CHAPTER XX. THE SHADOW OF DEATH. It was a soft balmy day in June, just two years later than the close of our previous chapter. The little village of Wenton lay nestling white and beautiful among its surrounding hills. The words white and beautiful are meant literally. For the mill and cottages and stores and schoolhouse and chapel were all as white as fresh paint could make them, and the village was beautiful because every cottage had its garden, and green plot, and shrubs and flowers; while the mill was surrounded with tasteful lawns and tall shade trees and climbing vines. George Branford firmly believed that there was a moral and an elevating influence in the beauties God has thrown around us. He said it costs the manufacturer but little more to make his cottages and factories pretty and tasteful in their surroundings, and that he is more than compensated for the extra outlay in the ennobling effects upon his employés. They are broadened in mind, made contented in heart, and elevated in spirit. So, with Mr. Bacon's permission, he had during the two years and more that he had been here at Wenton carried out his ideas to a practical result, and he was satisfied; for there never was a happier nor more contented manufacturing community. The little village had grown somewhat also during this time. First of all, the mill itself had been so enlarged as to be hardly recognizable. Indeed, the additions were so extensive that the old mill was only a wing of the main building now. Then this enlargement of the mill necessitated more tenement houses; so a new street was opened back to the hills, and that row of pretty white cottages was built. Nor was this all. There was one other new building. Just down the street there, and almost in the centre of the clustered houses was a chapel, its white spire rising sixty feet toward the heavens. That has a history all its own. When George Branford first moved to Wenton no religious services were held in the village. He stood this condition of things just one week, and then he organized a Sunday-school and established a weekly prayer meeting. These services were held in the schoolhouse, for the want of a more suitable place. But one day Sailor Jack came down to Wenton to visit his old friend. After going over the mill, he took a stroll around the village. He even climbed the highest hill and looked down upon the busy community at its base. Then he returned to the mill office, and said, abruptly, to George Branford: "You need a chapel here badly." "I know it," George replied. "We shall have it in time." "There is a nice lot out there on that knoll for it," added Sailor Jack. "It's almost the centre of the village, and it would be a sightly position." "Yes," answered George, with more interest; "that's the site I had picked out for it."