for that visit to the baker's. Sabina's face softened, and her
contemptuous nose descended from its altitude of scorn; she gave
me one shy glance of kindness, and then concentrated her
attention upon Mercy knocking at the Wicket Gate. I felt awfully
mean as regarded Edward; but what could I do? I was in Gaza,
gagged and bound; the Philistines hemmed me in.

The same evening the storm burst, the bolt fell, and--to continue
the metaphor--the atmosphere grew serene and clear once more.
The evening service was shorter than usual, the vicar, as he
ascended the pulpit steps, having dropped two pages out of his
sermon-case,--unperceived by any but ourselves, either at the
moment or subsequently when the hiatus was reached; so as we
joyfully shuffled out I whispered Edward that by racing home at
top speed we should make time to assume our bows and arrows (laid
aside for the day) and play at Indians and buffaloes with Aunt
Eliza's fowls--already strolling roostwards, regardless of their
doom--before that sedately stepping lady could return. Edward
hung at the door, wavering; the suggestion had unhallowed charms.

At that moment Sabina issued primly forth, and, seeing Edward,
put out her tongue at him in the most exasperating manner
conceivable; then passed on her way, her shoulders rigid, her
dainty head held high. A man can stand very much in the cause of
love: poverty, aunts, rivals, barriers of every sort,--all these
only serve to fan the flame. But personal ridicule is a shaft
that reaches the very vitals. Edward led the race home at a
speed which one of Ballantyne's heroes might have equalled but
never surpassed; and that evening the Indians dispersed Aunt
Eliza's fowls over several square miles of country, so that the