"When the shadow touches the ninth board, towards the buttery, I shall, and not before ;" and the strong-minded operator dissected another apple, with a firm hand.

carefully wiped her knife, and gathered up the great heap of refuse. “You'd better let Simeon turn them to the hogs; they won't be worth shucks by Monday."

"Well, I've been thinking, and I've about made up my mind. We're not borne

"What ye doin', Walt ―lost anything?" said motherly Aunt Susan.

"No," shaking his brown curls, ominously, "I was just trying to see what nine boards were so nearly connected with Sunday. I thought the ninth might be a 'special dispensation' you know. I wonder now if it would have anything to do with those 'sinner' lines Aunt Prudy used to draw on the board at school!

"Oh! Walt, you're a sad boy," said Uncle Simeon, yet with a little touch of tenderness in his voice. "Here, Charity, take him over to Prudy and make peace."

As the young man went up to her, with profound obeisance, that lady's eyes flashed. She remembered vividly the time when he sat on the benches and she in the schoolmistress' desk. It was Miss Prudy's habit to hold up Scripture doctrine, as she would arithmetical rules. Once she drew a long line on the board, which she said was the path of life. Sinners and saints travelled it alike for a distance; but suddenly with a sharp right-angle the sinners' part branched off to the gates of death. "All very well," said Walter, "only you should make the sinner's path with charcoal, Miss Prudence." For which certainly most saucy speech she never forgave him. But Walter had long ago forgiven her for the fool-scap, and the dunce's bench, and the ruler that electrified him when he kissed pretty Charity in school, to comfort her for missing "almost the last word" in the spelling match. With abounding good nature he turned a laughing face to all the world, one of these incorrigibly sweet souls, whose" milk of human kindness," even this world's direst vinegar will not sour. "As full of mischief as an egg is full of meat," said Uncle Simeon.

and I think I've a call to do these apples. What I save in the store-price I shall devote to the missionary-box, so it's a sort of Lord's work, after all."

"Well?"

Aunt Prudence reddened a little in spite of herself. “If you must know, I'm going to get up an hour earlier than usual tomorrow. What I save from sleep is my own time, isn't it? Any how, I'm going to save the apples; they must be dried in the sun to-morrow."

"Dried on the Lord's day!" said Waiter, mockingly, "and cut, too! Oh ! Aunt Prudence, who would have thought of you're being a backslider? But give me that big apple under the chair, and I'll promise to say nothing about it! They might bring you up in meeting, you know!"

"You shan't have it!" and Miss Prudence made a desperate dash at the forbidden fruit. Dodging cleverly the upraised knife, Walter held up his trophy, saying as he sat down at Uncle Simeon's right hand,

"After all, how much of the world's history has hung upon an apple! Letting alone that first one 'which brought death into the world and all our woe,' (you remember, Miss Prudence, when I parsed that sentence) letting alone that, there's the story of Paris and the golden apple. Whereupon I have invented a new axiom. A woman and an apple make the shortest line between two points birth and death. They make the whole of lite, and its whole is greater than its parts!

trine to be thankful over what the Lord sends! Hev' some of the Indian pudding, Prudence?"

"Not just yet, Uncle Simeon," said Walter, as the big iron spoon was poised over his plate. "I've got my destiny to read. Aunt Prudence has supplied me with the means. As Paris found his wife by an apple, so I mean to look for mine here. You know the story, Uncle?"

"I know plaster o' Paris, and that hotbed o' Jacobinism over the water. Taint nyther o' them, I spose?"

"Shade of the Greek gods! But it isn't essential, Uncle! Suffice it to say that Yankee art has enabled every swain to find out whether he shall have the fairest woman in the world for a wife. Behold!" Walter cut the rosy apple in two, carefully abstracting the seeds. "One I love, two I love - ah! the oracle is propitious twelve they marry!" Looking fixedly at Aunt Prudence. "You see, the die is cast! there is every prospect of my becoming a member of your family."

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"The Lord forbid !" ejaculated that lady, and Charity blushed, as the merry brown eyes rested upon her with a speculation" in them that was not purely disinterested!

