He liked to hear her talk in that way, though he was not won by her beliefs. Far in the future he saw days when he would have shot the bolt of his temptations and settled down with her into being the "good fellow" she hoped to make of him. In the mean time-- But in the mean time came the call. It was the kind of call against which his instincts and his interests both rebelled, but he took it with no more analysis than he gave to the necessity of getting out of bed on a winter's morning. There was no help for it; it was all in the day's work. His family took it in the same way. It was as much a matter of course as when Ebenezer Lester shouldered his eighteenth-century musket to defend the stockade against the Iroquois stealing down from Canada. It was as much a matter of course as when Charles E. Lester, the bookseller, rallied to President McKinley against Spain. It was also a matter of course to Molly Dove. It would postpone the wedding for which she had begun her simple preparations, but she had a curious, secret facility for renouncing her own will. Her right-about-face was made with smiling lips and glistening eyes, and no effort that any one could see. To Lester she whispered: "It's going to be all right, dear. Whatever the clash of human wills, there's only one real Ruler in the universe. The closer we can keep in touch with Him the nearer we shall be to the usefulness and happiness which make up what we call our destiny." "That's all very well." He smiled, patting her hand. "But suppose I'm shot--or die of a fever?" Her reply would have staggered him if he had not put it down to the sweet and charming eccentricity which made her different from other girls. "Well, suppose it does happen that in the course of doing your duty this mortal should 'put on immortality'--that's the way the Bible expresses it, you know--wouldn't that be a gain for you? And what's a gain for you couldn't be a loss for us." He laughed with a great guffaw. "But perhaps we shouldn't be married." "No; but marriage, after all, is only for time, whereas you and I are bound by all sorts of ties which really belong to eternity." He took no stock in that, he told her; but he liked her gleaming earnestness in saying it. The aunt who had brought her up must have been a quaint, religious character, he said, to have filled her head with such other-worldly notions. Anyhow, they were different from the anxiety and fear which the family hid behind their stoic calmness, and of which he felt the twinges within himself as he wound up his affairs. CHAPTER II