"Brethren! I wish to state that I have discovered a dreadful secret. That little girl, Rhoda, there, has stolen the silver communion cup!" What matter that I was innocent? Before the stern eyes of that congregation I should not be able to say a word in my defence. I should be disgraced forever, put in prison, perhaps for life! Tears of self-pity ran down my burning cheeks. And so I sat, the most wretched figure alive, I do believe; my little legs twisting and untwisting in anguish, until again the admonishing hand pinched reproof. The sermon was over; the hymns; the prayers; and still the sword had not fallen. The service ended, and we were filing out again. Once more the torture of progression down the aisle, past the Deacon's pew. Now, now, surely it would happen! The starched ruffles of my dress quivered as they passed that ominous point, and my whole body turned goose-flesh. Now, now it would come! But no! The Deacon said nothing. The time was not yet. Then next Sabbath it was to be. Seven short days, and then! There was little comfort in my present immunity. Horror, like hope, deferred maketh the heart sick. The week days that followed were hideous with the continual fear of meeting Deacon Poole. No criminal ever dodged and slunk more guiltily than did I. I dared not venture beyond the door without first reconnoitering from a window. I made wide détours through wood and underbrush to avoid the highroad near his House on the Hill. I was continually late to school, and suffered punishment. Once a sudden panic kept me hiding behind Uncle's barn for half an hour. Once, when sent on an errand to the store, I played truant, because I saw through the window that the Deacon was inside. But my efforts to evade my doom were in vain. I was sitting under an apple tree in the pasture, invisible as I thought from the road. I was crying as though my heart would break, for my Aunt had been more than usually severe. Probably I had been naughty. Certainly she had lost her temper, as usual in punishing me. Doubtless she had said unforgivable things. I remember smarting with a sense of injustice and indignity, wounded in spirit as well as bruised in body. I did not hear the approaching. tread of feet until a sudden "Ahem!" made me jump. There before me under the tree stood the form which I most dreaded to see, -Deacon Poole in all his accusing righteousness! "He has come to put me in prison!" my spirit shrieked, and I think I must have cried aloud. At any rate I rose wildly, seeking escape. But the Deacon's words were not so terrifying as I had expected. "What is the matter, child?" he asked, leaning on his cane and peering at me from under his bushy eyebrows. "I-d-don't know," I stammered. The Deacon looked keenly at me.. "Don't know, eh? Well, I do. Someone has been hurting your feelings. They do that sometimesin this town. Sit down and tell me all about it." To my amazement the Deacon seated himself on a rock under the apple tree and tapped with his cane. on the grass beside him. Presently, I cannot guess how, I found myself sitting there in the astonishing position of telling all the sorrows of my lonely little life,-telling all this with sobs and eager gestures to Deacon Poole, the grand, the righteous, the awful. Suddenly I paused in my tearful narrative, realizing the situation. My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and I stared at him, babbling. "Why, what is the matter, child?" he asked kindly, for the second time. "Don't look so frightened. Go on with your story, I am greatly interested." "But-but-you think I am a wicked girl," I blurted out, unable longer to endure the suspense of fear. "You-you're going to take me to prison?" The Deacon stared. "You're morbid, child!" he exclaimed. "They have punished self-confidence out of you, and left you too much alone. It is not good to be alone. H'm! I've been watching you for some time. I think you had better come home with me; I have some curious things in my house that might interest a child, that is, a child like you. How would you like to see 'em ?" At these last words my spirit soared. If the genie had cried, "I am the Slave of the Lamp. What wouldst thou?" I could not have been more enraptured. My fear vanished in a fever of curiosity. "You mean-to let me see your House?" I gasped. "The White House on the Hill, that no one ever visits? Oh-h!" The Deacon laughed drily. "Yes, that's the very house, child," he said. In a few moments I found myself hop-skipping along the road, holding to the Deacon's hand. And presently we had passed through the gate, up the pathway to the green door, at which the hollyhocks still gazed curiously, envious of me, the happy child who was to be introduced to the mysteries of Aladdin's palace. It was a wonderful moment when the door swung on its hinges and I passed over the magic threshold. But more wonderful still was the enchanted hour that followed. The folk of Kimpton might have railed at the treasures which Deacon Poole hid so carefully under lock and key; but to me they were more precious than a cave of gold and gems. What stories he told me of the old relics come down from historic days! How tenderly he handled them, the bits of satin and lace, delicate china and china and silver. From sweet-smelling boxes he lifted trophies of the East: whales' teeth. tattoed with weird pictures, corals, fairy shells, carvings in wood and ivory, and necklaces of strange nuts. From cabinets and chests he took them out, one by one, and he let me touch them, too, the kind old Deacon, who was reported so jealous of his treasures. I touched them and I held them in my hand, and was transported to the seventh heaven. In one corner of his "museum" stood a great mahogany desk, with tiers of crowded pigeonholes. At last, when he had shown me many treasures, the Deacon sat down in a stiff-backed chair before this desk, and pulling a little seat up to his knee beckoned me to sit there. "Come, you are tired," he said kindly; "come and sit down for a little while." And indeed I was exhausted by the succession of new sensations and sank down with a happy little sigh, resting my hand on the knee of my new friend. "And now, tell me what you meant by asking if I were going to put you in prison?" he said with gentle abruptness. The question brought shadows of my forgotten fears, and I withdrew my hand, looking at him wildly, I suppose. For he sought the little hand and drew it back to his knee, holding it gently while he said: "Tut, tut! don't be afraid, child. I have been trying to show you that