"Oh, dreadful!" she continued. "I don't know what he'd ben if we hadn't always restrained him. But somehow, I think there's something dreadful bewitchin' about such folks. Don't yew?" "Very," I answered with vague, though ardent sympathy. "Oh, dreadful!" she responded. Meanwhile the perspiration stood out on Lovell's grave countenance, and his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically backward and forward. "Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a rebuke to all cynics and unbelievers of any sort whatever. "Yes'm, so I will, certainly," said Lovell; "so I will, and if I hadn't got such a cold, I'd come down heavy on it too." "What do you think?" Mrs. Barlow went on in the same confidential aside to me; "he's took it into his head that he wants to get married! Oh, yes, he has really! and I think it's a wonder he never got set on it before. But he never has so but what we could restrain him. But William and I, we're beginning to think he might as well if he wants to. Oh, yes, I think it will be so nice. Don't yew? I think it will be just splendid! And I tell William, Lovell's wife shan't do nothing but set in the parlor and fold her hands, if she don't want to; and she shall have a music, and everything. When we built our new house, you know we used to live in that little house that Brother Mark Barlow lives in now, oh, yes, and I think it's so nice to have a new house, don't yew? I had 'em make the window seats low on purpose, so that Lovell's children could sit on them! Oh, I think it will be so pleasant, don't yew?" Mrs. Barlow turned her enraptured gaze on me. "Lovell's wife," I hastened to reply, toying with my glasses; "whoever she may be, is certainly to be envied--and Lovell's children, too"--I added, induced by that transcendently beaming smile; "who will have such a broad window seat to sit on." Never an evening began in heartier fashion at the Ark. George Olver, standing next to Rebecca, rolled out a grand and powerful bass. Lars Thorjon, the Norwegian, maintained a smiling silence, except when he was giving utterance in song to his inspiring tenor. Madeline played the "music." I saw her wince sometimes, when the fine though untutored voices around her took on a too wild and exuberant strain. The little woman's own voice was exceedingly gentle and refined; more than that, it had a passionately sweet, sad tone, a rare pathos. I used to wonder what there was in Madeline's heart--what there had been in her life--to make her sing so. Then I remembered how easy it was for her to get out of temper, and how often she slapped the children, and I concluded that it was only a voice after all, and not necessarily indicative of any inward sentiment or emotion.