been scratched off; it has only been clipped into prosperous decorum,
and antiquity still flings its glamour over the town.

"I feel as much rooted as one of the old poplars," I said to myself as
some whim made me go down the steps and out into the garden, along the
walks with their budding borders of narcissus and peonies, down through
Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now
seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little
stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I
said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of
silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my
embrace and laid my cheek against the rough bark.

And then something happened. Afterwards I was glad that I was leaning
against the strength of the old graybeard poplar and hidden behind it.

Suddenly from out the shadows beyond the lilac hedge, through whose bare
branches any movement in the yard of the chapel showed plainly, a woman
came stumbling along towards the gate and beside her walked the parson
with his arm supporting hers. She was sobbing the hard, dry sobs that
any woman knows are those of despair, and which call any other woman who
hears them. My first impulse was to run to the hedge and speak to her;
then I stopped, for I was arrested by what the parson was saying to her.

"What does it matter, Martha? You have your Master's forgiveness and His
permission to go and sin no more, even though those sins be as
scarlet." And as he spoke his voice was that of quiet authority as if he
felt fully his apostolic right to unloose sins upon this earth.

"He'll come back now that _she_ has, and he'll come to me again. I can't