The Rev. Mr. Freeland looked down the long, narrow poorhouse table, and then glanced inquiringly at the matron.  
"What has become of Harriet Blake, Mrs. Markham?" he asked. "I thought she sat at this table—I hope she's not ill?"
 
"Harriet's backslid," announced the Widow Sheldon laconically. She was a Baptist, of the variety sometimes known as hard-shelled, and made nothing of interrupting the discourse of any representative of a denomination unpleasing to her.
 
"Backslid?" repeated the reverend guest, dropping his napkin.
 
"She don't believe in——"
 
"Harriet," interrupted the matron, somewhat crossly, and with an unconcealed frown for the Widow Sheldon, "Harriet is taking her dinner alone. She—she is not quite well, I think. I will[104] speak to you about her later," she added as the pastor's eyes grew round at her. The widow Sheldon sniffed loudly.
 
"A person who has ter have her vittles carried up ter the bed-chamber on account o' losing any little faith she might 'a had," she began, but old Uncle Peterson broke in with his gentle drawl:
 
"Oh, come on, Mis' Sheldon, don't go and spile a good biled dinner with words o' bitterness," he urged. "Harriet's a good woman, as is known to all, and if she's travellin' through dark ways just now——"
 
The pastor looked puzzled, but he saw that the subject was better left alone: previous visits to the poorhouse had led him to dread the Widow Sheldon's tongue. He nodded approvingly at Uncle Peterson.
 
"Quite right, quite right," he said quickly. "That's the spirit for us all to have. Shall I ask the blessing, Mrs. Markham?" And the meal went on.
 
But there was something in the air that hot Sunday noon; something that lent variety to the[105] usual monotony of the querulous meal-times. There was less comment on the food than was usual, and the Widow Sheldon's resentful silence was more impressive than her ordinary vindictive volubility. It appeared that something had actually happened.
 
Once in her private sitting-room the matron began, low-voiced, with an occasional glance at the closed door, as if to make certain that no curious inmate lurked behind it:
 
"If Harriet Blake doesn't grow more sensible very soon I shall certainly go crazy; I invited you, Mr. Freeland, to dinner to-day because Harriet used to like your prayers in the afternoon, and it may help her to talk to you—but I don't know. She's a very obstinate old lady. The whole house talks about nothing else, and she's just morbid enough to like it. They gossip about her and fight about her till the air is blue with it. It was bad enough at election time, but religion is worse than politics."
 
The pastor made as if he would interrupt, but she overbore him.
 
[106] "If you can't stop her she must go home to her niece, though she can't really afford to keep her and oughtn't to be asked——"
 
"Do I understand that Harriet is in doubt—has lost her Christian faith?"
 
"Oh, well—no; but in a way I suppose she has. She says that she—she can't see—in fact, she doesn't believe any more in the Holy Ghost!"
 
"Doesn't believe in h—in it?" Mr. Freeland was absolutely unprepared for precisely this form of agnosticism, and showed it.
 
"She says she doesn't see any sense in it," responded Mrs. Markham, briefly.
 
"Oh—ah, yes!" The pastor looked vaguely over her head. There was a pause, and then he gathered himself together.
 
"But this—this is all wrong!" he said forcibly.
 
"So we tell her," replied the matron.
 
"It is sinful—it is extremely dangerous!" he repeated, still more forcibly.
 
"That's what the Widow Sheldon says," replied the matron. "She lectures her about it every meal,[107] and Harriet can't stand it. She says she can't help what she believes, and I can't blame her for that."
 
"How long——"
 
"She's been so for two weeks now, and she gets worse and worse. I had the Methodist minister—Harriet used to attend that church—up to talk to her about it, to see if she'd feel better, and he talked for four hours. Harriet sat as still as a stone, he said, and never moved or paid the least attention to him. Finally he asked her why she didn't answer, and she said he hadn't asked her opinion that she could see. So he asked her what it was, and she said that the Lord Almighty created the earth and that his Son, the Redeemer, saved it, and she didn't see anything more for the Holy Ghost to do. And everything that he told her she said one or the other could do perfectly well alone! And the angrier Mr. Dent got, the calmer Harriet was, I suppose, for he left in a rage, almost—I suppose it was trying, even for a minister—and when I went up to Harriet she seemed very calm. She told me triumphantly that the last thing she[108] did was to show him that big Bible of hers with the picture in the front, where she's crossed out the figure of the dove with ink, and to tell him that she was no Papist, to worship graven images of birds!"
 
Mr. Freeland shook his head gravely. "Dear, dear, dear!" he said.
 
"And then I got Dr. Henshawe from St. Mary's, in the city, you know, who's out here this summer, to come in. He's a very fine man, and very interesting. He stayed a while with Harriet, and told her not to mind, but to go on, and pray, and do the best she could, and she couldn't be blamed. He told me afterwards that he was far from considering her religious condition a safe one, but that she would soon be ill, and was growing morbid, and he tried to soothe her. She fell into a dreadful passion, and called him a lukewarm Jesuit, and told him that she was going to hell just because she couldn't believe in the Holy Ghost! He was very polite and quiet, and picked a rose when he went—he complimented the house—but Harriet wouldn't eat any dinner nor tea,[109] she was so angry. Of course it excites the others—they haven't much to think about, you know—and I'm really growing nervous. Old William Peterson, that gentle old man, preached a revivalist sermon day before yesterday, and got them all stirred up, so that Mrs. Sheldon groaned and cried all night, and kept Sarah Waters awake. And when Sarah stays awake all night, there's no living with her—none!"
 
