The Rector of St. Marks

Through the rich curtains which shaded the windows of a room looking

out on Fifth Avenue, the late October sun was shining, and as its red

light played among the flowers on the carpet a pale young girl sat

watching it, and thinking of the Hanover hills, now decked in their

autumnal glory, and of the ivy on St. Mark's, growing so bright and

beautiful beneath the autumnal frosts. Anna had been very sick since

that morning in September when she sat on the piazza at the Ocean

House and read Lucy Harcourt's letter. The faint was a precursor of

fever, the physician said, when summoned to her aid, and in a tremor

of fear and distress Mrs. Meredith had had her at once removed to New

York, and that was the last Anna remembered.

From the moment her aching head had touched the soft pillows in Aunt

Meredith's house all consciousness had fled, and for weeks she had

hovered so near to death that the telegraph wires bore daily messages

to Hanover, where the aged couple who had cared for her since her

childhood wept, and prayed, and watched for tidings from their

darling. They could not go to her, for Grandpa Humphreys had broken

his leg, and his wife could not leave him, so they waited with what

patience they could for the daily bulletins which Mrs. Meredith sent,

appreciating their anxiety, and feeling glad withal of anything which

kept them from New York.

"She had best be prayed for in church," the old man had said, and so

Sunday after Sunday Arthur read the prayer for the sick, his voice

trembling as it had never trembled before, and a keener sorrow in his

heart than he had ever known when saying the solemn words. Heretofore

the persons prayed for had been comparative strangers, people in whom

he felt only the interest a pastor feels in all his flock, but now it

was Anna, whose case he took to God, and he always smothered a sob

during the moment he waited for the fervent response the congregation

made, the "Amen" which came from the pew where Lucy sat sounding

louder and heartier than all the rest, and having in it a sound of the

tears which fell so fast on Lucy's book as she asked that Anna might

not die. Oh, how he longed to go to her, but this he could not do, and

so he had sent Lucy, who bent so tenderly above the sick girl,

whispering loving words in her ear, and dropping kisses upon the lips

which uttered no response, save once, when Lucy said: "Do you remember Arthur?"

Then they murmured faintly: "Yes; Arthur, I remember him, and the Christmas song, and the

gathering in the church; but that was long ago. There's much happened

since then."