In process of time they found a leader, one who was willing to sing by the new motto. I will not tell the story; it is long. But, in its details, it shows what we each need to more fully realize; the power of reconstruction which lies in one young consecrated life. Three months our borrowed songstress stayed with us, and when she went away she left our choir singing by the motto; the essential difference between their music and all others which we had ever enjoyed being embodied in that one brief sentence: They meant the words. The last time I heard Alice Haviland sing was in our church, on a week-day afternoon, just as the autumn leaves were beginning to fall. She stood near to an open coffin, in which lay an old, worn body, a wrinkled face, crowned with white satin hair, and the most reposeful smile that ever Auntie Barber's dear old face had ever worn. And the young singer, looking down on the quiet sleeper, breathed out the words to wondrous melody: "Forever with the Lord, Amen, so let it be; Life from the dead is in that word, 'Tis immortality. "Servant of Christ, well done; Praise be thy new employ; And while eternal ages run. Rest in thy Saviour's joy." And as the voice ceased, and the singer turned toward me with tear-dimmed eyes, while they closed the coffin-lid, she murmured: "I am sure Auntie Barber has already joined the choir. Her soul was just full of song. And, oh! How she can sing now. And she will always mean the words." HIS FRIEND. ——— CHAPTER I. IT would have puzzled many of his friends to understand what possible interest Mr. Thornton could have had in the old cottage which he stood surveying. What was there in the dingy, cobwebby place to call for so much thought as he seemed to be putting upon it? He was not a real estate agent estimating its value, nor a mechanic contriving how he might make it good as new; for his cultured face had not the sharp business look of the one, neither did his elegant attire belong to the latter. The old place might have been picturesque in its day, but now the luxuriant growth of lawn and garden were all in a tangle; the maples and elms were locking arms, and that "gadding vine," the woodbine, had strayed away to the top of the tall hemlock. It may be that Mr. Thornton was musing upon the possibilities of the forlorn little house, thinking it pitiful that even houses, trees and vines should not make the most of themselves. He had a passion for bringing up human ruins from depths of sin. It would not be strange if this divine outgoing widened and extended to inanimate things.