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282 than I can say for Mrs. Jaynes, in whose heart a secret rage was burning, though her aspect and demeanor were as placid and demure as if the butter she held in her hand would not have melted in her pursed-up mouth.

Mrs. Jaynes, for reasons of her own, thought proper to keep her temper in control, abstaining from any manifestation of displeasure for a much longer time than while she remained standing in the back veranda of Doctor Bugbee's house. She did not think it prudent to apprise Laura that her rebellious conference with Statira had been discovered, nor to forbid her from holding further communication with her evil counsellors; but contented herself, for the present, with keeping a stricter watch over her sister's conduct, by practising with increased rigor and vigilance that efficient system of tactics hereinbefore commemorated, by which the ardor of Laura's chance admirers was repressed and their advances repelled, and by alluding, from time to time, to Laura's prospective nuptials, as to an event predestined and inevitable, or, at least, no less sure to come to pass than if Laura herself had engaged her hand to Mr. Hunt of her own free will and accord, and was only waiting to be asked to name the wedding-day.

It was many months after Elam left the shady height of East Windsor Hill before he received a call to settle; for though he preached in different parts on trial, before many congregations that were destitute of pastors, none of these fastidious flocks would listen to his voice a second time, or agree to choose him for its shepherd. At last, however, the people of Walbury, a town in Windham County, lying nearly twenty miles from Belfield, made choice of Mr. Hunt to be their spiritual guide, and accordingly extended to him an invitation to be ordained and installed as the settled minister over their ancient parish. Upon receiving this proposal, Elam at once despatched a letter to his friend and ally, Mrs. Jaynes, informing her of his good fortune, and suggesting that Laura should at once bestir herself in preparations for their wedding, in order that this blissful event might precede his ordination. Then, after waiting for the lapse of that period of decorous delay which immemorial usage has prescribed in such cases, he indited an epistle to the church in Walbury, stating, in proper and accustomed form, that his native humility inclined him to refuse their request; but that, after a wrestle with his inclinations, he had got the better of them, and had resolved to sacrifice his own wishes and feelings, and to enter the field of labor to which the Israel in Walbury had invited him.

A year and more had elapsed since Laura, encouraged by Tira Blake's assuring words, had begun to hope that a better fate was in store for her than to become the wife of a man she detested. Meanwhile, Elam had often come to Belfield, sometimes preaching a sermon for Mr. Jaynes, and going away again, after a brief sojourn, without having opened his mouth to Laura to speak of love or marriage. At his later visits it was evident that he was inclined to despond about his prospects of getting a settlement, and Laura began to entertain strong hopes that he never would be successful; for she would have given up all the chances of beholding her military hero in person, and would have been content to live a maid forever, continually waiting for Elam, if she could have been assured the time would never come for him to claim her.

But, one morning, after breakfast, having made her bed and arranged her chamber, singing blithely all the while, she was just going to sit down by the window with her sewing, when Mrs. Jaynes came in with a letter in her hand. Laura guessed at once that the letter was from Elam, and that it contained the news of which the reader has been apprised already. Though she did not need to read the letter in order to inform herself of its contents, she took it in her hand, when her