Yet he was vain, old Gray, and did not know it! He wore his hair unparted, long, and plain, To hide the handsome brow that slept below it, For fear the world would think that he was vain! He had a hearty hatred of oppression, And righteous words for sin of every kind; Alas, that the transgressor and transgression Were linked so closely in his honest mind! Yet that sweet tale of gift without repentance, Told of the Master, touched him to the core, And tearless he could never read the sentence: "Neither do I condemn thee: sin no more." Honest and faithful, constant in his calling, Strictly attendant on the means of grace, Instant in prayer, and fearful most of falling, Old Daniel Gray was always in his place. A practical old man, and yet a dreamer, He thought that in some strange, unlooked-for way, His mighty Friend in heaven, the great Redeemer, Would honor him with wealth some golden day. This dream he carried in a hopeful spirit Until in death his patient eye grew dim, And his Redeemer called him to inherit The heaven of wealth long garnered up for him. So, if I ever win the home in heaven For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray In the great company of the forgiven I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray. THE MINISTER'S WOOING. [Continued.] CHAPTER XVIII. The Doctor sat at his study-table. It was evening, and the slant beams of the setting sun shot their golden arrows through the healthy purple clusters of lilacs that veiled the windows. There had been a shower that filled them with drops of rain, which every now and then tattooed, with a slender rat-tat, on the window-sill, as a breeze would shake the leaves and bear in perfume on its wings. Sweet, fragrance-laden airs tripped stirringly to and fro about the study-table, making gentle confusions, fluttering papers on moral ability, agitating treatises on the great end of creation, mixing up subtile distinctions between amiable instincts and true holiness, and, in short, conducting themselves like very unappreciative and unphilosophical little breezes. The Doctor patiently smoothed back and rearranged, while opposite to him sat Mary, bending over some copying she was doing for him. One stray sunbeam fell on her light brown hair, tinging it to gold; her long, drooping lashes lay over the wax-like pink of her cheeks, as she wrote on. "Mary," said the Doctor, pushing the papers from him. "Sir," she answered, looking up, the blood just perceptibly rising in her cheeks. "Do you ever have any periods in which your evidences seem not altogether clear?" Nothing could show more forcibly the grave, earnest character of thought in New England at this time than the fact that this use of the term "evidences" had become universally significant and understood as relating to one's right of citizenship in a celestial, invisible commonwealth.