The
congregation looked at that pew, the mothers enviously, when they sang
the lines:
"Jerusalem like a city is
Compactly built together."
The first half of the service had been gone through on this particular
Sunday without anything remarkable happening. It was at the end of the
psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the
door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in that
attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of the
church. In their eagerness to be at the sermon many of the congregation
did not notice him, and those who did put the matter by in their minds
for future investigation. Sam'l however, could not take it so coolly.
From his seat in the gallery he saw Sanders disappear, and his mind
misgave him. With the true lover's instinct he understood it all.
Sanders had been struck by the fine turnout in the T'nowhead pew. Bell
was alone at the farm. What an opportunity to work one's way up to a
proposal! T'nowhead was so overrun with children that such a chance
seldom occurred, except on a Sabbath. Sanders, doubtless, was off to
propose, and he, Sam'l, was left behind.
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