Twenty-five years ago, life in New England was marked by a staid rigidity widely different from our own times. The wheels moved slower, some will say less clogged by our modern arts of fast and tree living. In theory, at least, life then was epical the Puritan spirit, like the ghost of the Brocken, threw its shadow over the places it had so lately relinquished to a different genius the wider, more cosmopolitan spirit of to-day. The gravity of religious conviction, the fanaticism that holds to the letter, though the spirit has departed, made a sombre background for every picture. It was respectable, it accorded with traditions, to be sober, pious and Church-going. Consequently, Deacon Brown, whose wife and daughters spent the money his brewery distilled, in a New York winter, shook his head gravely over Fourierism, lamented the growing tendency to laxity in the general conscience, supported the gallows as a measure of public safety, be

lieved in the Constitution and the Fugitive Slave Law, and went to meeting every Sunday, without fail. The young people, whom the newspapers and the lyceum lectures, were educating faster, much faster than the Church, were beginning with the quick wit, the simple honesty of youth, to sit in judgment on their elders. Walter was a clearsighted fellow, and hated shams. Aunt Prudy's compromise of conscience only represented to him the shallow professions of half the town. He loved to tease her, as he said, "to let the honesty out," for when people got angry they were always honest. Walter was no favorite among the matrons of the village. He did not attend prayer meetings. He had not come forward as a candidate for grace at the last revival. "I wouldn't have my daughter so intimate with him for the world," said Mrs. Cap'n Gray, shaking her head dubiously in Aunt Susan Bates' direction. "Why, just think of it, he's a free-thinker!"

"And spends halt his time Sundays in the woods," said another. In fact, Aunt Susan was hardly excused for her big motherly heart, and the gossips did not let her escape easily. Miss Polly Dunham, who came weekly to get the tax for the women's society, had occasion to mourn to the sisterhood often and often over Susan Bates' sinful pride in her best parlor carpet, her real China tea-set, and the liberal bounty of her groaning table. "Depend upon it," she would say, "such making of idols will bring a judgment. Its no use looking for holy exercises with all that world's gear." Yet Miss Polly would go home and complacently take out of her basket the "world's gear "in the shape of huge slices of cake, and was quite wicked enough to eat it, too.

The life of Miss Prudence Bates was somewhat nomadic. She had, to be sure, an abiding place, a little house on a brother's land forty miles in the country. She had taught school till the pupils who learned their letters at her keee were strong men with children of their own; but she found that a fortune did not grow on every bush. - certainly not on the schoolma'am's. Charity actually had in her possession sundry scraps of paper on which

Miss Prudence had made her calculations in years gone by; interest reckoned on five thousand dollars at six per cent., which was her idea of a competence. But modest as this Utopian dream was, thirty years of saving did not realize it, and she spent her time between her own dignified retreat, and brother Simeon's. If the truth must be told, long years of pinching and saving had developed a habit of hoarding in Aunt Prudy's otherwise generous nature. If a penny or any stray odds and ends were to be had, she had eyes quick to see them; in fact her manner of life might be likened to that of those gleaners who gathered after the reapers, in old Bible times. Every friend and relative was represented in her winter

stores. She was not ashamed of honest

poverty either, but would save expressage by taking her spoils to the train, herself. The strong bag was in the garret in which Aunt Prudy meant to take these identical apples to the depot, and the taking them made two hearts happy. In short, accident has decided the fate of empires, and accident decided the loves of Charity and Wal

ter.

When manly and womanly years came between them, a strange shyness oppressed Walter Tyrrel. His fun overran to every one but Charity; his easy-going speech was as reckless as ever to all but Charity; the little offices he used to render her when they went to school, he would not dare to offer now. This great hearty, buoyant fellow was afraid of nothing but a little innofensive girl. She was too good to be looked at, spoken to, or claimed by such a good-for-nought as he suddenly found himself to be. So Charity baked and brewed, swept and darned, and Walter looked on afar off.

To Charity this state of things was no puzzle: she knew the boy's heart; she could afford to wait. In every woman's love there is a motherly element, and Charity, from her serene height of self-surety, counselled her lover calmly, hid from him that she knew his secret, moralized like an octogenarian, and with maidenly art, kept him just in doubt whether he might be sure of her if he asked.

