To Dan, through the broad gate artistically set with palings of green and white. Under the sweet old cedars deep down into the heart of the woods, with the solemn mountains rising, grim and mysterious, in the twilight. Down the great bluff where the tinkle of falling water tells of the spring hidden in the dim wood's shadowy heart. The golden arrows of sunset are put out one by one by the shadowhands of the twilight hidden in the haunted hemlocks. One star rises above the trees and peeps down to find itself quivering in the dusky pool. A little bird flits by with an evening hymn fluttering in its throat. They stopped at the foot of the bluff and seated themselves upon a fallen tree, the rifle resting, the stock upon the ground, the muzzle against the tree, between them. Between them, the loaded rifle. She herself had placed it there. They had scarcely spoken, but words are weak; feeling is strong and silent. His heart was breaking; could words help that? It was she who spoke at last, nestling closer to him a moment, then quickly drawing back. Her hand had touched the iron muzzle of the gun it was cold, and it reminded her. She drew her hands together and folded them, palm to palm, between her knees, and held them there, lest the sight of his agony drag them from duty and honor. She could not bear to look at him, she could only speak to him, with her eyes turned away toward the distant mountains. "Donald," her voice was low and very steady, "there are so many mistakes made, dear, and my marriage was one of them. But, the blunder having been committed, I must abide by it. And who knows if, after all, it be a mistake? Who can understand, and who dares judge God's plans? But right cannot grow from wrong. We part. But I shall not leave you, Donald. Here in the heart of the woods -” "Don't!" he lifted his face, white with agony. "Your suffering can but increase mine. Go back, dear, and forget. Our paths crossed too late, too late. Go back, and leave me to my lonely struggles. I shall miss you, oh, my beloved," the words choked him, "forget, forget "Never!" again she moved toward him, and again drew back. The iron muzzle had touched her shoulder, warningly. She still held her hands fast clasped between her knees. Suddenly she loosed them; opened them, looked at them; so frail, so small, so delicately womanly as they were. He, too, saw them, the dear hands, and made a motion to clasp them, restrained himself, and groaned. She understood, and her whole soul responded. The old calm was gone; the wife forgotten. It was only the woman that spoke as she slipped from her place beside him, to the ground at his feet; and extended the poor hands toward him. "Donald, O Donald!" she sobbed. "Look at my hands. How frail they are, and weak, and white, and clean. Aye, they are clean, Donald. Take them in your own; hold them fast one moment, for they are worthy. But oh, my beloved, if they falter or go wrong, those little hands, who would pity their polluted owner? Not you, oh, not you. know the sequel to such madness. Help me to keep them clean. Help me oh, help me!" I She lifted them pleadingly, the tears raining down her cheeks. She, the strong, the noble, appealing to him. In that moment she became a saint, a being to be worshipped afar off, like God. "Help me!" She appealed to him, to his manhood which he had supposed dead so long the hollow corpse would scarcely hear the judgment trump. Her body swayed to and fro with the terrible struggle. Aye, she knew what it was to be tempted. She who would have died for that poor drunkard's peace. But that little mound — that little child's grave on the hill — “Help me!" She reeled forward and he sprang to clasp her. The rifle slipped its place against the log; but it was between them still; the iron muzzle pointed at her heart. There was a flash, a sharp report, and she fell, just missing the arms extended to receive her. "O my God!" the cry broke from him, a wild shriek, torn from his imnost heart. "O my God! my God! I have killed her. Alice! oh, speak to me! speak to me before my brain goes mad." He had dropped beside her, on his knees, and drawn the poor face to his bosom. She opened her eyes and nestled there, closer to his heart. There was no iron muzzle beween them now. She smiled, and whispered, softly: "In the heart of the woods. O Love; O Love!" And seeing that he understood, she laid her hand upon his bosom, gasped once, and the little hands were safe. 66 They would never go wrong" now, never. Even love, which tempts the strongest into sin, could never harm them now, those little dead hands. "In the heart of the woods." It was there they buried her, beside that broken-hearted one whose life went with the tidings from old Shiloh, in the little mountain graveyard in the woods between Dan and Beersheba. As for him, her murderer, they said, "the accident quite drove him mad." Perhaps it did; he thought so, often; only that he never called it by the name of accident. "It was God's plan for helping me," he told himself during those slow hours of torture that followed. There were days and weeks when the very mention of the place would tear his very soul. Then the old craving returned. Drink; he could forget, drown it all if only he could return to the old way of forgetting. But something held him back. What was it? God? No, no. God did not care for such as he, he told himself. He was alone; alone forever now. One night there was a storm, the cedars were lashed and broken, and the windows rattled and shook with the fury of the wind. The rain beat against the roof in torrents. The night was wild, as he was. Oh, he, too, could tear, and howl, and shriek. Tear up the very earth, he thought, if only he let his demon loose. He arose and threw on his clothes. He wanted