the narrow shirrings inside the frames fitted so close to their peaceful,
wrinkled foreheads that no hair could be seen.

"I wish I could sit and sort herbs!" Athalia said, under her breath.

Brother Nathan chuckled. "For how long?" he asked; and then
introduced her to the three workers, who greeted her calmly
and went on sorting their herbs. The loft was dark and cool;
the window-frames, in which there were no sashes, opened wide
on the still August fields and woods; the occasional brief words
of the sorting-women seemed to drop into a pool of fragrant silence.
The two visitors followed Brother Nathan down the room between
piles of sorted herbs, and out into the sunshine again.
Athalia drew a breath of ecstasy.

"It's all so beautifully tranquil!" she whispered, looking about
her with blue, excited eyes.

"Tay and tranquillity!" Lewis said, with an amused laugh.

But as they went along the grassy street this sense
of tranquillity closed about them like a palpable peace.
Now and then they stopped and spoke to some one--always an
elderly person; and in each old face the experiences that life
writes in unerasable lines about eyes and lips were hidden
by a veil of calmness that was curiously unhuman.

"It isn't canny, exactly," Lewis told his wife, in a low voice.
But she did not seem to hear him. She asked many questions
of Eldress Hannah, who had taken them in charge, and once