For an hour Jasper, Viola, and the rest who had come from "Mount Pisgah" labored with the penitents at the altar. At half past nine o'clock, long before the service closed, they started for home. They were all lifted to a high plane of spiritual experience, and for some time each was busy with his or her own thoughts and few words were spoken. The moon had risen and was throwing her mild light through the thick trees as best she could. Gradually George LeMonde and the three girls got into a more talkative and merry mood. Now and then a happy laugh floated through the forest, and was heard by the wakeful owl as he sat perched on some high branch, or with rush of wings flew through the air seeking his prey. They spoke of the camp meeting and the commoner events of every day life, occasionally asking the opinion of Jasper and Viola concerning this or that event or notion. But George on the front seat was too much occupied with guiding the horses through the uncertain light and with the chat of the fair girl at his side to pay much attention to those in the rear seats, and the two girls in the middle naturally kept their eyes and ears turned forward. This left Jasper and Viola in a measure to themselves. They spoke occasionally to each other, but their words were fewer than their thoughts. Jasper's heart in the meeting had been aflame with love to God and his fellowman, and what better soil than that can there be for a man's love for a pure and beautiful woman to spring and grow? All the wealth of his great nature was even then being given to the woman at his side, and he felt the hour had come to make that love known. And Viola was ready to receive it as a most precious gift and in return to offer a yet richer treasure, a woman's unsullied affection. In that carriage was about to take place the world's most wondrous mystery--two lives, which for months had been drawn together more and more strongly by a power which no man can understand, at last meeting and blending in a union which God in heaven makes and which eternity cannot sever. Jasper did not need words to express his love nor Viola to receive it. They were more than half way home when Jasper moved his large, honest, chivalrous right hand over to Viola and took her small, beautiful hand in his. She did not resist the act, but let her little hand lie in his broad palm. That was all. Their betrothal was as silent as the meeting of God and a human soul. Words were not needed. They seemed out of place. They would have appeared almost a profanation. In fact they could not then have been spoken. The light carriage robe covered those two hands, and the laughing girls in the next seat did not suspect that just behind them an engagement without words was taking place. What joys, what sorrows, what tragedies and comedies occur so near us that we can almost touch them with our fingers, and yet we are unconscious of their existence?