"What kep' you so, Mandy?" asked old Mrs. Powell, with as near the suspicion of a complaint in her voice as ever got into it. "Why, something very singular, mother. Would you credit it, that Funkhausen put Peter Weaver's cow under the church and starved it to death! We heard its moans--probably its last ones, and Peter went down and found it. He says he'll thrash Funkhausen, and I think everybody in the county'll stand by him if he does." "How perfectly dreadful!" chimed in the girls, in thrilled accents. "Oh, dear, Mandy, that wuz mean indeed of Funkhausen," said the grieved old lady. "And he a member o' the chu'ch, and holdin' to particular redemption, which he oughtn't to dare to do less he's shore he's one o' the elect hisself." "He'll need all his particular redemption--when Peter gets hold of him," commented Mistress Amanda, who was no Antinomian. She took some pleasure in making remarks like these, less to shock her mother, to whom she was more tenderly deferential than to anybody else in the world, than to enlarge the outlook of Nellie, whose innate bent toward Calvinism irritated her. She disbelieved in the possibility of a woman saint under sixty. Of men, she had been heard to remark that they "only got to heaven through the grace of God and the goodness of women." But while she hated pretensions to special piety she readily pardoned sinners who were confessedly incorrigible. She would overlook all offenses save self-complacency or the possession of a bloodless nature incapable alike of sterling virtues or robust wickedness. There are persons to whom the touch of velvet is odious. Mistress Amanda detested velvety natures. Some Viking-like quality in the woman, something fierce and grand as the breaking of a storm at sea, threw out a challenge for rough honesty; for the strong hand of untamed manhood to touch and calm her mood. In Peter Weaver she realized her ideal of robust, simple manliness. Twenty years before her maiden fancies would have passed him by with disdain. But there comes a period of life when a second set of desires replace the dreams of youth, unlike them in every respect, especially where "the curse of a granted prayer" has robbed the dreamer of illusions. In so many words, Mistress Amanda had never said to herself since she had been left a widow five years ago,--I like best the man who least resembles my husband:--but her regard involuntarily fell upon everything in the shape of both men and women, who were innocent of the suavity, the grace, and the polished egotism of the late Col. Thomas.