There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. “Rebecca dear,” he said, “it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boy did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see ''twixt the hill and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only you have the right sort of vision.” I was a long, long time about “experiencing religion.” I remember Sunday afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; when I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent and still, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's “Saints' Rest,” but her seat was by the window, and she at least could give a glance into the street now and then without being positively wicked. Aunt Jane used to read the “Pilgrim's Progress.” The fire burned low; the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the pictures swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep. They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God; but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybrook and John that I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long one beginning: “My thoughts on awful subjects roll, Damnation and the dead.” It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sunday afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother was always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk. Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; and at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I was grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer. I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinking out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to Aunt Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say to Him that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always made me happy and contented. When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told him I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a real member. “So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?” he asked, smiling. “Well, there is something else much more important, which is, that He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings, desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is what counts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritance of faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!” “God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that,” I said; “but the doctrines do worry me dreadfully.”