CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.

THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

CALISTA had truly said that she and Jeff understood each other. To oblige her, he even condescended to trot. Just as she reached the town, she met the delinquent Joseph Anderson, and stopped to talk with him.

"Good-morning, Friend Anderson. I was just coming to bring you a note from my aunt."

"I was on my way to see her," was the reply. "I suppose she is in a fret about her interest, as usual. I have had it by me these ten days, but my poor sister Rolfe was so ill, I did not like to be out of the way."

"I heard yesterday she was not as well."

"She is not long for this world, though she is more comfortable this morning," said the old man, shaking his head. "Well, it will be a glorious exchange for her, that is one comfort."

"A great one, I am sure," said Calista.

"Yes, yes, thee is right; but then thee knows the heart will cling to those it loves. Well, I must go on my errand and get back. Thee had better give me the note, perhaps."

Calista did so, and drove on to the bank, where she found Mr. Fabian, an elderly white-haired man, of precise, polite manners, who shook her by the hand, and complimented her on her growing resemblance to her father.

Calista presented her note, which Mr. Fabian read with interest.

"Quite right, quite right, and very sensible on your part, my dear young lady. Yes, I will take care of the things, and have them put into the vault. I knew your father and grandfather well. Pray, call upon me without hesitation if I can be of any service to you."

As Calista was waiting a moment for Mr. Fabian to write a receipt and a note for Miss Druett, she heard an old gentleman, who had been sitting in the back office, say to him—

"Is not that old Richard Stanfield's granddaughter?"

"Granddaughter and heir, if every one had their rights," answered Mr. Fabian in the same tone. "But the second will, if indeed he ever made one, will never be found."

"It may turn up yet."

"Possibly; and then the girl would be a great heir, for the property has increased tenfold in value. I fear the will will never be found. I suspect some one took care of that."

At another time this conversation would have set Calista off into one of the day dreams in which she had so much delighted; but now her head and heart were full of something else.

She asked at the school for Miss McPherson, and heard that she was better, and had gone out driving with Miss Meeks and Tessy; for Miss McPherson kept a handsome, roomy carriage, and drove out with some of her young ladies almost every day. It was not till she was on her way home, and had turned into the river road, that Calista remembered Mary Burns and the missing working-case.

In fact, Calista's mind and head were full of a new and strange trouble. A fierce contention was going on for that small empire—so small, so great—a human soul.

The night before she had fully determined to follow her mother's counsel—to give herself heart and soul to him who had given himself for her. But since then, she had read Miss Priscilla's letter, and her mother's remarks upon it, and hence arose her trouble. This it was which had waked up the lions which disputed her passage, and if the lions were chained, she saw not the chains. She knew that to follow the footsteps of her Lord she must forgive not only her own enemy—she thought that would be almost easy—but her mother's.

"Forgive if ye would be forgiven," rung in her ears, and she felt the words were true.

"If it had been only myself,—" she said over and over again—"but my mother, my dear precious mother, who never did harm to any one in all her days—no, no! I never can! Oh, why did she keep that letter! She might have known! Oh, what shall I do!—What shall I do!"

In her trouble of mind, she had nearly passed Cassius's modest little house, but was recalled by a cheerful greeting from the old man, who was cutting some wood outside the gate.

"Morning, Missy! Don't you mean to stop and give us a call?"

"Yes, of course," answered Calista, recalled from her abstraction, and pulling up Jeff, nothing loth, at the gate. "I will come in if you will fasten the pony."

Cassius tied the pony, and brought him an armful of fragrant new hay from the next field, with which the attention of that ancient sage was soon wholly engrossed.

Meantime, Calista had alighted, and was receiving a hearty welcome from Aunt Sally, who conducted her to the house and seated her in the best chintz-covered rocking-chair, bringing her a fan, and sending a little girl to the well for cool water.

"Who is that little thing?" asked Calista, as the child disappeared. "Your grandchild?"

