"I've got to go and begin out the elderberry pasture this afternoon," said Peter dolefully. "I tell you it's a tough job. Mr. Roger might wait for cool weather before he sets people to stumping out elderberries, and that's a fact."  
"Why don't you tell him so?" asked Dan.
 
"It ain't my business to tell him things," retorted Peter. "I'm hired to do what I'm told, and I do it. But I can have my own opinion all the same. It's going to be a hot day."
 
We were all in the , except Felix, who had gone to the post-office. It was the forenoon of an August Saturday. Cecily and Sara Ray, who had come up to spend the day with us—her mother having gone to town—were eating timothy roots. Bertha Lawrence, a Charlottetown girl, who had visited Kitty Marr in June, and had gone to school one day with her, had eaten timothy roots, affecting to consider them great . The was at once taken up by the Carlisle schoolgirls. Timothy roots quite "sours" and young raspberry , both of which had the real merit of being quite toothsome, while timothy roots were tough and tasteless. But timothy roots were fashionable, therefore timothy roots must be eaten. Pecks of them must have been in Carlisle that summer.
 
Pat was there also, padding about from one to the other on his black paws, giving us friendly and rubs. We all made much of him except Felicity, who would not take any notice of him because he was the Story Girl's cat.
 
We boys were on the grass. Our morning chores were done and the day was before us. We should have been feeling very comfortable and happy, but, as a matter of fact, we were not particularly so.
 
The Story Girl was sitting on the mint beside the well-house, weaving herself a wreath of buttercups. Felicity was from the cup of clouded blue with an air of unconcern. Each was acutely and conscious of the other's presence, and each was desirous of convincing the rest of us that the other was less than nothing to her. Felicity could not succeed. The Story Girl managed it better. If it had not been for the fact that in all our foregatherings she was careful to sit as far from Felicity as possible, we might have been deceived.
 
We had not passed a very pleasant week. Felicity and the Story Girl had not been "speaking" to each other, and consequently there had been something rotten in the state of Denmark. An air of restraint was over all our games and conversations.
 
On the preceding Monday Felicity and the Story Girl had quarrelled over something. What the cause of the quarrel was I cannot tell because I never knew. It remained a "dead secret" between the parties of the first and second part forever. But it was more bitter than the general run of their , and the consequences were apparent to all. They had not spoken to each other since.
 
This was not because the rancour of either lasted so long. On the contrary it passed speedily away, not even one low sun going down on their . But dignity remained to be considered. Neither would "speak first," and each declared that she would not speak first, no, not in a hundred years. Neither argument, , nor expostulation had any effect on those two stubborn girls, nor yet the tears of sweet Cecily, who cried every night about it, and in her pure little prayers petitions that Felicity and the Story Girl might make up.
 
"I don't know where you expect to go when you die, Felicity," she said tearfully, "if you don't forgive people."
 
"I have forgiven her," was Felicity's answer, "but I am not going to speak first for all that."
 
"It's very wrong, and, more than that, it's so uncomfortable," complained Cecily. "It spoils everything."
 
"Were they ever like this before?" I asked Cecily, as we talked the matter over in Uncle Stephen's Walk.
 
"Never for so long," said Cecily. "They had a spell like this last summer, and one the summer before, but they only lasted a couple of days."
 
"And who first?"
 
"Oh, the Story Girl. She got excited about something and spoke to Felicity before she thought, and then it was all right. But I'm afraid it isn't going to be like that this time. Don't you notice how careful the Story Girl is not to get excited? That is such a bad sign."
 
"We've just got to think up something that will excite her, that's all," I said.
 
"I'm—I'm praying about it," said Cecily in a low voice, her tear-wet trembling against her pale, round cheeks. "Do you suppose it will do any good, Bev?"
 
"Very likely," I assured her. "Remember Sara Ray and the money.
That came from praying."
"I'm glad you think so," said Cecily tremulously. "Dan said it was no use for me to bother praying about it. He said if they COULDN'T speak God might do something, but when they just WOULDN'T it wasn't likely He would . Dan does say such queer things. I'm so afraid he's going to grow up just like Uncle Robert , who never goes to church, and doesn't believe more than half the Bible is true."
 
