"We all united on this. We wanted to have you come to the church and--Well, we couldn't bear to have you see it again the way it was." He understood it now. It was the sign of a united community. It set the seal of Christ's victory over evil passions, and the young preacher's head bowed in prayer, and they all knelt, while his weak voice returned thanks to the Lord for his gifts. Then they all rose and shook off the oppressive solemnity, and he had time to look around at all the changes. At last he turned to Mattie and reached out his hand--he had the boldness of a man in the shadow of some mighty event which makes false modesty and conventions shadowy things of little importance. His sharpened interior sense read her clear soul, and he knew she was his, therefore he reached her his hand, and she came to him with a flush on her face, which died out as she stood proudly by his side, while he said: "And Martha shall help me." Therefore this good thing happened--that in the midst of his fervor and his consecration to God's work, the love of woman found a place. A MEETING IN THE FOOTHILLS. I. The train which brought young Ramsey into Red Rock gave him no view of the mountains, because it arrived about eight o'clock of a dark day. He went to bed at once in order to be up early and prostrate himself before the peaks, for he was of the level middle-West. He was awakened by the sound of loud, hearty voices, and looking out of the window saw a four-horse team standing before the little hotel. On the wagon's side was a sign which made the heart of the youth leap. CRINKLE CREEK STAGE. DAVE WILLIS, Pro. He was in the land of gold! It was like a chapter from a story by Bret Harte. He dressed himself hurriedly, and went down and out into the cool, keen dawn, eager to catch a glimpse of the great peak whose name had been in his ear since a child, as the symbol of the Rocky Mountains. There it soared, dull purple, splotched with dark green, and rising to white at its shoulders, and radiant with light on its crown. In such impassible grandeur, it must have loomed upon the eyes of the first little caravan trailing its way across the plains to the mysterious West. He spent the day doing little else but gaze at the mountains and study the town. It was also much more stupendous than he had imagined, and doubts of his ability to fit with all this splendor came to him with great force. He remembered the smooth, green swells and fertile fields he had left behind, and the memory brought a touch of homesickness. After supper that evening he confided to the landlord his plans for finding a foreman's position on a stock farm. "Well, I dunno. There are such places, but they're always snapped up 'fore you can say Jack Robinson." "Well, I'm going to give it a good try," the young fellow said bravely. "That's right. If I was you, I'd go out and see some of these real-estate fellers; they most always know what's going on."