"Lord bless you, honey, no. My grandchillen's no such peaked, puny little things as that, thanks to Massy. No, that's poor Maria Jackson's child, that works to Mrs. Dare's, the dressmaker. You see, Mrs. Dare she can't very well have the child round—she can't, really—and Maria boarded the little thing out, down to Gouldtown. But the woman that had her didn't do her justice—made her work far too hard, though Maria paid her regular. Besides, she didn't give her half enough to eat. One day I met Maria in the street, and says she,—

"'Just look at this child, will you!'

"And says I, 'For Massy, Maria, what ails her?'

"So she up and told me, and Sister Wilson, that was with her, said it was all so.

"And says I, 'Maria, you just let me have her a few weeks, and you won't know her. Don't you never send her back to that woman,' says I.

"'But I don't know as I can afford to pay what it is worth,' says she.

"'Never mind,' says I; 'you pay what you can, or don't pay anything. Just let me have her a few weeks, and see what I can do with her. And Cassius says the same.'

"So we brought her home, and she's picked up wonderful in a week."

"But I thought the Gouldtowners were pretty nice people," said Calista, as she fanned herself and admired the cool, cheerful aspect of the room.

"So they are—so they are; but Missy knows there's a black sheep in every flock!"

"They's all middling black sheep up to Gouldtown!" said old Cassius, who had entered in time to hear the last remark.

Calista smiled, and the old woman laughed they heartily.

"So they are, old man—so they are; but that's only the outside. Bless the Master's name, he don't look at their skins. And old Sister Williams, she told me herself that the folks was up in arms about the way this child was treated. But I'm most sorry we took her, for she's such a smart, clever, lively little piece, I sha'n't never want to part with her."

All this time Sally had been, on hospitable thoughts intent, covering a little table with a white cloth, and setting thereon white bread, golden butter, a great pitcher of milk and cream, and various other good things. Having finished her preparations, she invited Calista to draw her chair to the table, excusing herself for having no meat cooked.

"This hot weather we don't do much cooking. We generally eats bread and milk, or some such thing, at noon, and I cooks something for supper. But I can make a fire and boil Missy some eggs in a minute."

"No, thank you," said Calista. "I like this beautiful, cool milk better than anything."

"That's just what Drusella Pine says," replied old Sally, much delighted. "She says, 'Aunt, we can get meat in the city, but we can't get such milk as you have here—not for no price,' says she."

"Philadelphy's pretty well off for milk, too, for a city," remarked Cassius. "Not like New York."

Cassius always spoke of New York with a kind of pitying contempt, as a place which might come to something some time, but could never hope to vie, either in beauty or importance, with "Philadelphy."

"I wanted to ask about Drusella," said Calista. "When is she coming?"

"We expect her to-night," answered Cassius. "I'm going to meet her at the Cohansey stage and bring her out here. She'll stay with us a few weeks, and then, I expect, she'll have to rent a room in Cohansey. It is too far out here for her business."

"I asked because I thought she would, perhaps, do some work for me," said Calista. "Miss Druett wants me to have a couple of dresses made, and she told me to call and see if Drusella could take them home and cut and fit them."

"I'll speak to her about it the first thing Monday morning," said Cassius. "I don't doubt she'll be glad to do the work. I hope Missy means to go to the preaching to-morrow night?"

"Oh, yes, I shall go," said Calista. "Thank you very much, Aunt Sally, for your nice lunch. I only wish I could make you any return for all your kindness to me."

"Law, Missy, don't you think of such a thing!" said Sally. "Your family has done more for us than we can ever pay."

"Well, I'm glad the poor child is going to have some new frocks, for once in her life," she added as Cassius came back to the house. "I only wonder how she came by them. Have a drink, old man?"

"Maybe Miss Priscilla's turning liberal," observed Cassius, accepting the offer.

"Maybe the sky's turning pea-green!" returned Sally, scornfully. "Maybe that milk you're a-drinking is made of melted pearls!"

