"Nelly," the large, bearded young man spoke, tenderly, “we have only one inspiration, and that is love."

She accepted his hand, but her soul was wayward, and she said to Light Pittson when they walked aside:

"I have asked him, and been refused. Now I can go by myself."

Abel Quantrell asked Luther Bosler all about the effect of John Brown's raid in mountain Maryland, and what vote the Republican candidate would draw there the next autumn, saying that Hannah Ritner, a trusted friend of liberty, had recommended Luther as a firm and just man. Luther heard, thoughtfully, until the fierce spirit of the old man suggested war as a possibility, and sought to incite Luther to resistance.

“Abel Quantrell,” Luther spoke at last, "there you go too far, like te disciple of our Lord, who drew his sword and cut off te highpriest's ear; and ever since St. Peter's spirit has been in te Christian church, till Christ is everywhere in sound and symbol, and nowhere in te soul. We Baptists had our St. Peter, too, in John of Leyden, who took a city like John Brown, and prought upon his brethren generations of persecution. But Menno Simons, a former priest of Rome, died peaceful in his cabbage-garden with thousands thirsting for his plood, pecause he would not meet evil with evil. He is te father of all te non-resistants, Quakers and Baptists, and all rebukers of man-holding was us."

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te first of

'Sho, sho! Old Brown has cut off the high-priest's ear this time, and the priest must needs hear everything. Go preach to your people that Christ is for liberty."

Katy came in at this place, and Abel Quantrell looked at her with steady curiosity, ending with something like approval.

"No wonder Lloyd fell captive to your eyes, young plover; I could have taken them once to my dreams, too. Are you a Dunker, like Brother Luther here?”

"I promised to be, mister."

"You do not believe in rebellion, then, but obey the laws and seek the spirit of peace and submission?"

"I want to pe happy," said Katy, "and to have God bless me and

"

"And Lloyd.

You are a child yet. There is time enough for affection to try itself. Your brother will tell you that what I am to say is right."

He came to her and sat by her side, and put his bleached hand upon her head, and, turning back the small forehead, her radiant eyes, that would be his daughter's, looked at him with the dew of prayer in them.

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Are you afraid of me, Kate?"

"No. But you are going to preak my heart."

"Kiss me forgiveness before I do."

She raised her chin and kissed him, and suddenly a thought, like coincidence, rushed through her ardent brain :

"God gif me this soul," she cried aloud, "and let it feed with me of thy supper! "

"Amen, shweshter!" from Luther Bosler.

Her arms were around Abel Quantrell with all the strength and affection she showed his son that love-feast Sunday, and tender kisses thawed his frosty lips. The magnetism of life and childhood entered the cold portals where once was the throne-room of a conqueror's mind. He could not arrest her attack; it came like Indian summer and its thunderstorm upon the fading head of winter. Luther Bosler looked on with the sensibility of brother and of priest. "Gif back that ring where it pelongs," sighed Katy. God will bless you, old man, and, till you love somepody, he never will."

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"All hearts in all places under the blessed light of youth say it, each in its own language,' ,'"* the old man repeated and explained. Had I the merry devil's trick to be young Faust again, my son would wonder at my gallantry! You can not kiss, my child, the warm blood back where it has flowed, nor by a ring revive the golden passion of my prime. What justice is a wasted frame, presented at the altar, and love's signet, falsified by a ceremony no nuptials will attend! Sho, sho! how few there be who work for the bettering of this world! how many work to people it!"

"Nothing," said Luther, "can be more acceptable to our Creator than te sight of a well-replenished earth. If he preferred Abel's sacrifice of a lamb's life more than te insensible fruits of Cain, will he not approve te offering of a human life prought forth in all te piety of love and te sacrifice of pain?"

"That has been my lamb upon the altar. I have rendered it," urged Abel Quantrell. "I will not be a hollow hypocrite, and raise another altar to the world.”

* Goethe.

Mister," said Katy, "you seem to pe fighting love away. I know you love something, pecause it troubles you. Te ring is not love, I know, but it is comfortable to have, and to look at it and say, 'It's mine.' What made you gif my ring of love, that made me so happy, to Hannah Ritner? She told me I must git a ring and nefer lose it, and, when I lost it, always hunt it back."

"She never

"You can lie, I see," the old man said, austerely. was so weak—to hunger for what she never was refused."

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'I won't let you hate me," Katy cried; you know I don't tell lies, mister. Look at me! And this minute I would rather die and pe took home to my old fader dead than to lie apout my love and Lloyd. He loved me pefore we efer thought of any ring. Te Lord put te ring upon his jacket, and he found it there, and it was his mother's. When he gif it to me he didn't love me more than we both loved a'ready, but it made me happier."

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'Dunce!" said Abel Quantrell. “Why?”

Pecause-pecause—”

"Cube it! Because what?"

Katy blushed, and then looked up again, all beaming:

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Pecause, mister, his love respected me, and wasn't going to hurt me.

