angel dropped the traditional tear over this ruin of another young life, but it caused not a ripple of pity in the community of the saints. Nor did its victim consider herself an object of pity, any more than does Miss Blank who marries millions or a title.
Apostle Jones was thrifty, but this event called for munificence. The eastern façade of his one-story mansion was decorated with yet another door with its quota of windows, while the plush sofa and bright-flowered carpet of the little parlor were the envy of the neighborhood and a sad thorn in the flesh to Sarah Mary and Christine, who drew suddenly nearer in the face of this new calamity.
Mother Evelyn beheld these preparations unmoved. The fountain of tears was dried, she said to herself—her husband was nothing to her now. But she loved Joan, and suffered a pang that the girl should be willing to supplant her even in appearance. This too passed when Joan flung herself penitently at her feet and, sobbing, begged her forgiveness if she were robbing her further of her rights. "For he's your husband!" she exclaimed, springing up, flushed with shame; "me and these other women are" She could not say the word. Joan, the wife, had changed her views on the subject of wedlock.
Mother Evelyn drew the girl again to her side and gently stroked the rich black hair. "You have robbed me of nothing, my dear. The man I married is long since dead. You are a good girl, and you could hardly have refused the Apostle safely. Power counts for right here. So come and see me often, but never mention him again."
Joan took up her new life bravely. If there were dark hours in the night when she lay and writhed with shame as she thought of her relations with the man beside her, or if there were other hours scarcely less dark when tender dreams of a love that might have been stole into her mind, she kept the fact to herself. These belonged to the night, when weariness and gloom steal the purpose from our hearts; morning found her resolute and cheerful, and few who saw her, blithe and self-contained, dreamed that the bonds of plural wedlock rested heavily on handsome Joan.
But a cloud no bigger than a man's hand was stealing over the Apostle's horizon. Who ever heard of a wife, young and petted, demanding equal favors for the rivals she had supplanted? Did the Apostle bring home a basket of fruit for his love, she must immediately divide it with Sarah Mary and Christine, after slipping the finest pieces into Mother Evelyn's larder. Did he bring her a new ribbon, she begged him not to fail to remember the others soon. The thrifty patriarch was sorely troubled over this generosity, for there is a wide difference between providing the frivolities of life for one and furnishing the same to four, with a contingent of rapidly growing children. The great man at length felt called upon to remonstrate with his be-