"Don't taste like it," said Cassius. "Tastes like first-rate cow's milk."

"Much you know how melted pearls taste! There, now, don't go to work in the sun right off. Sit down in the big chair and have a nap. Naps in the middle of the day is good for old folks."

Calista arrived at home just as Friend Anderson and Miss Priscilla had finished their business, which had not been done without some wrangling; Miss Priscilla maintaining that the money was twenty-five cents short.

"Thee is in the wrong," said Jacob Anderson, "but I will pay the money rather than dispute longer. I will thank thee for a receipt."

"What is the use of a receipt when it is endorsed on the bond?" snapped Miss Priscilla.

"I'll trouble thee for the receipt all the same," said the old Friend. "Accidents sometimes happen, and there is so harm in a double security."

"Won't you have a cup of tea, Friend Anderson?" said Miss Druett, struck with the old man's weary expression. "You look very tired."

"No, thank thee, Friend Druett. I am a poor man, but I don't think I could swallow grudged victuals. They would stick in my throat. Thank thee for the offer all the same. Farewell, Priscilla; I hope thee may some day come to a better mind. Remember, if riches don't leave thee, thee will have to leave them. When thee comes to lie on a death-bed, like my poor sister, twenty-five cents won't look quite so big to thee as it does now."

And Jacob Anderson took his departure, having certainly taken the worth of his twenty-five cents out of Miss Priscilla.

"So you had your ride for nothing," remarked Miss Druett.

"Not altogether. I did your errand at the bank, and stopped to see about Drusella Pine. She is coming to-night, and Cassius says he will send her over Monday morning."

"What on earth do you want with Drusella Pine?" asked Miss Priscilla.

"I want her to cut and fit the child's new frocks, and perhaps make one of them. She has not a decent thing to wear."

"She is not coming here to make it, I can tell you that," said Miss Priscilla, in alarm. "I won't have a dressmaker eating more than her day's wages, and telling and tattling about family matters all over."

"Don't alarm yourself, I have no intention of having her here," replied Miss Druett; "she need not come into the house, if you prefer she should not. Calista and I can go over there. Don't you want some dinner, child?"

"No, thank you, Miss Druett. I had a good lunch of bread and milk and gingerbread at Aunt Sally's?"

"Sally makes a great deal of you, it seems to me," said Miss Priscilla. "I dare say she would not offer me so much as a crust."

"Oh, yes, she would, aunt; try her and see."

"Did you hear any news?" asked Miss Druett.

"Only about Mrs. Rolfe; they say she cannot live but a few days, at the outside."

"That will be a great relief to her family," said Miss Priscilla; "it must cost a great deal to have her ill so long."

"I don't believe they feel in that way," observed Calista; "they are all very fond of 'Aunty Rolfe,' as they call her. Can I do anything for you, Miss Druett?"

"No, child, unless you can find a brick to heat for my face. I am going to try to get a little sleep, for I had none last night."

Calista found the brick and heated it, and having done all in her power to make Miss Druett comfortable, she betook herself to her own room.

How she would have liked to set her mother's work-box and writing-desk on the table; but she knew it would never do, though she did venture to arrange her small store of books on two shelves which had long ago been put up in a corner. These books were, as I have said, chiefly religious; but there was a thick, fine-printed but handsome Shakespeare, with her father's name in it, and some volumes of English poetry—Cowper, Goldsmith, Young's "Night Thoughts," and others of that stamp. There was a "Saint's Rest," much used and blotted here and there with tears; a "Pilgrim's Progress," apparently quite new, and the "Life of Mrs. Fletcher," by H. More.

The next morning, Miss Druett was really ill with a severe cold, and Calista, was kept busy all day running and waiting on her. As it came towards night, however, Miss Druett felt better, and insisted on Calista going to the meeting. Calista had felt a dull, miserable pain at her heart all day; she could see no way of deliverance, and she did not hope for much help at the meeting; but she had promised to go, and she went.

