Isabel felt her resolution wavering; her strength gave way, she yielded to the pressure of his arm, and for one moment was drawn to his heart. Down in the distant chapel the music still swelled, and with it came the voices of the choir, "Father, oh, our Father!" The solemn Latin in which those words were uttered fell upon her like winged arrows; she started forward and stood for an instant immovable, horrified by the tenderness to which she had yielded. "Oh, my father, my father, forgive me!" she exclaimed, passionately. "Isabel, Isabel, what is this?" pleaded the young man, astonished at the abrupt change. "Stop!" she said, waving him back. "Tempt me no more, I cannot bear it!" Still he pressed toward her, grieved and anxious. He had not observed the words of the music, and her change of manner was inexplicable. "Listen to me, Isabel!" She waved him back, and walking toward the high altar fell upon her knees before it, and there, touching the sculptured leaves that had occupied a human life five hundred years before, she uttered a solemn vow. The words fell in whispers from her white lips, her forehead was one moment uplifted to heaven. She arose and stood before her lover, cold and pale as the marble she had touched. Then the music swelled out again in a slow, plaintive strain, as if it were moaning over the burial of a dead hope. Those who had gathered for worship in the chapel, glided away; the tapers were extinguished, and through the gathering darkness Frederick Farnham and Isabel Chester walked forth into the world again. Isabel had made a vow never to marry the son of her father's murderer. It was a rash act, for even then she had not the courage to tell Frederick of the oath she had taken. Oh, Isabel! that vow may prove like that of Jepthah yet--only it is your own hand that gives, and your own heart that receives the blow. CHAPTER XXXV. SISTER ANNA Ah, we never could resist her, Since the day that she was born; For we loved that winsome sister As we loved the opening morn. Four years!--yes, I think it was a little over four years, after the scene in our last chapter, when we bring our readers to the Old Homestead again. It was the evening of a disagreeable, chilly day. Everything was gloomy inside and out. Salina had come up from the Farnham's deserted mansion to spend the evening with aunt Hannah, and arrange the preliminaries for a "husking frolic," which was to take place on the morrow in uncle Nathan's barn. But she found the good lady so taciturn and gloomy, that even her active spirit was awed into stillness. So the two women remained almost in silence, knitting steadily, with a round candle-stand between them.