the North Village, where there was a service. It was a plain little
church, with unpainted pews; but the windows looked forth upon a green
mountain-side, and whispers of oaks and pines and river-music crept
in, and the breath of sweet water-lilies, heaped in a great bowl upon
the communion-table of common stained cherry-wood, floated up and
filled the place. The minister, a quiet, gray-haired man, stayed his
foot an instant at that simple altar, before he went up the few steps
to the desk. He had a sermon in his pocket from the text, "The hairs
of your heads are all numbered." He changed it at the moment in his
mind, and, when presently he rose to preach, gave forth, in a tone
touched, through the fresh presence of that reminding beauty, with the
very spontaneousness of the Master's own saying,--"Consider the
lilies." And then he told them of God's momently thought and care.

There were scattered strangers, from various houses, among the simple
rural congregation. Walking home through the pines again, Delight and
Leslie and Dakie Thayne found themselves preceded and followed along
the narrow way. Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman came up and joined them
when the wider openings permitted.

Two persons just in front were commenting upon the sermon.

"Very fair for a country parson," said a tall, elegant-looking man,
whose broad, intellectual brow was touched by dark hair slightly
frosted, and whose lip had the curve that betokens self-reliance and
strong decision,--"very fair. All the better for not flying too high.
Narrow, of course. He seems to think the Almighty has nothing grander
to do than to finger every little cog of the tremendous machinery of
the universe,--that he measures out the ocean of his purposes as we
drop a liquid from a phial. To me it seems belittling the Infinite."