"It's like that ugly point in theology that hurt you so, last autumn; and when you had said a cruel _Credo_, you found sweet flowers lost out of your religion. I know you missed them." "Oh, Anna!" "Don't interrupt me; let me finish. It's like making maple-sugar: one eats the sugar, calling it monstrous sweet, and all through the burning sun of summer sits under thin-leaved trees, to pay for the condensation. The point is, it doesn't pay,--the truest bit of sentiment the last winter has brought to me." "Is this Anna?" asked the minister. "Yes, Aaron, it is I, Anna." "You're not what you were when last here." "Quite a different person, Sir. But what is your new sexton's name?" "That is more sensible. His name is Abraham Axtell." "What sort of person is he?" "The strangest man in all my parish. I cannot make him out. Have you seen him?" "No. Is there any harm in my making his acquaintance?" "What an absurd question!" said Sophie. "You are quite at liberty to get as many words out of him as he will give, which I warn you will be very few," said the sexton's friendly pastor. "Is he in need of the small salary your church must give its sexton?" I asked. "The strangest part of the whole is that he won't take anything for his services; and the motive that induces him to fight the spiders away is past my comprehension. He avoids Sophie and me." So much for my thread of discovery: a very small fibre, it is true,--a church-sexton performing the office without any reward of gold,--but I twisted it and twirled it round in all the ideal contortions plausible in idealic regions, and fell asleep, with the tower-key under my pillow, and the rising moon shining into my room. I awoke with my secret safely mine,--quite an achievement for one in no wise heroic; but I _do delight_ in sole possessions. There is the sun, a great round bulb of liquid electricity, open to all the eyes that look into the sky; but do you fancy any one owns that sun but I? Not a bit of it! There is no record of deed that matches mine, no words that can describe what conferences sun and I do hold. The cloudy tent-door was closed, the sun was not "at home" to me, as I went down to life on the second day of March, 1860. Sophie seemed stupid and commonplace that morning. Aaron had a headache, (that theologic thorn, I know,) and Sophie must go and sit beside him, and hold the thread of his Sunday's discourse to paper, whilst with wrapped brow and vision-seeing eyes he told her what his people ought to do. Good Sophie! I forgave her, when she put sermons away, and came down to talk a little to me. It is easy to forgive people for goodness to others, when they are good to one's self _just afterwards_. "Do you know any Herbert in Redleaf?" I ventured to ask, with as careless a tone as I knew. "No, Anna;--let me think;--I thought I knew,--but no, it is not here. Why?"