At first the whole thing struck Phebe as grotesque, but youth is not apt to be very critical, especially if having a good time, and as she usually had a good time she enjoyed everything immensely after the first surprise wore off, and slept in a tent with the rain sometimes dripping on her face, and ate coarse fare from board tables, and watched the proceedings with feelings of curiosity and amusement and half contempt for what seemed to her emotional and senseless. The church in which she had been brought up did not worship that way, and, with something of a Pharisaical feeling, she was one night listening to an elder noted for piety and eloquence, who was exhorting some people near her to a better life. Considering herself as a spectator and no part of the congregation, she did not expect to be addressed. Anxious seats and extemporaneous prayers were not for one reared as she had been, and when the elder, who for some time had had her in his mind, turned suddenly towards her and asked if she were a Christian, she colored with confusion and alarm and answered, hurriedly: “No, so; no, sir; I am an Episcopalian.” Something like a smile flitted across the elder’s face, as he said: “More’s the pity for you and your church,” and then passed on, leaving the girl, who was not a Christian because she was an Episcopalian, to the tender mercies of her companions. Young people are apt to be relentless where ridicule is concerned, and Phebe was jeered at and chaffed until in desperation she declared her intention to go forward for prayers the next time an invitation was given. New and strange feelings were beginning to influence her, and when at last she knelt with others to be prayed for it was more in sober earnest than in fun. There was something in this religion after all, and as she never did anything by halves, she tested it until she proved its reality, and went back to her home in Ridgefield an avowed Methodist. To the father and mother, equally as conscientious as herself, it seemed almost sacrilege that their daughter, born and brought up in the tenets of the church, should embrace another faith, or at least another form of worship. But Phebe was firm. Episcopacy, with its ritual and ceremonious dignity, would never appeal to her again. She liked better the stir and life of the Methodists. It was something real,—something to take hold of, and she liked their style of dress as more consistent with a Christian life. She could pray better in a plain gown than in a silk one, and she stopped curling her hair and laid aside her jewelry and her ribbons, and went every year to Oak City, where she was one of the most zealous workers, and was known as Sister Phebe. As long as her parents lived she stayed with them in Ridgefield, going with them occasionally to St. John’s, which, she thanked her stars, was _low_, as she understood the term, but going oftener to the plain wooden building on the shore of