Family Pride

With an air of submission Bill took his post and Helen began to play, but she could only see before her: "I have loved you ever since that morning when I put the lilies in your hair," and she played so out of time and tune that Billy asked: "What makes 'em go so bad?"

"I can't play now; I'm not in the mood," she said at last. "I shall feel better by and by. You can go home if you like."

Billy needed no second bidding, but catching up his cap ran down the stairs and out into the porch, just as up the step a young man came hurriedly, the horse he had hitched to a tree smoking from exercise and himself looking eager and excited.

"Hello, boy," he cried, grasping the collar of Bill's roundabout and holding him fast, "who's in the church?"

"Darn yer, old Jim Sykes, you let me be, or I'll--" the boy began, but when he saw his captor was not Jim Sykes, but a tall, fine-looking man, wearing a soldier's uniform, he changed his tone, and standing still, answered civilly: "I thought you was Jim Sykes, the biggest bully in town, who is allus hectorin' us boys. Nobody is there but she--Miss Lennox--up where the organ is," and having given the desired information, Bill ran off, wondering first if it wasn't Miss Helen's beau, and wondering next, in case she should some time get married in church, if he wouldn't fee the organ boy as well as the sexton. "He orto," Bill soliloquized, "for I've about blowed my gizzard out sometimes, when she and Mrs. Cameron sings the 'Te Deum.'"

Meanwhile Mark Ray, who had driven first to the farmhouse in quest of Helen, entered the church, glancing in upon the festooned walls, and then as he heard a sound in the loft, stealing noiselessly up the stairs to where Helen sat in the dim light, reading again the precious letter withheld from her so long. She had moved her stool near to the window, and her back was toward the door, so that she neither saw nor heard, nor suspected anything, until Mark, bending over her so as to see what she had in her hand, as well as the tear she had dropped upon it, clasped both his arms about her neck, and drawing her face over back, kissed her fondly, calling her his darling, and saying to her as she tried to struggle from him: "I know I have a right to call you darling by that tear on my letter and the look upon your face. Dear Helen, we have found each other at last."