unwritten; whether the parable had not better be left without an
interpretation. But it is written and it shall stand. And so this
simple story goes from my hands, I trust to do some little good, by
hinting to clerical readers how some problems concerning Christian
work appear to a layman's mind, and by quickening lay readers to
share more generously in their pastors' labors and to understand
more sympathetically their pastor's trials.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

The Knoll, Cornwall on the Hudson, N. Y.






LAICUS.

CHAPTER I.

How I happened to go to Wheathedge.





ABOUT sixty miles north of New York city,--not as the crow flies, for
of the course of that bird I have no knowledge or information
sufficient to form a belief, but as the Mary Powell ploughs her way