or twenty years?

II.

EVANGELIST.

"The value of a thought cannot be told."—Bailey.

Her mother's broad, gingham back and the twist of iron gray hair low in her neck greeted her as she opened the door, then the odor of hot biscuits intruded itself, and then there came a shout from somebody kneeling on the oilcloth near the stove and pushing sticks of dry wood through its blazing open door.

"Oh, Marjie, what happened to you?"

"Something didn't happen. I didn't have my spelling or my examples. I read the "Lucy" book in school instead," she confessed dolefully.

"Why, Marjie!" was her mother's exclamation, but it brought the color to Marjorie's face and suffused her eyes.

"We are to have company for tea," announced the figure kneeling on the oilcloth as she banged the stove door. "A stranger; the evangelist Mr. Horton told us about Sunday."

"I know," said Marjorie. "I've read about him in Pilgrim's Progress; he showed Christian the way to the Wicket Gate."

Linnet jumped to her feet and shook a chip from her apron. "O, Goosie!
Don't you know any better?"

Fourteen-year-old Linnet always knew better.

"Where is he?" questioned Marjorie.

"In the parlor. Go and entertain him. Mother and I must get him a good supper: cold chicken, canned raspberries, currant jelly, ham, hot biscuit, plain cake and fruit cake and—butter and—tea."

"I don't know how," hesitated Marjorie.

"Answer his questions, that's all," explained Linnet promptly. "I've told him all I know and now it's your turn."

"I don't like to answer questions," said Marjorie, still doubtfully.

"Oh, only your age and what you study and—if—you are a Christian."

"And he tells you how if you don't know how," said Marjorie, eagerly; "that's what he's for."

"Yes," replied her mother, approvingly, "run in and let him talk to you."

Very shyly glad of the opportunity, and yet dreading it inexpressibly, Marjorie hung her school clothing away and laid her satchel on the shelf in the hall closet, and then stood wavering in the closet, wondering if she dared go in to see Evangelist. He had spoken very kindly to Christian. She longed, oh, how she longed! to find the Wicket Gate, but would she dare ask any questions? Last Sabbath in church she had seen a sweet, beautiful face that she persuaded herself must be Mercy, and now to have Evangelist come to her very door!

What was there to know any better about? She did not care if Linnet had laughed. Linnet never cared to read Pilgrim's Progress.

It is on record that the first book a child reads intensely is the book that will influence all the life.

At ten Marjorie had read Pilgrim's Progress intensely. Timidly, with shining eyes, she stood one moment upon the red mat outside the parlor door, and then, with sudden courage, turned the knob and entered. At a glance she felt that there was no need of courage; Evangelist was seated comfortably in the horse-hair rocker with his feet to the fire resting on the camp stool; he did not look like Evangelist at all, she thought, disappointedly; he reminded her altogether more of a picture of Santa Claus: massive head and shoulders, white beard and moustache, ruddy cheeks, and, as the head turned quickly at her entrance, she beheld, beneath the shaggy, white brows, twinkling blue eyes.

"Ah," he exclaimed, in an abrupt voice, "you are the little girl they were expecting home from school."

"Yes, sir."

He extended a plump, white hand and, not at all shyly, Marjorie laid her hand in it.

"Isn't it late to come from school? Did you play on the way home?"

"No sir; I'm too big for that"

"Doesn't school dismiss earlier?"

"Yes, sir," flushing and dropping her eyes, "but I was kept in."

"Kept in," he repeated, smoothing the little hand. "I'm sure it was not for bad behavior and you look bright enough to learn your lessons."

"I didn't know my lessons," she faltered.

"Then you should have done as Stephen Grellet did," he returned, releasing her hand.

"How did he do?" she asked.

Nobody loved stories better than Marjorie.

Pushing her mother's spring rocker nearer the fire, she sat down, arranged the skirt of her dress, and, prepared herself, not to "entertain" him, but to listen.

"Did you never read about him?"

"I never even heard of him."

"Then I'll tell you something about him. His father was an intimate friend and counsellor of Louis XVI. Stephen was a French boy. Do you know who Louis XVI was?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know the French for Stephen?"

"No, sir."

"Then you don't study French. I'd study everything if I were you. My wife has read the Hebrew Bible through. She is a scholar as well as a good housewife. It needn't hinder, you see."

"No, sir," repeated Marjorie.

"When little Etienne—that's French for Stephen—was five or six years old he had a long Latin exercise to learn, and he was quite disheartened."

Marjorie's eyes opened wide in wonder. Six years old and a long Latin exercise. Even Hollis had not studied Latin.

"Sitting alone, all by himself, to study, he looked out of the window abroad upon nature in all her glorious beauty, and remembered that God made the gardens, the fields and the sky, and the thought came to him: 'Cannot the same God give me memory, also?' Then he knelt at the foot of his bed and poured out his soul in prayer. The prayer was wonderfully answered; on beginning to study again, he found himself master of his hard lesson, and, after that, he acquired learning with great readiness."

It was wonderful, Marjorie thought, and beautiful, but she could not say that; she asked instead: "Did he write about it himself?"

"Yes, he has written all about himself."

"When I was six I didn't know my small letters. Was he so bright because he was French?"

The gentleman laughed and remarked that the French were a pretty bright nation.

"Is that all you know about him?"

"Oh, no, indeed; there's a large book of his memoirs in my library. He visited many of the crowned heads of Europe."

There was another question forming on Marjorie's lips, but at that instant her mother opened the door. Now she would hear no more about Stephen Grellet and she could not ask about the Wicket Gate or Mercy or the children.

Rising in her pretty, respectful manner she gave her mother the spring rocker and pushed an ottoman behind the stove and seated herself where she might watch Evangelist's face as he talked.

How the talk drifted in this direction Marjorie did not understand; she knew it was something about finding the will of the Lord, but a story was coming and she listened with her listening eyes on his face.

"I had been thinking that God would certainly reveal his will if we inquired of him, feeling sure of that, for some time, and then I had this experience."

Marjorie's mother enjoyed "experiences" as well as Marjorie enjoyed stories. And she liked nothing better than to relate her own; after hearing an experience she usually began, "Now