comforted.

No questions were asked, for it was felt by all parties that Emma
Jane's demeanor was answering them before they could be framed.

"He threatened to set the dog on me!" she wailed presently, when,
as they neared the Sawyer pasture, she was able to control her

voice. "He called me a pious, cantin' young one, and said he'd
chase me out o' the dooryard if I ever came again! And he'll tell

my father--I know he will, for he hates him like poison."
All at once the adult point of view dawned upon Rebecca. She

never saw it until it was too obvious to be ignored. Had they
done wrong in interviewing Jacob Moody? Would Aunt Miranda be

angry, as well as Mr. Perkins?
"Why was he so dreadful, Emmy?" she questioned tenderly. "What

did you say first? How did you lead up to it?"
Emma Jane sobbed more convulsively, and wiped her nose and eyes

impartially as she tried to think.
"I guess I never led up at all; not a mite. I didn't know what

you meant. I was sent on an errant, and I went and done it the
best I could! (Emma Jane's grammar always lapsed in moments of

excitement.) And then Jake roared at me like Squire Winship's
bull. . . . And he called my face a mug. . . . You shut up that

secretary book, Alice Robinson! If you write down a single word
I'll never speak to you again. . . . And I don't want to be a

member' another minute for fear of drawing another short lot.
I've got enough of the Daughters or Zion to last me the rest o'

my life! I don't care who goes to meetin' and who don't."
The girls were at the Perkins's gate by this time, and Emma Jane

went sadly into the empty house to remove all traces of the
tragedy from her person before her mother should come home from

the church.
The others wended their way slowly down the street, feeling that

their promisingmissionary branch had died almost as soon as it
had budded.

"Goodby," said Rebecca, swallowing lumps of disappointment and
chagrin as she saw the whole inspiring plan break and vanish into

thin air like an iridescentbubble. "It's all over and we won't
ever try it again. I'm going in to do overcasting as hard as I

can, because I hate that the worst. Aunt Jane must write to Mrs.
Burch that we don't want to be home missionaries. Perhaps we're

not big enough, anyway. I'm perfectly certain it's nicer to
convert people when they're yellow or brown or any color but

white; and I believe it must be easier to save their souls than
it is to make them go to meeting."

Third Chronicle
REBECCA'S THOUGHT BOOK

I
The "Sawyer girls'" barn still had its haymow in Rebecca's time,

although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the
opinion of the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and

wanting in flavor. It still sheltered, too, old Deacon Israel
Sawyer's carryall and mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh,

and a dozen other survivals of an earlier era, when the broad
acres of the brick house went to make one of the finest farms in

Riverboro.
There were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig

grunting comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to
peck the plants in the cherished garden patch. The Sawyer girls

were getting on in years, and, mindful that care once killed a
cat, they ordered their lives with the view of escaping that

particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly well until
Rebecca's advent made existence a trifle more sensational.

Once a month for years upon years, Miss Miranda and Miss Jane had
put towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn,

taking off the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called
"emmanuel covers" in Riverboro), dusting the ancient implements,

and sometimes sweeping the heaviest of the cobwebs from the
corners, or giving a brush to the floor.

Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed
place, propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway

leading to eternal glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old
than this to Rebecca. By means of its dusty rounds she mounted,

mounted, mounted far away from time and care and maiden aunts,
far away from childish tasks and childish troubles, to the barn

chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy reveries, and
vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the

sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in
her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of

anticipation.
Once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the

heavy doors and give them a gentle swing outward. Then, oh, ever
new Paradise! Then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! For

Rebecca had that something in her soul that
"Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise."

At the top of Guide Board hill she could see Alice Robinson's
barn with its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that

swam with the wind and foretold the day to all Riverboro. The
meadow, with its sunny slopes stretching up to the pine woods,

was sometimes a flowing sheet of shimmering grass,
sometimes--when daisies and buttercups were blooming--a vision of

white and gold. Sometimes the shorn stubble would be dotted with
"the happy hills of hay," and a little later the rock maple on

the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against
the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it,

brave in scarlet.
It was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air

that Adam Ladd (Rebecca's favorite "Mr. Aladdin"), after
searching for her in field and garden, suddenly noticed the open

doors of the barn chamber, and called to her. At the sound of his
vice she dropped her precious diary, and flew to the edge of the

haymow. He never forgot the vision of the startled little
poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in the other, dark

hair all ruffled, with the picturesqueaddition of an occasional
glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.

"A Sappho in mittens!" he cried laughingly, and at her eager
question told her to look up the unknown lady in the school

encyclopedia, when she was admitted to the Female Seminary at
Wareham.

Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her

gingham apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some
pieces of brown paper; then she seated herself gravely on the

floor, and drew an inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading

of the extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them
were apparently to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure

showed themselves now and then, and smiles of obvious delight
played about her face; but once in a while there was a knitting

of the brows and a sigh of discouragement, showing that the
artist in the child was not wholly satisfied.

Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was
supposedly to be racked with the throes of composition; but

seemingly there were no throes. Other girls could wield the
darning or crochet or knittingneedle, and send the tatting

shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch, oversew,
braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient

in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from
early childhood to the end of time.

Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue,
and no more striking simile could possibly be used. Her

handwriting was not Spencerian; she had neither time, nor
patience, it is to be feared, for copybook methods, and her

unformed characters were frequently the despair of her teachers;
but write she could, write she would, write she must and did, in

season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now,