the roses on its crown tremble, and perhaps a desperate jerk at the sash which destroyed all the love knots and left the ends crumpled in her lap, while her mother sat frowning majestically all the time, and poor Phebe was doing her best to hide the tears and blushes which her sister’s disgrace had occasioned. Still, though Malina was a romp and a sad reprobate in the estimation of a sect which had made old Connecticut celebrated among the states by the strictness and sobriety of their lives, there was something about the girl which stole even upon their austere habits—a warmth of heart and generosity of feeling that no faults could check or conceal. She had a winning, soft and exceedingly arch manner peculiarly her own, which few could resist; a ready wit, and a laugh that rang through the heart like the tones of a silver bell, and which made the old deacon smile, even while he was lecturing her. Before Malina was eighteen she had good cause to congratulate herself that she was not a “church member,” for most assuredly would she have been ignominiously expelled had this been the case. At that season a sectarian feud had arisen between the Episcopal church and our old meeting-house, a difference of opinion which went well nigh to destroy all social intercourse in our village. The Episcopalians had offered a practical reproof to the upright manner in which the Presbyterians were in the habit of addressing the throne of grace, by erecting kneeling boards in the pews of their church, a course which led our minister into open denunciation of such heresy from the pulpit, where he eloquently defended his own manner of worship by a sermon containing manifold heads, and a prayer which was responded to by a congregation more resolutely upright both in body and mind than ever. This sermon of course was answered from the white church, with some spirit, and, in the midst of the controversy which arose, Malina Gray took it into her pretty head to exhibit a fashionable bonnet which she had purchased in New Haven, and a smart silk dress, in the Episcopal church, not only without asking her mother’s consent, but directly against her known wishes. It was even rumored that she did not rise, but absolutely bent forward and covered her pretty face with her pocket handkerchief, during the whole time of prayer, and that, on leaving the church, three persons had heard her say that she was delighted with the sermon, and particularly with the chant, it was _so_ droll. It was in vain that Malina defended her conduct, in vain she insisted that she had bent forward, and used her handkerchief only to conceal the motion of her lips as she ate half a dozen peppermint drops, and a head of green fennel which a companion had given her. She could not disprove her presence at the church, and that alone was considered as rank rebellion against her mother, and an insult to the congregation with which she had been taught to worship. Dark were the looks, and manifold the lectures