object of his attention he would soon forget, or his feelings would undergo a change a mere transfer of the same feeling for a new object. This had occurred so often, he was beginning to think he had a large capacity for loving many women, or that the feeling he had experienced was short of love. This feeling while in Sarah's society, or in her absence, was a new sensation. He could not forget her while away, and could not transfer that feeling to any other woman. She was to his mind. surrounded by that virginal purity that chills an unworthy passion and is a maiden's greatest safeguard in the very innocence and blamelessness of budding maidenhood.

Neither thought of the graver problems of life the difference of station, of creed, or of education-and why should such material things concern them? Why should they not beguile the blissful hours of the present without a thought of the morrow? This pleasant, happy time was only for a short space to be equally enjoyed to the fullest, and when Colonel Johnson went back to his many duties in the Colony of New York, and she to her accustomed ones as before with only the difference of an occasional happy dream to remind them of the reality. But with the thought of parting, each received a shock or pang of pain as if they had been struck a blow with a sharp instrument, like as if a painful wound had been inflicted just at the moment that thought of parting came to their minds.

Colonel Johnson often found himself, when in Sarah's presence, letting his eyes linger with that

subdued tenderness that belongs to the first moments of hopeful love with a dawning consciousness of the great depth of feeling centered in his heart.

At these moments Sarah did not turn away but the mantling of cheek and brow and dropping of eyelids, evidences of a new feeling aroused, which contented Colonel Johnson meeting and blending with a sweet emotion within his own breast. Not a word was spoken-his heart was too full to speak and he thought by some subtle telepathic process that Sarah knew all that was in it. It was with him a time that a man can least forget in after life; the time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something, a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or eyelid, a sudden start or embarrassment, or a loss for a word, he has roused a responsive chord in her nature, thrilling them both by the knowledge, indefinite though it may be, of deep mutual love. The sign is slight, he could describe it to no one. A mere feather touch, a soft gentle zephyr of feeling, yet seems to have changed their whole being; to have merged a deep uneasy yearning into a delicious unconsciousness of everything but the present moment.

But the first glad moments of our first love is a beautiful vision that returns to us to the last and brings with it a feeling intense and special in the sweet recurrent sensations of a sweet odor breached o'er Eden in a far-off hour of happiness.

TH

CHAPTER VII.

Confidences Established

"Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense
And almost made a sin of abstinence,
Yet had his aspect nothing of severe
But such a face as promised him sincere;
Nothing reserved or sullen was to see,
But sweet regard and pleasing sanctity."

-Dryden.

HERE had been gathered together one sabbath morning from the different portions of the town the good people of the flock to listen to the regular preaching of their pastor, Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll. He was just past his allotment of three score and ten, with long hoary locks and venerable aspect, a man of God of other times, a patriarchal teacher not caring much for the balanced nicety of phrase, but giving his flock wholesome food in sound doctrine and plain speech with that reverential holiness that comes with maturity, much like the mellowness of rich old wine with none of the fermentation and bitterness of sectarian controversy. The aroma of the vineyard of Christ still clinging about him, his prayers had that directness of individual necessity, as well as to public welfare, to the keen insight into the momentous questions of political events of the times and the need of quiet deliberation on the part of the public. His flock comprising the essence of Congregationalism as proposed by Davenport and Hooker; in other words, they held that the right to choose and settle their own minister, discipline their own members, and to