those from which I es-
caped."

"Night after night I've prayed to be the
means of leading you to the celestial life," said
the Eldress, "but my plaint was not worthy to
be heard. Oh, that God would increase our
numbers and so revive our drooping faith ! We
work, we struggle, we sacrifice, we pray, we
defy the world and deny the flesh, yet we fail
to gather in Believers."

"Don't s,ay you 've failed, dear, dear Abby ! "
cried Susanna, pressing the Eldress's work-
stained hands to her lips. "God speaks to you
in one voice, to me in another. Does it matter

THE OPEN DOOR

I so much as long as we both hear Him ? Surely
'it's the hearing and the obeying that counts
most ! Wish me well, dear friend, and help me
to say good-by to the Elder."

The two women found Elder Gray in the
office, and Abby, still unresigned, laid Su-
sanna's case before him.

"The Great Architect has heed of many
kinds of workmen in His building," said the
Elder. "There are those who are willing to
put aside the ties of flesh for the kingdom of
heaven's sake; 'he that is able to receive it,
let him receive it!'"

"There may also be those who are willing to
take up the ties of the flesh for the kingdom of
heaven's sake," answered Susanna, gently, but
with a certain courage.

Her face glowed with emotion, her eyes
shone, her lips were parted. It was a new
thought. Abby and Daniel gazed at her for a
moment without speaking, then Daniel said :
"It's a terrible cross to some of the Brethren

SUSANNA AND SUE

and Sisters to live here outside of the world, i
but maybe it's more of a cross for such as you
to live in it, under such conditions as have sur-
rounded you of late years. To pursue good
and resist evil, to bear your cross cheerfully
and to grow in grace and knowledge of truth
while you're bearing it — that's the lesson of
life, I suppose. If you find you can't learn it
outside, come back to us, Susanna."

"I will," she promised, "and no words can
speak my gratitude for what you have all done
for me. Many a time it will come back to me
and keep me from faltering."

She looked back at him from the open door-
way, timidly.

"Don't forget us, Sue and me, altogether,"
she said, her eyes filling with tears. " Come to
Farnham, if you will, and see if I am a credit
to Shaker teaching ! I shall never be here again,
perhaps, and somehow it seems to me as if you.
Elder Gray, with your education and your gifts,
ought to be leading a larger life than this."

THE OPEN DOOR

"I've hunted in the wild Maine forests, ini
my young days; I've speared salmon in her
rivers and shot rapids in a birch-bark canoe,"
said the Elder, looking up from the pine table
that served as a desk. "I've been before the
mast and seen strange countries; I've fought
Indians; I've faced perils on land and sea;
but this Shaker life is the greatest adventure
of all!"

"Adventure?" echoed Susanna, uncompre-
hendingly.

"Adventure !" repeated the Elder, smiling at
his own thoughts. "Whether I fail, or whether
I succeed, it's a splendid adventure in ethics."

Abby and Daniel looked at each other when
Susanna passed out of the office door.

" ' They went out from us, but they were not
of us ; for if they had been of "us, they would
have continued with us,' " he quoted quietly.

Abby wiped her eyes with her apron. "It's
a hard road to travel sometimes, Daniel!"
she said.

SUSANNA AND SUE

" Yee; but think where it leads, Al
lere it leads ! You're not going to com^

of dust when you 're treading the King's High

way!"

, think

am

Susanna left the office with a drooping head,
knowing the sadness she had left behind.
Brother Ansel sat under the trees near by.
and his shrewd eye perceived the drift of com-
ing events.

" Well, Susanna," he drawled, " you 're goin'
to leave us, like most o' the other 'jiners.' I
can see that with one eye shut."

"Yes," she replied, with a half smile; "but
you see, Ansel,I'jined' John Hathaway before
I knew anything about Shaker doctrines."

"Yee; but what's to prevent your on-jinin'
him ? They used to tie up married folks in the
old times so 't they could n't move an inch.
When they read the constitution and by-laws
over 'em they used to put in ' till death do us
part.' That's the way my father was hitched

THE OPEN DOOR

I to his three wives, but death did 'em part —
fortunately for him!"

'"Till death us do part' is still in the mar-
riage service," Susanna said, "and I think of
it very often."

