upon him with a cry, " Oh, father, I see fire always there—last winter when I burned my finger—oh, always such pain!"
The minister's voice broke as he said, "Oh, Nathaniel, the blessed ease when all this travail is gone by and thou knowest thyself to be of the elect."
Nathaniel screamed out at this, a fleck of froth showing on his lips. "That is the horrible thing—I know I am not one of the saved. My heart is all full of carnal pleasures and desires. To look at the sun on the hill side—why I love it so that I forget my soul—hell—God"
His father gave a deep shocked groan and put his hand over the quivering lips. "Be not a bitterness to him that begot you. Hush!"
The fever of excitement left the boy and he fell down with his face in the pillow to lie there motionless until his parents went out for second meeting, leaving him alone in the house. "Confidence must be rooted out of his tabernacle," said his father sternly. "The spirit of God is surely working in his heart in which I see many of my own besetting sins."
Nathaniel sprang up, when he heard the door shut, with a distracted idea of escape, now that his jailers were away, and felt an icy stirring in the roots of his hair at the realization that his misery lay within, that the walls of his own flesh and blood shut it inexorably into his heart forever. He threw open the window and leaned out.
The old negress came out of the woods at the other end of the street, her turban gleaming red. She moved in a cautious silence past the meeting-house, but when