She was surprised to see what a large congregation had been collected by the exertions of Cassius and the others who had interested themselves in the matter. Sally and her husband had washed the windows and floor, dusted the benches and pulpit, and really made the poor deserted old sanctuary look bright and cheerful. Cassius, who was acting as sexton, assigned Calista a seat near the desk, where the minister was already seated.

He was an elderly, somewhat hard-featured man, who looked as some one said of another minister, as if he had been through the fire and come out brightened and also a little hardened by the process. He glanced at Calista with peculiar interest, and Calista wondered whether he was thinking that she looked like her father. That, however, was not the case. He was thinking, "That child looks as if she were in some great trouble. I wonder what it is. God help her."

The service began with a hymn, then a chapter in the Bible—the first of St. John's gospel—then a prayer, and then came the announcement of the text, taken from the same chapter:

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."

The style was so plain that a child could have understood it; plain with the simplicity of high cultivation and much reading, and also that of deep feeling. It was evident that the preacher meant every word he said. Calista drank it in as a man dying in the alkaline desert would take in a draught of cool, fair water brought from a mountain spring. Here was the Saviour she needed—he who was called Jesus, because he came to save his people from their sins; because his blood cleansed away sin; because he suffered in their stead; because he blotted out transgression in the past and promised help for the future.

As the preacher went on in his even, mellow voice, so clear, so calm and tender, setting forth Jesus Christ crucified in the place of sinners, Calista's head sank down on the bench before her, and her full heart overflowed at her. The question was no longer with her, "Can I forgive Aunt Priscilla?" but "What, oh, what can I do for him who has done so much for me; who has paid the debt I owed; who has so loved me all these years that I have never thought of him at all?"

Calista's was not the only bowed head in the assembly. There was a universal silence and hush, and even the careless and wild young men whose presence in the back part of the room had caused Cassius and others some anxiety sat hushed and silent.

The sermon was short—too short for Calista, who would have liked to sit an hour longer. The speaker announced that a prayer meeting would be held in the same place on Wednesday evening, and that after the service, he should be glad to converse with any one who wished for further religious instruction. Then a hymn was sung and the congregation dismissed.

Two or three of the better class of neighbors came up to speak to the minister.

And one grave, formal old man, after saying good-evening, turned to Cassius and reproved him, with some asperity, for letting in Tom Edgar and his companions.

"Why, Mr. Heminway, I thought they were just the people who needed the gospel," answered Cassius, no ways abashed. "I suppose Tom Edgar has a soul to be saved, and that the Lord died to save it, and he ain't any worse than the publicans and sinners that same Lord preached to and sat down to table with."

"That was very different," said the old man. "Tom Edgar is a swearing, fighting, drunken sot,—the pest of the whole neighborhood."

"So much the more need of his having the gospel preached to him," returned Cassius. "Ain't that so, Mr. Alger?"

"Certainly," answered the minister, promptly. "Was that tall, dark young man by the door Tom Edgar? I looked at him several times, and thought him quiet and attentive enough. He sings very finely."

"Well, Mr. Alger, all I have to say is, that if you encourage such sort of people, you will have enough of it. That is the worst of these outside and out of the way meetings. They draw in all the riffraff of the community. * If only the respectable people will come, it would be very well."

* This is no exaggeration.

"Inasmuch as there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance, perhaps that may be an effect of outside meetings not altogether displeasing to him who has promised to be in the midst of us," said Mr. Alger, mildly.

Mr. Heminway deigned no answer, but walked away.

"Well, for my part, I was downright glad to see the poor young fellow come in," said Mr. Davis, a small, plain man, who rented one of Miss Priscilla's farms. "Tom Edgar was just one of the nicest little boys that ever lived to begin with, but he hadn't much chance. His father never spoke a kind word to him, and whipped him half to death for every little fault, and his stepmother, who was young and a kind-hearted little thing, thought to make it up by indulging him in everything, and covering up his faults just as far as she could. Tom ain't altogether bad. Don't you remember how he risked his life nursing that poor creature that had the fever up in the woods here?"