"I want to know if that's there yit!" ex-
claimed Ansel, with apparent surprise; "I
thought they must be leavin' it out, there's
so much on-jinin' nowadays ! Well, accordin'
to my notions, if there is anything wuss 'n
marriage, it's hevin' it hold till death, for then
men-folks don't git any chance of a speritual
life till afterwards. They certainly don't when
they're being dragged down by women-folks
an' young ones."

"I think the lasting part Of the bargain
makes it all the more solemn," Susanna argued.

"Oh, yes, it's solemn enough, but so's a
prayer meetin', an' consid'able more ele-
vatin' " ; and here Ansel regarded the surround-
ing scenery with frowning disapproval, as if it
left much to be desired.

SUSANNA AND SUE

"Don't you think that there are any agree-'
able and pleasant women, Ansel?" ventured
Susanna.

"Land, yes ; heaps of 'em ; but they all wear
Shaker bunnits!"

"I suppose you know more about the women
in the outside world than most of the Brothers,
on account of traveling so much?"

"I guess anybody 't drives a seed-cart or
peddles stuff along the road knows enough o'
women to keep clear of 'em. They'll come
out the kitchen door, choose their papers o'
seasonin' an' bottles o' flavorin', worry you
'bout the price an' take the aidge off every
dime, make up an' then onmake their minds
'bout what they want, ask if it's pure, an'
when by good luck you git yojir cart out o'
the yard, they come runnin' along the road
after ye to git ye to swop a bottle o' vanilla
for some spruce gum an' give 'em back the
change."

Susanna could not help smiling at Ansel's

THE OPEN DOOR

^arraignment of her sex. "Do you think they
' follow you for the pleasure of shopping, or the
pleasure of your conversation, Ansel?" she
asked slyly.

" A little o' both, mebbe ; though the plea-
sure 's all on their side," returned the unchiv-
alrous Ansel. "But take them same women,
cut their hair close to their heads (there's a
heap o' foolishness in hair, somehow), purge
'em o' their vanity, so they won't be lookin'
in the glass all the time, make 'em depend on
one another for sassiety, so they won't crave
no conversation with men-folks, an' you git
an article that's 'bout as good and 'bout as
stiddy as a man!"

" You never seem to remember that men are
just as dangerous to women's happiness and
goodness as women are to men's," said Su-
sanna, courageously.

"It don't seem so to me! Never see a man,
hardly, that could stick to the straight an'
narrer if a woman wanted him to go the other

SUSANNA AND SUE

'way. Weak an' unstable as water, men-folks
are, an' women are pow'ful strong."

"Have your own way, Ansel! I'm going
back to the world, but no man shall ever say
I hindered him from being good. You'll see
women clearer in another world."

"There'll be precious few of 'em to see!"
retorted Ansel. "You're about the best o' the
lot, but even you have a kind of a managin'
way with ye, besides fillin' us all full o' false
hopes that we'd gathered in a useful Believer,
one cal'lated to spread the doctrines o' Mother
Ann!"

"I know, I know, Ansel, and oh, how sorry
I am ! You would never believe how I long
to stay and help you, never believe how much
you have helped me ! Good-by, Ansel ; you 've
made me smile when my heart was breaking.
I shan't forget you !"

THE HILLS OF HOME

XII

SUSANNA had found Stie in the upper
chamber at the Office Building, and be-
gan to make the simple' preparations for her
homeward journey.

It was the very hour when John Hathaway
was saying : —

"Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be."

Sue interfered Ivith the packing somewhat by
darting to and fro, bringing her mother sacred
souvenirs given her by the Shaker sisters and
the children — needle-books, pin-balls, thim-
ble-cases, packets of flower-seeds, polished
pebbles, bottles of flavoring extract.

Aunt Louisa — the needle-book, 'cause she's
so useful. Oh, I'm glad we're going home,
Mardie, though I do love it here, and I was
most ready to be a truly Shaker. It's kind of
pityish to have your hair shingled and your
stacking half-knitted and know how to say
'Yee' and then have it all wasted."

Susanna dropped a tear on the dress she
was folding. The child was going home, as she
had come away from it, gay, irresponsible, and
merry; it was only the mothers who hoped
and feared and dreaded.