"Which half does he believe is true?" I inquired with unholy curiosity.
 
"Oh, just the nice parts. He says there's a heaven all right, but no—no—HELL. I don't want Dan to grow up like that. It isn't respectable. And you wouldn't want all kinds of people crowding heaven, now, would you?"
 
"Well, no, I suppose not," I agreed, thinking of Billy Robinson.
 
"Of course, I can't help feeling sorry for those who have to go to THE OTHER PLACE," said Cecily . "But I suppose they wouldn't be very comfortable in heaven either. They wouldn't feel at home. Andrew Marr said a simply dreadful thing about THE OTHER PLACE one night last fall, when Felicity and I were down to see Kitty, and they were burning the potato stalks. He said he believed THE OTHER PLACE must be lots more interesting than heaven because fires were such jolly things. Now, did you ever hear the like?"
 
"I guess it depends a good deal on whether you're inside or outside the fires," I said.
 
"Oh, Andrew didn't really mean it, of course. He just said it to sound smart and make us stare. The Marrs are all like that. But anyhow, I'm going to keep on praying that something will happen to excite the Story Girl. I don't believe there is any use in praying that Felicity will speak first, because I am sure she won't."
 
"But don't you suppose God could make her?" I said, feeling that it wasn't quite fair that the Story Girl should always have to speak first. If she had spoken first the other times it was surely Felicity's turn this time.
 
"Well, I believe it would puzzle Him," said Cecily, out of the depths of her experience with Felicity.
 
Peter, as was to be expected, took Felicity's part, and said the
Story Girl ought to speak first because she was the oldest.
That, he said, had always been his Aunt Jane's rule.
Sara Ray thought Felicity should speak first, because the Story
Girl was half an .
Felix tried to make peace between them, and met the usual fate of all peacemakers. The Story Girl loftily told him that he was too young to understand, and Felicity said that fat boys should mind their own business. After that, Felix declared it would serve Felicity right if the Story Girl never spoke to her again.
 
Dan had no patience with either of the girls, especially
Felicity.
"What they both want is a right good ," he said.
 
If only a spanking would mend the matter it was not likely it would ever be mended. Both Felicity and the Story Girl were rather too old to be , and, if they had not been, none of the grown-ups would have thought it worth while to administer so desperate a remedy for what they considered so a trouble. With the usual of grown-ups, they regarded the coldness between the girls as a subject of mirth and jest, and recked not that it was freezing the current of our youthful souls, and hours that should have been fair pages in our book of days.
 
The Story Girl finished her wreath and put it on. The buttercups over her high, white brow and played peep with her glowing eyes. A dreamy smile around her poppy-red mouth—a significant smile which, to those of us skilled in its , the sentence which soon came.
 
"I know a story about a man who always had his own opinion—"
 
The Story Girl got no further. We never heard the story of the man who always had his own opinion. Felix came tearing up the lane, with a newspaper in his hand. When a boy as fat as Felix runs at full speed on a broiling August forenoon, he has something to run for—as Felicity remarked.
 
"He must have got some bad news at the office," said Sara Ray.
 
"Oh, I hope nothing has happened to father," I exclaimed, springing anxiously to my feet, a sick, horrible feeling of fear running over me like a cool, wave.
 
"It's just as likely to be good news he is running for as bad," said the Story Girl, who was no believer in meeting trouble half way.
 
"He wouldn't be running so fast for good news," said Dan .
 
We were not left long in doubt. The orchard gate flew open and Felix was among us. One glimpse of his face told us that he was no bearer of glad tidings. He had been running hard and should have been . Instead, he was "as pale as are the dead." I could not have asked him what was the matter had my life depended on it. It was Felicity who demanded impatiently of my shaking, voiceless brother:
 
"Felix King, what has scared you?"
 
