The Rector of St. Marks

How prettily Anna had looked to him during those memorable days, so

much prettier than the other young girls of his flock, whose hair was

tumbled ere the day's work was done, and whose dresses were soiled and

disordered; while here was always so tidy and neat and the braids of

her chestnut hair were always so smooth and bright. How well, too, he

remembered that brief ten minutes, when, in the dusky twilight which

had crept so early into the church, he stood alone with her, and

talked, he did not know of what, only that he heard her voice replying

to him, and saw the changeful color on her cheek as she looked

modestly in his face. That was a week of delicious happiness, and the

rector had lived it over many times, wondering if, when the next

Christmas came, it would find him any nearer to Anna Ruthven than the

last had left him.

"It must," he suddenly exclaimed. "The matter shall be settled before

she leaves Hanover with this Mrs. Meredith. My claim is superior to

Thornton's, and he shall not take her from me. I'll write what I lack

the courage to tell her, and to-morrow I will call and deliver it

myself."

An hour later, and there was lying in the rector's desk a letter in

which he had told Anna Ruthven how much he loved her, and had asked

her to be his wife. Something whispered that she would not refuse him,

and with this hope to buoy him up, his two miles walk that warm

afternoon was neither long nor tiresome, and the old lady, by whose

bedside he had read and prayed, was surprised to hear him as he left

her door whistling an old love-tune which she, too, had known and sung

fifty years before.