The Wares exchanged another glance as he disappeared round the corner
of the house, and another mutual laugh seemed imminent. Then the wife's
face clouded over, and she thrust her under-lip a trifle forward out of
its place in the straight and gently firm profile.

"It's just what Wendell Phillips said," she declared. "'The Puritan's
idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.'"

The young minister stroked his chin thoughtfully, and let his gaze
wander over the backyard in silence. The garden parts had not been
spaded up, but lay, a useless stretch of muddy earth, broken only by
last year's cabbage-stumps and the general litter of dead roots and
vegetation. The door of the tenantless chicken-coop hung wide open.
Before it was a great heap of ashes and cinders, soaked into grimy
hardness by the recent spring rains, and nearer still an ancient
chopping-block, round which were scattered old weather-beaten
hardwood knots which had defied the axe, parts of broken barrels and
packing-boxes, and a nameless debris of tin cans, clam-shells, and
general rubbish. It was pleasanter to lift the eyes, and look across the
neighbors' fences to the green, waving tops of the elms on the street
beyond. How lofty and beautiful they were in the morning sunlight, and
with what matchless charm came the song of the robins, freshly installed
in their haunts among the new pale-green leaves! Above them, in the
fresh, scented air, glowed the great blue dome, radiant with light and
the purification of spring.

Theron lifted his thin, long-fingered hand, and passed it in a slow arch
of movement to comprehend this glorious upper picture.

"What matter anyone's ideas of hell," he said, in soft, grave tones,