The very universe was working toward Su-
sanna's desire at that moment, but she was all
unaware of the happiness that lay so near. She
could not see the freshness of the house in
Farnham, the new bits of furniture here and
there; the autumn leaves in her own bed-
room; her work-table full of the records of
John's sorrowful summer; Jack handsomer

THE HILLS OF HOME

and taller, and softer, also, in his welcoming
mood; Ellen rosy and excited. She did not
know that Joel Atterbury had said to John
that day, "I take it all back, old man, and
I hope you'll stay on in the firm!" nor that
Aunt Louisa, who was putting stiff, short-
stemmed chrysanthemums in cups and tum-
blers here and there through the house, was
much more flexible and human than was
natural to her; nor that John, alternating
between hope and despair, was forever hum-
ming : —

"Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be;
Higher are the hills of home,
Bluer is the sea!"

It is often so. They who go weeping to
look for the dead body of a sorrow, find a vision
of angels where the body has lain.

" I hope Fardie '11 be glad to see us and Ellen
will have gingerbread," Sue chattered; then,
pausing at the window, she added, "I 'm

cause
them, don't you, Mardie?"

"We are leaving the Shaker hills, but we
are going to the hills of home," her mother
answered cheerily. "Don't you remember the
Famham hills, dear?"

"Yes, I remember," and Sue looked
thoughtful ; " they were farther off and covered
with woods ; these are smooth and gentle. And
we shall miss the lake, Mardie.*'

"Yes; but we can look at the blue sea from
your bedroom window. Sue!"

"And we'll tell Fardie about Polly Reed
and the little quail bird, won't we?"

" Yes ; but he and Jack will have a great deal
to say to us, and we must n't talk all the time
about the dear, kind Shakers, you know!"

"You're all 'buts,' Mardie!" at which Su-
sanna smiled through her tears.

Twilight deepened into dusk, and dusk into
dark, and then the moon rose over the poplar
trees outside the window where Susanna and

THE HILLS OF HOME

Sue were sleeping. The Shaker Brethren and
Sisters were resting serenely after their day of
confession. It was the aged Tabitha's last
Sabbath on earth, but had she known, it would
have made no difference; if ever a soul was
ready for heaven, it was Tabitha's.

There was an Irish family at, the foot of the
long hill that lay between the Settlement and
the village of Albion ; father, mother, and chil-
dren had prayed to the Virgin before they went
to bed; and the gray-haired minister in the
low-roofed parsonage was writing his commun-
ion sermon on a text sacred to the orthodox
Christian world. The same moon shone over
all, and over millions of others worshiping
strange idols and holding strange beliefs in
strange far lands, yet none of them owned the
whole of heaven ; for as Elder Gray said, "It is
a big place and belongs to God."

Susanna Hathaway went back to John
thinking it her plain duty, and to me it seems
beautiful that she found waiting for her at the

SUSANNA AND SUE

journey's end a new love that was better than '
the old; found a husband to whom she could
say in that first sacred hour when they were
alone together, "Never mind, John! Let's
forget, and begin all over again."

When Susanna and Sue alighted at the little
railway station at Farnham, and started to
walk through the narrow streets that led to the
suburbs, the mother's heart beat more and
more tumultuously as she realized that the
issues of four lives would be settled before
nightfall.

Little did Sue reck of life issues, skipping
like a young roe from one side of the road to
the other. "There are the hills, not a bit
changed, Mardie!" she cried; "and the sea is
just where it was ! . . . Here's the house with
the parrot, do you remember ? Now the place
where the dog barks and snarls is coming next.
. . . P'raps he'll be dead . . . or p'raps he'll
be nicer. . , . Keep close to me till we get

THE HILLS OF HOME

past the gate. . . . He did n't come out, so
p'raps he is dead or gone a-visiting. . . .
There's that 'specially lazy cow that's always
lying down in the Buxtons' field. ... I don't
b'lieve she's moved since we came away. . . .
Do you s'pose she stands up to be milked,
Mardie ? There 's the old bridge over the
brook, just the same, only the woodbine's
red. . . . There's . . . There's ... Oh,
Mardie, look, look! ... I do b'lieve it's our
Jacky!"

Sue flew over the ground like a swallow,
calling " Jack-y! Jack-y! it's me and Mardie
come home!"

Jack extricated himself from his sister's
strangling hug and settled his collar. "I'm
awful glad to see you, Sukey," he said, "but
I'm getting too big to be kissed. Besides,
my pockets are full of angleworms and fish-
hooks."

"Are you too big to be kissed even by
mother.?" called Susanna, hurrying to her

SUSANNA AND SUE

boy, who submitted to her embrace with bet-
ter grace. "O Jack, Jack! say you're glad
to see mother ! Say it, say it^ I can't wait,
Jack!"

