There was something that gripped Hunt in the rough and ready diction of this letter—something that aroused his imagination. It brought to his mind, too, a picture of Joe himself—a picture of both his physical and his mental proportions. The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was no pigmy himself, nor did he lack courage and vigor. He was good to look upon, dark without being sallow, crowned with a thick brush of dull black hair—there were some brown lights in it—possessing good features, keen gray eyes, broad shoulders, a hundred and eighty pounds of gristle and flesh on a perfect bony structure, and could look over a six-barred gate before he vaulted it. He had not allowed his spiritual experiences, neither rising nor falling, to interfere with his gymnastics or his daily walk. But Joe Hurley topped Hunt by two inches, was broader, hardier, a wholly out-of-door man. Joe was typically of the West and the wilderness. He knew the open places and the tall timber, the mountains and the canyons, the boisterous waters of cascade and rock-hemmed river. He was such an entirely different being from Hunt that the latter had often wondered why the Westerner had made such a chum and confidant of him during those two years at college. And now the pastor of Ditson Corners’ First Church realized that Joe Hurley had something that he wanted. He wished he was with Joe, out there in that raw country. He felt that he could get nearer to mankind out there and perhaps—he said it reverently—nearer to the God he humbly desired to serve. He thought of Betty. “She needs a change as much as I do. How does Joe guess that she is becoming exactly a prim, repressed, narrow-thinking woman, and a Martha cumbered by many cares? She needs her chance as much as I need mine.” He heard Betty’s step on the porch, and in a moment she entered the study, her hands full of those grateful mid-spring flowers, the lily of the valley. Betty Hunt was not a fragile girl, but she did not possess much of that embonpoint the Greeks considered so necessary to beauty of figure. Nor was she angular. At least, her grace of carriage and credibly tailored frock masked any lack of flesh. Slim hands she had, too,—beautiful hands, very white and with only a faint tracery of blue veins upon them. Really, they were a musician’s hands—pliable, light of touch, but strong. The deftness with which they arranged the flowers suggested that she did not need vision to aid in the task. Therefore she kept her gaze on Hunt. He felt it, turned, and smiled up at her. He shook the leaves of the letter in his hand. “Bet,” he said, “I’ve got another letter from Joe Hurley.” Betty’s countenance changed in a flash. “Oh! That Westerner?” There was more than disapproval in her tone. She looked away from him quickly. Her own gray eyes filmed. A shocked, almost terrified expression seemed to stiffen all her face. But Hunt did not see this.