"Come, Walter," said Charity, as they rose from supper, "I've got a new treasure. Just come and see it! We found it, Mr. Moreland and I. There! isn't that a beauty!" and she laid a dainty humming-bird's nest in his hand.

The dry twig still adhered to it, and the dainty cup was hardly larger than a lady's thimble. Walter would have liked to close his hand over the dainty nest.

"Oh, yes," he answered, absently; then in a changed voice, - "How's Uncle Simeon's lawsuit?"

"Hold on! slow up there a little, Charity! You're getting beyond me. I know what machine magnetism is, that takes hold of a fellow's hand with no end of grip, but confound it, if I know anything about this personal magnetism, except that it's a new name for old tricks! Genteel snobs don't hang round a pretty girl now-a-days, and fool her with their patronizing, lazy gallantry! Oh, no! they just attract her by "personal magnetism." And I tell you you're too good for such nonsense!"

"Then I'm good enough to choose my own friends, and hear them well spoken of, too," said Charity, with a mixture of pique and tears in her voice. "When Mr. Moreland calls Walter Tyrell a boor, I shall defend him, although that is impossible, since he is a gentleman!"

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in it to keep a girl's heart from freezing. But there! I meant to have told you a little different, but I suppose you'll be relieved to hear I'm going to take my brusque self out of your way. Old times are gone when we used to go together; it's the fashion to be a hypocrite now, and I'm out there. 'Squire Brown thinks I'm one of the unregenerate because I stroll round Sundays, instead of being cooped up in meeting; and the minister preaches about those who scoff at religion, and means me all the time. I can't help it! if they won't give a fellow the length of his line they must expect him to kick! What's the use to girth a fellow up so tight he can't breathe! I can't stand it, and I won't!"

Charity trembled inwardly when she heard these terrible words that meant separation, but like a skilful diplomat, she said:

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'No, we can't help our natures; but it seems to me the high breeding you denounce is like the bit father puts into Jack's mouth: it don't make him less a fine, high-spirited horse, but it improves his manners greatly."

"Well, Charity, I always knew you were a world too good for me."

And Walter looked at the delicately formed face, the nervous hands twisting the humming-bird's nest, at the exquisite bunch of wild flowers on the table, which Charity had been telling him about, how Edward Moreland had sent them that morning, how rare a botanist he was, how he had discovered seven new varieties in Fern Valley, and he thought: "She's given me a hint I won't be slow She compares me to Moreland, I don't play second fiddle to any no, not if I know myself! I was not born in Boston, and I can't talk in Latin, but I know a hole through a grindstone when I see one. So here goes!" and it was a very miserable fellow indeed who gloried in "first fiddle" by holding out his hard to Charity.

to take. it seems. fellow,

"Well, good-bye!"

"Good-bye, and good luck," said Charity, stiffly.

ful phase of humility.

"And so you're going away," she said. "I'm so sorry!

Walter looked at the honest, quiet face before him, and hesitated. Here was love, joy, peace; if he could only take a promise with him, it would make that dingy counting-house in the city so much more bearable; the close columns in the ledger would seem to say "home" to him every time he pored over them, and so brought himself so much nearer Charity. In fact, he had, down in a dark pocket, a tiny gold hoop which he had meant to offer her if she showed a hopeful amount of sorrow at his loss. But our thoughts are like fast-rushing trains that flit by us in the night, often separating forever those that otherwise might meet and clasp hands. Charity was thinking:

"They say the fruit that falls into a man's hand is never valued like that which is climbed for. If Walter wants me he must ask me fair and square."

called, as by some sudden after-thought: "Come back here, Walter, a minute, will you?"

"I only wanted to say, Walter," said this aggravating philosopher in the the guise of a Love, "I only wanted to say I think it my duty to warn you against a bad habit of yours. You are going out into the great world, and people won't make allowances for you as I do. Now if you should talk so about other men as you did about 'Squire Brown, just now, they would say you were a young Hotspur, undisciplined, and all that. Its worldly policy as well as Christian duty to be charitable to all men. garet Fuller says ".

Mar