" Course I'm glad! why wouldn't I be? I
tell you I'm tired of Aunt Louisa, though she's
easier than she was. Time and again I 've
packed my lunch basket and started to run
away, but I always made it a picnic and went
back again, thinking they 'd make such a row
over me."

"Aunt Louisa is always kind when you 're
obedient," Susanna urged.

"She ain't so stiff as she was. Ellen is real
worried about her and thinks she's losing her
strength, she's so easy to get along with."

"How's . . . father . . . ?"

"Better 'n he was."

"Hasn't he been well?"

"Not so very; always quiet and won't eat,
nor play, nor anything. I'm home with him
since Sunday."

THE HILLS OF HOME

"What is the matter with your clothes?"
asked Susanna, casting a maternal eye over
him while she pulled him down here and up
there, with anxious disapproving glances.
"You look so patched, and wrinkled, and
grubby."

"Aunt Louisa and father make me keep my
best to put on for you, if you should come. I
clean up and dress every afternoon at train
time, only I forgot to-day and came fishing."

"It's too cold to fish, sonny."

"It ain't too cold to fish, but it's too cold
for 'em to bite," corrected Jack.

"Why were you expecting us just now.'*"
asked Susanna. "I didn't .write because,
because, I thought . . . perhaps . . . it would
be better to surprise you."

"Father's expecting you every day, not just
this one," said Jack.

Susanna sank down on a stone at the end of
the bridge, and leaning her head against the
railing, burst into tears. In that moment the

SUSANNA AND SUE

worst of her fears rolled away from her heart
like the stone from the mouth of a sepulchre.
If her husband had looked for her return, he
must have missed her, regretted her, needed
her, just a little. His disposition was sweet,
even if it were thoughtless, and he might not
meet her with reproaches after all. There
might not be the cold greeting she had often
feared — " Well, you've concluded to come back,
have you? It was about time ! " If only John
were a little penitent, a little anxious to meet
her on some common ground, she felt her task
would be an easier one.

"Have you got a pain, Mardie ? " cried Sue,
anxiously bending over her mother.

"No, dear," she answered, smiling through
her tears and stretching a hand to both chil-
dren to help her to her feet. "No, dear, I've
lost one!"

"I cry when anything aches, not when it
stops," remarked Jack, as the three started
again on their walk. — "Say, Sukey, you look

THE HILLS

bigger and fatter than you did when you went "
away, ^nd you've got short curls 'stead of
long ones. — Do you see how J've grown ? —
Two inches!"

"I'm inches and inches bigger and taller,"
Sue boasted, standing on tiptoe and stretching
herself proudly. "And I can knit, and pull
maple candy, and say Yee, and sing *0
Virgin Church, how great thy light.'"

"Pooh," said Jack, "I causing 'A sailor's
life 's the life for me, Yo ho, yo ho ! ' Step along
faster, mummy dear ; it 's 'most supper time.
Aunt Louisa won't scold if you're with me.
There's the house, see. -* Father '11 be working
in the garden covering up the asters, so they
won't freeze before you come."

"There is no garden. Jack. What do you
mean.? "

"Wait till you see if there's no garden!
Hurrah! there's father at the window, side of
Aunt Louisa. Won't he be pleased I met you
halfway and brought you home!"

SUSANNA AND SUE

Oh ! it was beautiful, the autumn twilight,
the smoke of her own hearthside rising through
the brick chimneys! She thought she had
left the way of peace behind her, but no, the
way of peace was here, where her duty was,
and her husband and children.

The sea was deep blue ; the home hills rolled
softly along the horizon; the little gate that
Susanna had closed behind her in anger and
misery stood wide open ; shrubs, borders,
young hedge-rows, beds of late autumn flowers
greeted her eyes and touched her heart. A
foot sounded on the threshold ; the home door
opened and smiled a greeting ; and then a voice
choked with feeling, glad with Welcome, called
her name.

Light-footed Sue ran with a cry of joy into
her father's outstretched arms, and then leap-
ing down darted to Ellen, chattering like a
magpie. Husband and wife looked at each
other for one quivering moment, and then
clasped each other close.

THE HILLS OF HOME

"Forgive! O Susanna, forgive!"
John's eyes and lips and arms made mute
appeals, and it was then Susanna said, "Never
mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over
again!"

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