"Ah," responded Mr. Dale.




CHAPTER IV.


John and Helen had not gone at once to Lockhaven; they spent a fortnight
in wandering about through the mountains on horseback. The sweet June
weather, the crystal freshness of the air, and the melodious stillness of
the woods and fields wrapped those first heavenly days of entire
possession in a mist of joy. Afterwards, John Ward felt that it had
blinded the eyes of his soul, and drifted between him and his highest
duty; he had not been able to turn away from the gladness of living in
her presence to think of what had been, during all their engagement, an
anxiety and grief, and, he had promised himself, should be his earliest
thought when she became his wife:--the unsaved condition of her soul.

When he had first seen her, before he knew he loved her, he had realized
with distress and terror how far she was from what he called truth; how
indifferent to what was the most important thing in the whole world to
him,--spiritual knowledge. He listened to what she said of her uncle's
little Episcopal church in Ashurst, and heard her laugh good-naturedly
about the rector's sermons, and then thought of the doctrines which were
preached from his own pulpit in Lockhaven.

Helen had never listened to sermons full of the hopelessness of
predestination; she frankly said she did not believe that Adam was her