died. You ask her if she didn't!" The effort of continuous talking
wearied him, and presently he dozed off. Once he woke, and Dorcas was
still on her knees, her head abased. "Dorcas!" he said, and she
answered, "Yes, father!" without raising it; and he slept again. The
bell struck, for the end of service. The parson was awake. He stretched
out his hand, and it trembled a moment and then fell on his daughter's
lowly head.

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ--" the parson said, and went
clearly on to the solemn close.

"Father," said Dorcas. "Father!" She seemed to be crying to One afar.
"Say the other verse, too. What He told the woman."

His hand still on her head, the parson repeated, with a wistful
tenderness stretching back over the past,--

"'Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.'"




NANCY BOYD'S LAST SERMON


It was the lonesome time of the year: not November, that accomplishment
of a gracious death, but the moment before the conscious spring, when
watercourses have not yet stirred in awakening, and buds are only
dreamed of by trees still asleep but for the sweet trouble within their
wood; when the air finds as yet no response to the thrill beginning to