Powell started back as if he had been struck. The blood rushed into his face, and then, suddenly receding, left him paler than before. But he answered after a moment in a low, sweet voice, and without a trace of anger, "You cannot mistrust me more than I mistrusted myself. But I have wrestled and prayed; and I am assured that I have spoken this thing with a single heart." "Well, well, well, it may be as you say," said Maxfield, a shade less harshly than he had spoken before. "But you have neither wife, nor daughter, nor sister, and you cannot understand these matters as well as I do, who am more than double your years, and have had the guidance of this young maid from a baby upward." "Nay," answered Powell, humbly; "it is not my own wisdom I am uttering! God forbid that I should set up my carnal judgment against a man of your years." "That's very well said--very rightly said!" exclaimed Maxfield, nodding twice or thrice. "Aye, but I must speak when my conscience bids me. I dare not resist that admonition for any human respect." "Why, to be sure! But do you think yours is the only conscience to be listened to? I tell you I follow mine, young man. And you can ask any of our brethren here in Whitford, who have known me for the last thirty or forty years, whether I have gone far astray!" Powell sighed wearily. "I have released my soul," he said. "And just hearken," pursued old Maxfield, in a lowered voice, "don't say a word of this sort to Rhoda--nay, don't interrupt me! I've listened to your say, now let me have mine--because you might be putting something into her thoughts that wouldn't have come there of itself. And keep a discreet tongue before Betty and James. 'Least said, soonest mended.' And I'll tell you something more. If--observe I say 'if'--I saw that Rhoda's heart was strongly set upon anything, anything as wasn't wrong in itself, I should be very loath to thwart her." David Powell turned a startled, attentive face on the old man, who proceeded with a sort of dogged monotony of voice and manner: "Christian charity teaches us there's good folks in all communions of believers. And there's different ranks and different orders in the world; some has one thing, and some has another. Some has fine family and great connections among the rulers of the land. Others has the goods of this world earned by honesty, and diligence, and frugality; and these three bring a blessing. Some is fitted to be gentlefolks by nature, let 'em be born where they will. Others, like my sister-in-law Betty, is born to serve. We are all the Lord's creatures, and we are in his hand but as clay in the hands of the potter. But there's different kinds of clay, you know. This kind is good for making coarse delf, and that kind is fit for fine porcelain. We'll just keep these words as have passed between you and me, to ourselves, if you please. And now, I I think, we may drop the subject." "May the Lord give you his counsel!" said Powell, in a broken voice.