heart, I’ll do it if she says so, and Anna will answer——” Adam did not know what, and the very possibility that she might answer, as he sometimes feared, paled his bronzed cheek, and made him reel, as, walking to his blind mother’s chair, he knelt beside it, and prayed earnestly for grace to bear the happiness or sorrow there might be in store for him. In early youth, Adam had learned the source of all true peace, and now in every perplexity, however trivial, he turned to God, who was pledged to care for the child, trusting so implicitly in him. “If it is right for Anna to be mine, give her to me, but, if she has sickened of me, oh, Father, help me to bear.” This was Adam’s prayer, and when it was uttered, the pain and dread were gone, and the childlike man saw no cloud lowering on his horizon. It was nearly time for him to be going now, if he would have Anna see the cottage by day-light, and hastening to the chamber he had occupied since he was a boy, he put on, not his wedding suit, for that was safely locked in his trunk, but his Sunday clothes, feeling a pardonable thrill of satisfaction when he saw how much he was improved by dress. Not that Adam Floyd was ever ill-looking. A stranger would have singled him out from a thousand. Tall, straight and firmly built, with the flush of perfect health upon his frank, open face, and the sparkle of intelligence in his dark brown eyes, he represented a rare type of manly beauty. He was looking uncommonly well, too, this afternoon, old Martha thought, as from the kitchen door she watched him passing down the walk and out into the road which lead to the red farm-house, where Deacon Burroughs lived, and where Anna was waiting for him. CHAPTER II. ANNA.