tears, nor slept any, since she heard this news. You know that her mind
has been in a peculiar and unhappy state with regard to religious things
for many years. I was in hopes she might feel free to open her exercises
of mind to the Doctor."

"Perhaps she will feel more freedom with Mary," said the Doctor. "There
is no healing for such troubles except in unconditional submission to
Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. The Lord reigneth, and will at last bring
infinite good out of evil, whether _our_ small portion of existence be
included or not."

After a few moments more of conference, Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor
departed, leaving Mary alone in the house of mourning.


CHAPTER XXIII.

We have said before, what we now repeat, that it is impossible to write
a story of New England life and manners for superficial thought or
shallow feeling. They who would fully understand the springs which moved
the characters with whom we now associate must go down with us to the
very depths.

Never was there a community where the roots of common life shot down so
deeply, and were so intensely grappled around things sublime and
eternal. The founders of it were a body of confessors and martyrs, who
turned their backs on the whole glory of the visible, to found in the
wilderness a republic of which the God of Heaven and Earth should be the
sovereign power. For the first hundred years grew this community, shut
out by a fathomless ocean from the existing world, and divided by an