As she stood with her companions this evening, while one and another commented upon this or that feature of the shore, they came suddenly upon a congregation of negroes encircling an inlet between two curves in the levee, and, as the low sun shone clearly into the crowd, it became immediately plain that a baptism was in progress. A line of women, robed in white, stood on one side; several men, likewise in white, on the other, while the minister, knee-deep in the water, was immersing a subject who shouted wildly as he went under and came up struggling as one in a fit, while two able-bodied men with difficulty bore him ashore. The scene was scarcely one to inspire reverence to a casual observer, and there was naturally some merriment at its expense. One playful comment led to another until a slashing bit of ridicule brought the entire ceremony into derision, and, as it happened, the remark with its accompanying mimicry was addressed to Agnes. "Oh, please!" she pleaded, coloring deeply. "I quite understand how it may affect you; but--oh, it is too serious for here--too personal and too sacred--" While she hesitated, the culprit, ready to crawl at her feet,--innocent, indeed, of the indelicacy of which he had become technically guilty,--begged to be forgiven. He had quite truly "meant no harm." "Oh, I am quite sure of it," the girl smiled; "but now that I have spoken,--and really I could not help it; I could not wish to let it pass, understand,--but now that I have spoken--oh, what shall I say! "Perhaps you will understand me when I tell you that I should not be with you here to-day but for the devoted care of two old Christian people who dated their joy in the spiritual life from precisely such a ceremony as this. They are in Heaven now. "My dear old Mammy often said that she 'went under the water groaning in sin, and came up shouting, a saved soul!' I seem to hear her again as I repeat the words, on this same river, in sight of her people and within the sound of their voices. I was small when she died, and I do not clearly remember many of her words; but this I do well recall, for we lived for some years on the river-bank, only a few miles from the spot where in her youth she had been immersed. She taught me to love the river, and perhaps I am a little sentimental over it. I hope always to be so. My father remembers many of her words. She was his nurse, too. She told him as a boy that she had insisted on being baptized in flowing water, so that her sins might be carried away to the sea. It was all very sacred to her." Of course the romantic story of Agnes's youth was known to every one present, and this unexpected allusion awakened immediate interest.