they reminded her of a picture of a ballet girl which a mischievous boy had once sent her as a valentine, and which she had promptly burned. Owing to the influence of a few New Yorkers and Bostonians, who came to Oak City every summer, spending their money freely and introducing many innovations in the old-established customs, the place was booming. A little church, holding the faith in which she was reared, was built under the shadow of one of the largest hotels. “Fashion’s Bazaar,” Miss Hansford called it, but she watched its growth with a strange interest, and a feeling as if something she had loved and lost were being restored to her. Unsolicited, she gave a hundred dollars towards its erection for the sake of her dead father and mother, and she never heard the sound of the bell calling the people to service without a wave of memory taking her back to the days of her childhood, and the broken bit of wall in the apple orchard, where she used sometimes to sit and listen to the chimes of St. John’s echoing across the river and the meadowland. Laid carefully away in her bureau drawer was the Prayer Book her mother had used, and, pressed between the leaves, was a rose taken from her mother’s hand as she lay in her coffin. Miss Hansford had not seen the book for a long time, but on the day of the consecration she took it from its hiding place, removed the folds of tissue paper and the handkerchief in which it was wrapped, and sat down to follow the morning service. She had once known it by heart, and she found herself repeating it now instead of reading it, while a feeling she had not experienced in years came over her as her lips pronounced the familiar words. There were passages in the book marked by her mother’s hand, and on the margin, at the commencement of the baptismal service for infants, was written: “June ——, 18——. Little Phebe was christened to-day. God keep her safe in His fold.” On this and the marked passages and the faded rose Miss Hansford’s tears fell like rain, and with them much of her intolerance of other people’s opinions was washed away. When a girl she had sung in the choir, and now, as she glanced a second time at the grand old Te Deum, she began unconsciously to sing the opening sentence: “We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!” Whether she would have gone on to the end will never be known, for suddenly there came an interruption to her devotions. She had shut the door against any possible intruder, but the window was open, and through it came a mocking laugh and the words, “If I’se you, I’d join the Salvation Army, only your voice is a little cracked.” It was the same boy who had sent her the valentine the previous winter,—Jack Percy, from Washington, and her special aversion. Her first impulse was to throw her Prayer Book at him, but he was beyond her reach and running rapidly towards the avenue, his laugh coming back to her as he ran, and making her shake with rage.