visible in every attitude--nay, seemed a part of the close, overheated
atmosphere itself.

An observer, looking over these compact lines of faces and noting the
uniform concentration of eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed
that they were watching for either the jury's verdict in some peculiarly
absorbing criminal trial, or the announcement of the lucky numbers in
a great lottery. These two expressions seemed to alternate, and even to
mingle vaguely, upon the upturned lineaments of the waiting throng--the
hope of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some adverse
decree.

But a glance forward at the object of this universal gaze would have
sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice
nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session of the annual Nedahma
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about
to read out the list of ministerial appointments for the coming year.
This list was evidently written in a hand strange to him, and the slow,
near-sighted old gentleman, having at last sufficiently rubbed the
glasses of his spectacles, and then adjusted them over his nose
with annoying deliberation, was now silently rehearsing his task to
himself--the while the clergymen round about ground their teeth and
restlessly shuffled their feet in impatience.

Upon a closer inspection of the assemblage, there were a great many
of these clergymen. A dozen or more dignified, and for the most part
elderly, brethren sat grouped about the Bishop in the pulpit. As many
others, not quite so staid in mien, and indeed with here and there
almost a suggestion of frivolity in their postures, were seated on the
steps leading down from this platform. A score of their fellows sat