sense of comradeship. For these reasons it is possible to fall violently in love more than once, and there are dozens of people who possess this magnetic power over us and would respond to it violently if we only came in social contact with them. That the romantic bombast about the possibility of but one love in life, and that of supernatural origin, is twaddle, and leads to false ideals. Have I given the argument?"

"Exactly. But what do you deduce from it?" "Freedom!"

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Good!" he cried, licking his lips.

"Freedom from superstitions about love," she answered, "and positive knowledge of its elemental beauty which Nature reveals. In short, I no longer wonder and brood over your charm for me. I know exactly what it means, and how it might occur again and again with another and another. I have simply throttled it in a moment by an act of my will, based on this knowledge."

"You amaze me."

"No doubt. One's character centres in the soul, or the appetites. Mine is in the soul, yours in the appetites. I see you to-day as you really are, and I loathe you with an unspeakable loathing. You have opened my eyes with' this beautiful little book of Nature. I thank you. Your scientist has convinced me that there are possibly a hundred men in the world who would affect me as you do, were we to meet. And when I looked back into the sweet face of my dead boy, I learned another truth, that in the union of my first great love I was bound in marriage, not simply by a social convention, or a state contract, but for life by Nature's eternal law. The period of infancy of one child extends over twenty-one years, covering the whole maternal life of the woman who marries at the proper age of twenty-four. This union of one

man and one woman never seemed so sacred to me as now. It is Nature's law, it is God's law."

MeLeod's anger was fast rising.

'Don't fool yourself," he sneered, "You may overwork your maternal intuitions. You remember the kiss you gave me when a boy just fifteen? Well, you fooled yourself then about its maternal quality. The magnet of my red head drew your coal black one down to it with irresistible power."

"Perhaps so, Allan. Your work is done. There is the door. I say a last good-bye, with pity for your shallow nature, and the bitter revelation you have given me of your worthlessness."

Without another word he left, but with a dark resolution of slander with which he would tarnish her name, and wring the Preacher's heart with anguish.

CHAPTER XXI

WHY THE PREACHER THREW HIS LIFE AWAY

W

HILE Mrs. Worth and Sallie were still in the North, the Rev. John Durham received a unanimous call to the pastorate of one of the most powerful Baptist churches in Boston, with a salary of five thousand dollars a year. He was receiving a salary of nine hundred dollars at Hambright, which could boast at most a population of two thousand. He declined the call by return mail.

The committee were thunderstruck at this quick adverse decision, refused to consider it final, and wrote him a long urgent letter of protest against such ill-considered treatment. They urged that he must come to Boston, and preach one Sunday, at least, in answer to their generous offer, before rendering a final decision. He consented to do so, and went to Boston. He sought Sallie the day after his arrival.

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'Ah, my beautiful daughter of the South, it's good to see you shining here in the midst of the splendours of the Hub, the fairest of them all!" he said shaking her hand feelingly.

"You mean pining, not shining," she protested.

That's better still. I knew your heart was in the right place!"

"How is he, Doctor?" she asked.

"He's trying to pull himself together with his work, and succeeding. The shock of a great sorrow has steadied

his nerves, broadened his sympathies, and it will make him a man."

A look of longing came over her face. "I don't want him to be too strong without me," she faltered.

"Never fear. He's so despondent at times I have to try to laugh him out of countenance."

She smiled and pressed his hand for answer as he rose to go.

"How do you like these Yankees, Miss Sallie?"

"I've been surprised and charmed beyond measure with everything I've seen!"

"You don't say so! How?"

"Well, I thought they were cold-blooded and inhospitable. I never made a more foolish mistake.

I have never been more at home, or been treated more graciously in the South. To tell you the truth, they seem like our most cultured people at home, warm-hearted, cordial, sensible and neighbourly. Mama is so pleased she's trying to claim kin with the Puritans, through her Scotch Covenanter ancestry."

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'After all, I believe you are right. I never preached in my life to so sensitive an audience. There's an atmosphere of solid comfort, good sense, and intelligence that holds me in a spell here. This is the place in which I've dreamed I'd like to live and work."

"Then you will accept, Doctor?"

"Now listen to you, child! Don't you think I've a heart too? My brain and body longs for such a home, but my heart's down South with mine own people who love and need me."

The committee did their best to bring the Preacher to a favourable decision at once, but he smiled a firm refusal. They refused to report it to the church, and sent Deacon Crane, now a venerable man of seventy-six, the warmest admirer of the Preacher among them all to

Hambright. They authorised him to make an amazing offer of salary, if that would be any inducement, and they felt sure it would.

When the Deacon reached Hambright and saw its poverty and general air of unimportance he felt encouraged.

"A man of such power stay a lifetime in this little hole! Impossible!" he exclaimed under his breath, when he looked out of the bus along the wide deserted looking streets with a straggling cottage here and there on either side.

He stopped at the same hotel with the Preacher and became his shadow for a week. He was seated with him under the oak in the square, threshing over his argument for the hundredth time, in the most good-natured, but everlastingly persistent way.

Doctor, it's perfect nonsense for a man of your magnificent talents, of your culture and power over an audience, to think of living always in a little village like this!" No, deacon, my work is here for the South."

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66 But, my dear man, in Boston, it would be for the whole nation, North and South. I'll tell you what we will do. Say you will come, and we will make your salary eight thousand a year. That's the largest salary ever offered a Baptist preacher in America. You will pack our church with people, give us new life, and we can afford it. You will be a power in Boston, and a power in the world."

At length he said,
You pay me the

The Preacher smiled and was silent. "I appreciate your offer, deacon. highest compliment you know how to express. But you prosperous Yankees can't get into your heads the idea that there are many things which money can't measure." "But we know a good thing when we see it, and we go for it!" interrupted the deacon.