whiskey; he was tired of the struggle, the madness, the despair. A mile beyond there was a still, an illicit concern, worked only at night. He meant to find it. His brain was giving way, indeed. Had already given way, he thought, as he listened to the wind calling him, the storm luring him on to destruction. The very lightning beckoned him to "come and be healed." Healed? Aye, he knew what it was that healed the agonies of mind which physics could not reach. He knew, he knew. He had been a fool to think he would forego this healing. He laughed as he tore open the door and stepped out into the night. The cool rain struck upon his burning brow as he plunged forward into the arms of the darkness. He had gone but two steps when the fever that had mounted to his brain began to cool. And the wind And the wind-he paused. Was it speaking to him, that wild, midnight wind? "In the heart of the woods. O Love, O Love!"" There was a shimmery glister of lightning among the shadowy growth. Was it a figure, a form of a woman beckoning him, guiding him. He turned away from the midnight still, and followed that shimmery light, straight to the little graveyard in the woods, and fell across the little new mound there, and sobbed like a child that has rebelled and yielded. A soft presence breathed among the shadows; a soft presence that crept to his bosom when he opened his arms, his face still pressed against the soft, new sod. A strange, sweet peace came to him, such as he had never felt before, filling him with restful, chastened, and exquisite sadness. The storm passed by after awhile, and the rain fell softly. as the dew falls on flowers. And he arose and went home, with the chastened peace upon him, and the old passionate pain gone forever. But as the summers drifted by, year after year, he returned. He became a familiar comer to the humble mountain folk, where summer twilight times they saw him leaning on the parson's little gate, conversing with the old man of the "Promised Land" toward which, as "brethren," they were travelling. Sometimes they talked of the blessed dead -the dear, dear dead who are permitted to return to give help to their loved ones. Aye, he believes it, knows it, for the old temptation. assails him no more forever. That is enough to know. And in the heart of the woods in the dewy twilight, or at the solemn midnight, she comes to meet him, unseen but felt, and walks with him again along the way from Dan to Beersheba. He holds communion with her there, and is satisfied and strengthened. God knows, God knows if it be true, she meets him there. But life is no longer agony and struggle with him. And often when he starts upon his lonely walks, he hears the wind passing through the ragged cedars with a low, tremulous soughing and bends his ear to listen. "In the heart of the woods, O Love, O Love." And he understands at last how to those passed on is vouchsafed a power denied the human helper, and that she who would have been his guide and comforter now gave him. better guardianship—a watchful and a holy spirit. EDITORIAL NOTES. THE poisonous and corrupting influence of PhariPHARISAISM IN saism is noticeable in every strata of society, as viPUBLIC LIFE. cious and odious to-day as when the great Galilean, with the supreme contempt of a pure and genuine soul, denounced in such withering terms those who pretended to be what they were not. Evil and repulsive as hypocrisy must ever appear, it assumes colossal proportions as a moral crime, when it masquerades in the robes of official authority, for nothing so surely undermines all respect for law in the mind of the masses as exhibitions of insincerity, inconsistency, and Pharisaism by those invested with power. The people are not so slow witted as the few who take pride in their superior brilliancy imagine. They quickly detect insincerity or hypocrisy; but unfortunately, they frequently do not discriminate between the offender and the office in the nation or the communion which he disgraces. Pharisaism within the Church, far more than assaults from without, has destroyed the old-time influence of theology over the popular mind; while the same results are clearly manifest in our political fabric. In the latter sphere, hypocrisy is doubly odious, in that while undermining the confidence of the people in law, justice, and government, it places far greater power in the hands of pretentious individuals than would be tolerated were it not for their profession of superior virtue, and thus enables persons who are of small moral stature, or who through defective training and unfortunate environment are thoroughly narrow and bigoted, to wield despotic power, often bringing swift and severe punishment on those far less guilty in the eye of the moral law than themselves. Believing as I do that Pharisaism is to-day one of the greatest evils which menace the stability of our government and the continued advance of civilization along the highway of enlightened progress, I feel it an urgent duty to frankly and freely discuss some notable recent illustrations which to unprejudiced minds take on the cast of Pharisaism, and are symptomatic of a condition which presages the moral decline of a nation. For if history teaches one lesson more impressively than another, it is that in which she emphasizes the fact that when Pharisaism becomes enthroned in power, when hypocrisy mantles insincerity and depravity, the soul of a people goes out; and though the form or shadow of former greatness may remain for a time, like the oak which remains standing after the tap-root has been eaten out, vitality, growth, and life have vanished. The first case which calls for attention is that of Joseph A. Britton, and it impressively illustrates the evils which will sooner or later come |