As nine o’clock drew near there approached the church on every side, on foot and on horseback, the members of the congregation. All knew of the mysterious disappearance of Cotton and Elam, for the country had been widely and quickly scoured for them. Among the worshippers came Deacon and Mistress Fayerweather and Goodman Noyes and his wife, for all felt it a godly duty, even in time of deep affliction, not to neglect the public worship of God on the Sabbath. Despairingly did the sad parents hope to hear some news of their lost boys, who had apparently vanished from the face of the earth, for neither in farm-house nor in field, neither on the road nor at the toll-gate, neither by traveller nor by hunter, had they been seen. The very simplicity of their plan had been its safety. Forty years previously the whisper of kidnapping by the Indians would have added terror to the parents’ grief, but those days were happily over. After sad greetings had been exchanged and the minister had entered the pulpit, the congregation seated itself for its usual Sunday-morning service. The opening half-hour prayer was ended, the church attendants had let down their slamming pew-seats (for the seats in those old New England meeting-houses always turned up on hinges to allow the pew occupants to lean against the walls of the pew during the long prayer), the minister had read with trembling voice a note which had been sent to him, “desiring the prayers of the congregation for two families in great inconveniency and distress,” when a door on the leeward side of the church slowly opened and two pale, dishevelled, and most wretched-looking youngsters crept slowly and shamefacedly in. The habit of constant self-repression and self-control, characteristic of the times, was all-powerful, even in this intense moment of crisis for the families of Fayerweather and Noyes. The deacon flushed scarlet, but did not move from his raised seat in front of the congregation. A faint murmur swept over the entire assembly at the appearance of Cotton and Elam, but was at once repressed. The boys walked calmly on to their accustomed seats on the gallery stairs, under the supervision of the tithingman. That zealous officer rapped sharply on the head with his long staff two or three of the occupants of one of the “boys’ pews,” who had turned around and stared, and whispered noisily at the appearance of the runaways. The old minister, being slightly deaf, had heard no ripple of commotion, and, not having glanced at the late comers, proceeded to offer a pathetic prayer for the lost ones, “whom God held in the hollow of his hand,” a prayer that brought to Elam and Cotton a realizing sense of their selfishness and wickedness, and which worked a lesson that influenced them through life. The parson then gave out his text: “He will have charge over thee concerning thee,” and worked his way on in his accustomed and somewhat monotonous fashion,