Mr. Freeland looked frankly puzzled. He was not a particularly able man, and very far from originality of any sort. His doctrinal position, though always considered very solid, was somewhat stereotyped, and he had never happened to run against this peculiar form of apostasy. But he was a kindly man, and very honestly convinced of the responsibility of his position; moreover, he remembered Harriet pleasantly; he had thought her a very nice old lady. So he took his little Bible out of his pocket, and hoped that a desire to succeed where Mr. Dent and Dr. Henshawe had failed would not be accounted to him for unrighteousness.
 
[110] Mrs. Markham led the way across the hall and up the stairs. Before a door she paused to say, "As long as Harriet is upset in this way she has the room alone, because Mary Smith scolds her all night for being so sinful, and it makes them both cross. Mary is in the hall-room, and talks in her sleep so that nobody can rest very well. It doesn't disturb Harriet at all, she's such a sound sleeper, and I wish she could go back! You don't know how this disturbs us! Remember that we have prayer-meeting at half-past four," and she left him alone before the door.
 
Mr. Freeland knocked loudly and entered. Before him in the clean, bare room, with its rag-carpets, mats, and pine furnishings, sat a little old woman, her hands folded in her lap, her head erect, her eyes fixed uncompromisingly on the door. He started as he saw her face; it was so changed from the time, two weeks or more ago, when he had delivered that admirable prayer for charity and loving kindness on the occasion when the Widow Sheldon had thrown the butter-plate at old Mis' Landers. Thin and sunken, with dark[111] serried hollows under her still bright eyes—she had aged ten years in those weeks.
 
"My sister, my poor, suffering, misled sister," began the pastor; but Harriet's eyes flashed ominously.
 
"If you come to talk to me about that Holy Ghost, I ain't got nothin' to say," she declared, "an' if you think I'm goin' to say another word myself, you're mistaken. I'm a pore sinful woman, but I ain't goin' to be pestered t' death! I'm doin' the best I can 'bout it, an' I've prayed 'bout it, an' Mr. Dent an' a Papist, they both talked 'bout it till I nearly died. I don't see any more sense in it than I did before—not a morsel. So if that's what brought you, you might just as well start back this minute!"
 
Her reverend guest stared at her dumfounded. Was this the little woman who had pressed his hand at the prayer-meeting and thanked him so piously, so meekly, for such "beautiful prayin'?"
 
"You are greatly changed since I saw you last, Miss Blake," he said gravely. "Your spirit was[112] gentler, your mind was more religiously inclined. I found you——"
 
"You didn't find me pestered t' death," said Harriet briefly, somewhat mollified by his "Miss Blake."
 
"I was led to believe that you were suffering, that you were in trouble," hazarded the pastor.
 
Never in his somewhat self-sufficient life had he felt such difficulty in giving spiritual advice. Even to his thick-skinned personality it was deeply evident that this sharp-tongued little woman was in great trouble. Ordinarily, a certain facility for quotation and application made him a confident speaker, but to-day he felt impeded, held back by the self-control and patience of his listener. For he saw that she was patient; that she could say much more if she chose; that she was, beneath all her sharpness, alarmed and worried.
 
His somewhat perplexed air, his evident memory of her earlier estate, his startled recognition of her changed appearance had the effect that[113] nothing else could have had. Her hands twisted nervously in her lap, her mouth twitched, she dropped her eyes, and opened her lips once or twice without speaking. Suddenly, with a little gasp, she began:
 
"If you think I don't care, you're mistaken. I'm just about sick. I been a Christian and a good believer all my life, and now I ain't. Maybe I don't care about that? They just pester me t' death, and Mis' Markham, she can't stop 'em. They'll send me back to Sarah's, that's my niece, and they can't keep me there. They ain't good to me there, and I get fever 'n ague every day o' my life there. But I can't help it—I can't help it! I got ter go!"
 
Some good angel held Mr. Freeland silent, and after a moment she went on.
 
"I'm sixty-two years old, and I never was anything but a churchgoer an' a believer. Two weeks ago to-day I set in this chair an' looked out the winder, an' I see the birds pickin' in the front yard."
 
He followed her eyes and watched for a mo[114]ment the poor house pigeons preening and posing in the noon sun. They whitened the summer grass, and their clucking and cooing formed the undertone of the old woman's confession.
 
"I see 'em there, and I got thinkin' about the dove in my Bible an' the Holy Ghost. And it just come into my mind like a shot—what's the good of it? What'd it ever done for me? What's the sense of a bird, anyhow? An' I worked over it, and I worried over it, an' I got to talkin' with Mis' Sheldon about it while we was workin' together, and she just made me hate it more. She said I'd go to hell—me, a believer for sixty-two years! An' I've cried till I can't cry any more, an' I've prayed till I'm tired of prayin', and nothin' happens to me exceptin' I hate it more. An' if they send me back to Sarah's I'll die, that's the truth. But I'll have t' go—I'll have t' go!"
 
She rocked back and forth, dry-eyed, but in an agony of grief. The pastor remembered the time when he had wrestled with certain damnation in the form of terrib............