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Marg’et Ann sang in a high and somewhat nasal treble, compassing the extra feet of Mr. Rouse’s doubtful version with skill, and gliding nimbly over the gaps in prosody by the aid of his dextrously elongated syllables.

Some of the older men seemed to dwell upon these peculiarities of versification as being distinctively ecclesiastical and therefore spiritually edifying, and brought up the musical rear of such couplets with long-drawn and profoundly impressive “shy-un’s” and “i-tee’s;” but these irregularities found little favor in the eyes of the younger people, who had attended singing-school and learned to read buckwheat notes under the direction of Jonathan Loomis, the precentor.

Marg’et Ann listened to the Rev. Mr. McClanahan’s elaborately divided discourse, wondering what piece of the logical puzzle Lloyd would declare to be missing; and she glanced rather wistfully once or twice toward the Amen corner where the young man sat, with his head thrown back and his eager eyes fixed upon the minister’s face.

When the intermission came, she ate her sweet cake and her triangle of dried apple pie with the others, and then walked toward the graveyard behind the church. She knew that Lloyd would follow her, and she prayed for grace to speak a word in season.

The young man stalked through the tall grass that choked the path of the little inclosure until he overtook her under a blossoming crab-apple tree.

He had been “going with” Marg’et Ann more than a year, and there was generally supposed to be an understanding between them.

She turned when he came up, and put out her hand without embarrassment, but she blushed as pink as the crab-apple bloom in his grasp.

They talked a little of commonplace things, and Marg’et Ann looked down and swallowed once or twice before she said gravely,–

“I hoped you’d come forward this sacrament, Lloyd.”

The young man’s brow clouded.

“I’ve told you I can’t join the church without telling a lie, Marg’et Ann. You wouldn’t want me to tell a lie,” he said, flushing hotly.

She shook her head, looking down, and twisting her handkerchief into a ball in her hands.

“I know you have doubts about some things; but I thought they might be removed by prayer. Have you prayed earnestly to have them removed?” She looked up at him anxiously.

“I’ve asked to be made to see things right,” he replied, choking a little over this unveiling of his holy of holies; “but I don’t seem to be able to see some things as you do.”

She pondered an instant, looking absently at the headstone of “Hephzibah,” who was the later of Robert McCoy’s two beloved wives, then she said, with an effort, for these staid descendants of Scottish ancestry were not given to glib talking of sacred things:

“I suppose doubts are sent to try our faith; but we have the promise that they will be removed if we ask in the right spirit. Are you sure you have asked in the right spirit, Lloyd?”

“I have prayed for light, but I haven’t asked to have my doubts removed, Marg’et Ann; I don’t know that I want to believe what doesn’t appear reasonable to me.”

The girl lifted a troubled, tremulous face to his.

“That isn’t the right spirit, Lloyd,–you know it isn’t. How can God remove your doubts if you don’t want him to?”

The young man reached up and broke off a twig of the round, pink crab-apple buds and rolled the stem between his work-hardened hands.

“I’ve asked for light,” he repeated, “and if when it comes I see things different, I’ll say so; but I can’t want to believe what I don’t believe, and I can’t pray for what I don’t want.”

The triangle of Marg’et Ann’s brow between her burnished satin puffs of hair took on two upright, troubled lines. She unfolded her handkerchief nervously, and her token fell with a ringing sound against tired Hephzibah’s gravestone and rolled down above her patiently folded hands.

Lloyd stooped and searched for it in the grass. When he found it he gave it to her silently, and their hands met. Poor Marg’et Ann! No hunted Covenanter amid Scottish heather was more a martyr to his faith than this rose-cheeked girl amid Iowa cornfields. She took the bit of flattened lead and pressed it between her burning palms.