"And your sermon was so head-and-shoulders above all the others!" she
went on breathlessly. "Everybody said so! And Mrs. Parshall heard it so
DIRECT that you were to be sent here, and I know she told everybody how
much I was lotting on it--I wish we could go right off tonight without
going to her house--I shall be ashamed to look her in the face--and
of course she knows we're poked off to that miserable Octavius.--Why,
Theron, they tell me it's a worse place even than we've got now!"

"Oh, not at all," he put in reassuringly. "It has grown to be a large
town--oh, quite twice the size of Tyre. It's a great Irish place, I've
heard. Our own church seems to be a good deal run down there. We must
build it up again; and the salary is better--a little."

But he too was depressed, and they walked on toward their temporary
lodging in a silence full of mutual grief. It was not until they had
come within sight of this goal that he prefaced by a little sigh of
resignation these further words,--

"Come--let us make the best of it, my girl! After all, we are in the
hands of the Lord."

"Oh, don't, Theron!" she said hastily. "Don't talk to me about the Lord
tonight; I can't bear it!"



CHAPTER II


"Theron! Come out here! This is the funniest thing we have heard yet!"