Felix held out the newspaper—it was the Charlottetown Daily
Enterprise.
"It's there," he . "Look—read—oh, do you—think it's—true? The—end of—the world—is coming to-morrow—at two—o'clock—in the afternoon!"
 
Crash! Felicity had dropped the cup of clouded blue, which had passed unscathed through so many changing years, and now at last lay shattered on the stone of the well . At any other time we should all have been aghast over such a , but it passed unnoticed now. What mattered it that all the cups in the world be broken to-day if the crack o' must sound to-morrow?
 
"Oh, Sara Stanley, do you believe it? DO you?" gasped Felicity, clutching the Story Girl's hand. Cecily's prayer had been answered. Excitement had come with a , and under its stress Felicity had spoken first. But this, like the breaking of the cup, had no significance for us at the moment.
 
The Story Girl snatched the paper and read the announcement to a group on which sudden, tense silence had fallen. Under a headline, "The Last will sound at Two O'clock To-morrow," was a paragraph to the effect that the leader of a certain in the United States had predicted that August twelfth would be the Day, and that all his numerous were preparing for the event by prayer, fasting, and the making of appropriate white garments for ascension robes.
 
I laugh at the remembrance now—until I recall the real horror of fear that enwrapped us in that sunny orchard that August morning of long ago; and then I laugh no more. We were only children, be it remembered, with a very firm and simple faith that grown people knew much more than we did, and a rooted conviction that whatever you read in a newspaper must be true. If the Daily Enterprise said that August twelfth was to be the Judgment Day how were you going to get around it?
 
"Do you believe it, Sara Stanley?" persisted Felicity. "DO you?"
 
"No—no, I don't believe a word of it," said the Story Girl.
 
But for once her voice failed to carry conviction—or, rather, it carried conviction of the very opposite kind. It was borne in upon our minds that if the Story Girl did not altogether believe it was true she believed it might be true; and the possibility was almost as dreadful as the certainty.
 
"It CAN'T be true," said Sara Ray, seeking refuge, as usual, in tears. "Why, everything looks just the same. Things COULDN'T look the same if the Judgment Day was going to be to-morrow."
 
"But that's just the way it's to come," I said uncomfortably. "It tells you in the Bible. It's to come just like a thief in the night."
 
"But it tells you another thing in the Bible, too," said Cecily eagerly. "It says nobody knows when the Judgment Day is to come—not even the angels in heaven. Now, if the angels in heaven don't know it, do you suppose the editor of the Enterprise can know it—and him a , too?"
 
"I guess he knows as much about it as a Tory would," retorted the Story Girl. Uncle Roger was a Liberal and Uncle Alec a Conservative, and the girls held fast to the political traditions of their respective households. "But it isn't really the Enterprise editor at all who is saying it—it's a man in the States who claims to be a prophet. If he IS a prophet perhaps he has found out somehow."
 
"And it's in the paper, too, and that's printed as well as the
Bible," said Dan.
"Well, I'm going to depend on the Bible," said Cecily. "I don't believe it's the Judgment Day to-morrow—but I'm scared, for all that," she added piteously.
 
That was exactly the position of us all. As in the case of the bell-ringing ghost, we did not believe but we trembled.
 
"Nobody might have known when the Bible was written," said Dan, "but maybe somebody knows now. Why, the Bible was written thousands of years ago, and that paper was printed this very morning. There's been time to find out ever so much more."
 
"I want to do so many things," said the Story Girl, plucking off her crown of buttercup gold with a gesture, "but if it's the Judgment Day to-morrow I won't have time to do any of them."
 
"It can't be much worse than dying, I s'pose," said Felix, grasping at any straw of comfort.
 
"I'm awful glad I've got into the habit of going to church and
Sunday School this summer," said Peter very soberly. "I wish I'd
made up my mind before this whether to be a Presbyterian or a
Methodist. Do you s'pose it's too late now?"
"Oh, that doesn't matter," said Cecily earnestly. "If—if you're a , Peter, that is all that's necessary."
 
"But it's too late for that," said Peter miserably. "I can't turn into a Christian between this and two o'clock to-morrow. I'll just have to be satisfied w............