if rather dry, clean-shaven face, and wore his dustcolored hair long behind. His little figure was clad in black clothes of a distinctively clerical fashion, and he had a white neck-cloth neatly tied under his collar. The Wares noted that he looked clean and amiable rather than intellectually or spiritually powerful, as he took the vacant seat between theirs, and joined them in concentrating attention upon Mrs. Soulsby.

This lady, holding herself erect and alert on the edge of the low, big easy-chair, had the air of presiding over a meeting.

"My idea is," she began, with an easy implication that no one else's idea was needed, "that your Quarterly Conference, when it meets on Monday, must be adjourned to Tuesday. We will have the people all out to-morrow morning to love-feast, and announcement can be made there, and at the morning service afterward, that a series of revival meetings are to be begun that same evening. Mr. Soulsby and I can take charge in the evening, and we 'll see to it that that packs the house, fills the church to overflowing Monday evening. Then we 'll quietly turn the meeting into a debt-raising convention, before they know where they are, and we 'll wipe off the best part of the load. Now, don't you see," she turned her eyes full upon Theron as she spoke, you want to hold your Quarterly Conference after this money 's been raised, not before."

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"I see what you mean," Mr. Ware responded gravely.

"But

"But what!" Sister Soulsby interjected, with vivacity.

"Well," said Theron, picking his words, "in the first place, it rests with the Presiding Elder to say whether an adjournment can be made until Tuesday, not with me."

"That's all right. Leave that to me," said the lady.

"In the second place," Theron went on, still more hesitatingly, "there seems a certain — what shall I say?— indirection in — in — "

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"In getting them together for a revival, and springing a debt-raising on them?" Sister Soulsby put in. Why, man alive, that's the best part of it. You ought to be getting some notion by this time what these Octavius folks of yours are like. I've only been here two days, but I've got their measure down to an allspice. Supposing you were to announce to-morrow that the debt was to be raised Monday. How many men with bankaccounts would turn up, do you think? You could put them all in your eye, sir, - all in your eye!" "Very possibly you 're right," faltered the young minister.

"Right? Why, of course I'm right," she said, with placid confidence. "You've got to take folks as you find them; and you've got to find them the best way you can. One place can be

worked, managed, in one way, and another needs quite a different way, and both ways would be dead frosts complete failures - in a third."

Brother Soulsby coughed softly here, and shuffled his feet for an instant on the carpet. His wife resumed her remarks with slightly abated animation, and at a slower pace.

"My experience," she said, "has shown me that the Apostle was right. To properly serve the cause, one must be all things to all men. I have known very queer things indeed turn out to be means of grace. You simply can't get along without some of the wisdom of the serpent. We are commanded to have it, for that matter. And now, speaking of that, do you know when the Presiding Eider arrives in town to-day, and where he is going to eat supper and sleep?”

Theron shook his head. "All I know is he is n't likely to come here," he said, and added sadly, "I'm afraid he's not an admirer of mine."

Perhaps that's not all his fault," commented Sister Soulsby. "I'll tell you something. He came in on the same train as my husband, and that old trustee Pierce of yours was waiting for him with his buggy, and I saw like a flash what was in the wind, and the minute the train stopped I caught the Presiding Elder, and invited him in your name to come right here and stay; told him you and Alice were just set on his coming,

would n't take no for an answer. Of course he

could n't come,

promised old Pierce,

I knew well enough he had

but we got in our invitation anyway, and it won't do you any harm. Now, that's what I call having some gumption, — wisdom of the serpent, and so on."

"I'm sure," remarked Alice, "I should have been mortified to death if he had come. We lost the extension-leaf to our table in moving, and four is all it'll seat decently."

Sister Soulsby smiled winningly into the wife's honest face. "Don't you see, dear," she explained patiently, "I only asked him because I knew he could n't come. A little butter spreads a long way, if it's only intelligently warmed."

"It was certainly very ingenious of you," Theron began almost stiffly. Then he yielded to the humanities, and with a kindling smile added, "And it was as kind as kind could be. I'm afraid your're wrong about it's doing me any good, but I can see how well you meant it, and I'm grateful."

"We could have sneaked in the kitchen table, perhaps, while he was out in the garden, and put on the extra long tablecloth," interjected Alice, musingly.

Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but without any words this time; and Alice on the instant rose, with the remark that she must be going out to see about supper.

"I'm going to insist on coming out to help you," Mrs. Soulsby declared, "as soon as I've talked over one little matter with your husband. Oh, yes, you must let me this time. I insist!"

As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a swift and apparently significant glance shot its way across from Sister Soulsby's roving, eloquent eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her husband. He rose to his feet, made some little explanation about being a gardener himself, and desiring to inspect more closely some rhododendrons he had noticed in the garden, and forthwith moved decorously out by the other door into the front hall. They heard his footsteps on the gravel beneath the window before Mrs. Soulsby spoke again.

"You're right about the Presiding Elder, and you're wrong," she said. "He is n't what one might call precisely in love with you. Oh, I know the story, - how you got into debt at Tyre, and he stepped in and insisted on your being denied Tecumseh and sent here instead."

"He was responsible for that, then, was he?" broke in Theron, with contracted brows.

'Why, don't you make any effort to find out anything at all?" she asked pertly enough, but with such obvious good-nature that he could not but have pleasure in her speech. "Why, of course he did it! Who else did you suppose?"

"Well," said the young minister, despondently,