“How could you know that? He meant to cheat you."

"Not with his mother's ring-that was too holy. If his mother had nefer had a wedding-ring, he might not haf cared."

Abel Quantrell was now excited, and the blood that would not start to beauty's caresses, ran to his temples at the stern alarum of his intellectual indignations. He rose and placed his wrinkled hand in the scarce whiter folds of his bosom, and paced the room in the spirited tread of that pagan who defied the lightnings; yet Luther Bosler saw that his face was not now spiritually refined, and that the cane on which his lame foot relieved its burden nearly trembled in his grasp.

"I will witness before every God," he said, "how false that imputation is that a child of love is lawless to his mother's sex, and only to be humanized by form and hypocrisy! The mighty races of the bond and poor are thus to be tainted by the public opinion which refused them marriage, and the wedding-ring is to be a higher test of love and interest than the fond homage of separated hearts and offspring noble as the stag!"

As he stopped and stood, with erect head and trembling nostrils,

a magnetism as of some old, gallant husband to his young bride, flowed toward the Dunker girl. Katy went up to him with her nature aroused by his words:

"Yes," she said, "I think I know what you mean-that if people lose te wedding-ring, God will still let love make tem happy. I love your Lloyd. I can try to forget him, but God will teach me."

Abel," Luther Bosler said, reflectively, falling into the simple speech of his sect, "nobody blames te slave-people that can not marry and own their children, any more than them who lived without te knowledge of the law of Christ had to pe judged by it. But all them who knew the law by the law were judged. Te slaves seek decently to pe married. After tey are free, some day te licentiousness got from living without marriage will pe their accusation. Marriage is te sign of a man's respect over te world, and te due of woman, who is judged by her relations with man. It is te tyrant, in his self-love, who refuses te woman te ring, and pleads te tyranny of marriage for refusing it."

The old man looked at Luther's mild brown eyes and shaggy beard. The rage of intellect, still uncurbed, was about to break forth, when he was arrested by the calm yet clerical look of his plain guest, firm as priestly authority:

"I am a pastor of te Tunkers," Luther said; "I speak God's will and not man's. So much in you is good, so much is fierce and troubled like te storm, that I claim te privilege of a guest and of te Holy Spirit, to pray with you, my brother!"

Katy reached up to Abel Quantrell and kissed him fervently, saying:

He hardly knew how to yield, yet he was yielding. He had but little experience in kneeling, yet he was kneeling. To the melting

word of "brother " from Luther Bosler had been added the whisper of “father" from the Dunker girl.

It was a Dunker girl, perchance, the old man once had loved; a Dunker priest he might have been married by. Who knew but Abel Quantrell ?

The prayer flowed over him like a waft from the hemlocks in the Green Mountains with scents of childhood; like the purl of Pennsylvania brooks, bearing away a hidden scene of love and tenderness. The words he hardly heard; but the chastening spirit in them was balm in his nostrils and well-springs in his heart.

As they arose, others were in the library silently-Edgar Pittson and his daughter, and Nelly Harbaugh, and Lloyd Quantrell.

Katy looked at her lover but did not move, feeling that judgment was suspended over them and the parental law.

Luther Bosler stood among the statesman's books and prints, in his wool coat and rough boots, and long hair and beard; he drew his sister to his heart and looked around upon them all-senator and reformer, son and heir.

"Friends," he proceeded, "we are poor Germans who try to make no trouble. We have as little ampition as we can. Lloyd came a-gunning and stopped with us a bit. We didn't enfy him anything he had—his watch, nor gun, nor fine clothes, nor money— but he and sister fell a-loving. It's not te rule of our church; but love is a sheep that jumps efery fence. Lloyd has a manly, loving nature, and Katy couldn't help hearing what he said, down in her pig child's heart. Her heart-strings are tender yet; and I must take her away pefore tey get sore for life. I am her pastor and her brother. She will do what Lloyd's father temands.-Abel, tell her!"

Lloyd looked worn and wretched. His eyes were turned on Katy, and she looked at him with wo and submission and pity greater than for herself.

"Sho, sho! young sparrows," Abel Quantrell spoke, looking at both like the judge who is to divorce the mismated, “take out the square root of small figures and the surgery is safe. Sixteen and Twenty-two are not fit for life's responsibilities. I have laid on my son the injunction, and he has given me the promise Miss Katy will respect; I know-to wait one year from spring. In that time you are not to communicate with each other! Lloyd has given no attention to ladies, and must look around him and cultivate the sex. You can not cube life blindly."

There was a pause. The sentence had been less severe than Katy expected. The promise was only for a year, and not forever; but Nelly Harbaugh, alert to the subject of woman's equality, spoke

out:

"I suppose Katy is to look around, too. ging up our way."

She doesn't go a-beg

Lloyd grew pale to hear this; but Katy, never taking her eyes from him, cried:

"I wasn't a-begging when Lloyd come first, neither; but I guess