"I must try to have a talk with him," said the minister. "Who was that very pretty girl who sat near the desk and seemed so much affected?"

"Oh, that was old Miss Stanfield's niece," said Mr. Heminway, who had rejoined the group.

"That was Miss Calista Stanfield, daughter of Mr. Richard, and granddaughter of old General Stanfield of the mansion house," said Cassius, with a glance of severe rebuke at the first speaker. "She is as fine a young lady as any in the country."

"That she is," rejoined Mr. Davis. "I wish her aunt was only half as much of a lady. I wonder why Miss Druett wasn't down. I kind of thought she would be."

"Oh, she's sick abed with a cold. As to Miss Priscilla, I should think the millennium was coming sure enough if I should see her in a religious meeting. Well, Mr. Alger, I'm sure we have had a profitable time to-night, and I hope it may be the beginning of better things."

Calista went home as it were on wings. She hardly felt the ground on which she trod. The whole world seemed changed to her. Here was the Friend, the Protector, the Helper, the Physician, she needed, all in one. She had been walking in darkness, and here was light; hungry and thirsty, and here was the bread and the water of life; shut in with bolts and bars, and here was the deliverer who had broken the gates of brass and burst the bars of iron asunder, and the guide who would lead and teach her in the way she should go. She had been fighting with what she knew to be sin, and here was one who came before her saying, gently,—

"'Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.'

"'I, even I, am he that comforteth you.'"

Calista had, of course, much to learn of the force of temptation, of inbred sin, and of the corruption of her own heart, but of these things she did not think, nor would there have been any wisdom, but quite the contrary, in telling her of them. The traveller who sets out on a long journey knows very well that he will meet many discomforts, trials, and dangers; but he would be a foolish man who should lose the freshness of the morning, and the singing of the birds, and the beauty of flowers and scenery, in pondering over these coming dangers and trials.

Calista went up to Miss Druett's room, and softly opened the door.

"Come in, child, I am not asleep," said Miss Druett. "Come and tell me how you liked the meeting."

"Oh, so much, Miss Druett. How I wish you had been there."

"Then you had a fine sermon?"

"I don't know whether it was fine or not," answered Calista. "I never thought. I knew it was just what I wanted."

Miss Druett drew Calista nearer to her, and fixed her piercing eyes on her face. Then she sighed deeply.

"I see," said she. "You have found him of whom Moses and the Prophets did write."

"You are not sorry, are you, Miss Druett?"

"No, child! Heaven forbid! I found him once, or so I thought; but I lost him again."

"Oh, Miss Druett! Surely he did not forsake you!"

"No: I forsook him. I quarrelled with him because he would not give me the sweets I cried for, and I have never seen him since. I shall never find him again, I fear."

"Perhaps he will find you," said Calista softly. "You know that was what he came for—to seek and to save that which was lost."

Miss Druett had always rather suffered than returned Calista's caresses, but now she drew the girl down to her, and held her in a long, close embrace.

"Get your Bible and read the same chapter the minister read."

Calista obeyed, and Miss Druett listened with evident pleasure and interest.

"To think that any man with a heart could turn that into ridicule, whether he believed it or not!" said she when the chapter was finished. "Now tell me what hymns they sang. Do you know any of them?"

"Yes, ma'am. I know the whole of—"

"'Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,—'

"because we sing it sometimes in church."

"Sing it."

Calista sang the tender, simple old hymn, worth more than whole piles of sentimental stuff which go under the name of hymns in some quarters in these days. Miss Druett listened, and more than one tear stole out from under her closed eyelids.

Miss Priscilla listened as she nodded over her volume of Rousseau, in the parlors below, and made up her mind that she was not going to have that sort of thing going on in the house to please Druey nor any one else.

"Thank you, child. Your voice is like your father's and your grandmother's. There, get me some fresh water, and leave me alone. I dare say I shall have a good night."