I am not so terrible a person as you thought, and I believed that I had made you like me a little. Come, my dear. You have told me everything else. Tell me all about this. What did you mean by thinking that I could put you in prison?" "I-I-thought-you thought that I had stolen the cup. But I didn't! Oh, I didn't!" I cried in a passion of sobs, all the more anxious now to justify myself in the eyes of this kind friend. At my word the Deacon stared. "The cup,-what cup?" he manded, and I thought that tone was severe. de his "The stolen church cup," I answered, with heart sinking anew under his apparent coldness. "But, oh, indeed and indeed I didn't take it, though I know you have always suspected me." "You thought that I thought-" The Deacon seemed overcome by the idea, and stared at me in the strangest way. Then without warning, even as I was beginning to despair, he burst into a queer little laugh and caught me in his arms. "My poor, dear child!" he cried, and there were tears behind his glasses. "My poor, dear little child!" and he hugged me tight to his kind old heart, which had never before so held a child, I believe. And in this quaint way, out of a misunderstanding, grew up the strange friendship between Deacon Poole and myself. That was a wonderful morning, as happy for the Deacon as for me. And when at last it came to an end and I had to be gone or face a second punishment from the Powers who ruled my fate, the Deacon came with me to the gate and kissed me good-bye, saying: "You will come to see me again, Rhoda? Come to see the queer old man and his collections as often as you can. But sh! my child. We had best make a secret of it, and let no one know of your visits. We are two odd ones whom nobody understands. And if your Uncle and Aunt knew that we were playing together with these musty old relics they might take it into their heads to forbid you. So we won't talk about it, Rhoda, but we will be great friends; and you must come just as often as you can, for I am very lonely." Fervently I promised that I would come every single day, and we parted regretfully. My feet went down the hill as if shod with winged sandals. I had been admitted to Paradise; and best of all, the door behind me was set ajar for my return. Alas! Though the door might stand wide open, I was not again to cross that threshold,-not again for many years. The day that sealed our friendship was our last and only one together. I never saw the Deacon again, though his memory followed me like a present blessing through my whole life. The very day after my blissful visit came the next move in the game of my already varied career. A distant cousin in an equally distant city, with whom it seems my Uncle had been in correspondence concerning me, wrote that she would adopt me, and I was to be taken immediately to her home. The day was spent in preparations for departure. I was not allowed to leave the house, my Aunt fearing that I might fall into some last mischief. There was no chance for me to see my new friend, to tell him what had befallen me or to bid him good-bye. At night I was sent early to bed, as we were to take the train at sunrise for a long and tedious journey. And so ended my last day in Kimpton,-a period to my sentence of long and lonely days, brightened only by that last happy morning which had seemed to promise better times than I had ever known. It was useless for me to cry, to protest that I did not want to go to a relative whom I had never seen. I was not needed in Kimpton, save by the Deacon. who could not speak for me. My uncle's family was glad to be free of an uncongenial element. Indeed, I should have gone without regret, but for the memory of Deacon Poole. we exchanged letters, the Deacon and I. My own were erratic and casual enough, but the Deacon's followed me regularly wherever I went, so long as he lived. Poor, lonely old Deacon! He shared my joy in my new, happy home; in my school days far off in that gay and brilliant city; in my later pilgrimage to lands across the sea. And in all those letters of his there was not one word of sadness or discouragement to dull my pleasure. Though as I read them over now I see between the lines what a bitter disappointment my sudden departure was to him. He too had seen the promise of happier days. I am afraid that I was sadly selfish. I wrote to him less often than I should have done, I was distracted and absorbed by so many new interests and friends. But, indeed, I lonely indeed, I never forgot him, and loved his memory better day by day. Was he not my first friend? Had he not opened the door of Paradise to me and comforted me in my darkest hour? I could never forget the Deacon after that day of wonder which had changed him from a nightmare into a guardian angel. And so, the next morning, we steamed away. From the car window I watched out of sight the White House on the Hill, last visible sign of Kimpton village. And my Uncle wondered when I burst into a passion of tears. He did not know, no one in Kimpton ever knew, that I had left one friend behind. In the years that followed The news of his death was a great shock. Though I had never seen him in fifteen years he was still so vivid a power in my life that I could not at first realize what his loss meant. It was pitiful, too, that it should have come at just that time, for I was soon to have seen him once more, to have fulfilled the wish that he had expressed so often in the last months for a sight of my face. The news met me on my return to America, after my long sojourn abroad. I had written the Deacon that I should come down to visit him in Kimpton before leaving for my home in the West. But, he could not wait for me. He had gone, and Kimpton lay in my homeward path with no one to smile a welcome. Yet I must visit it once more, to lay a flower on his grave, to pay my second and final visit to the White House on the Hill. There I was to claim my legacy, the Deacon's desk. The "collections" were to be preserved in the White House as a local museum, and proud was now the town of Deacon Poole's vagaries, for antiquarianism had become fashionable, and even this unsophisticated little village realized at last what treasures it had been sheltering unaware. The old elms, still a-line for their contra dance, reached to me fingers of tremulous welcome. The inquisitive hollyhocks nodded me a greeting as I went up the path. They forgot that they could not know me; fifteen generations of hollyhocks lay between them and my childhood. But they had inherited curiosity, and watched me. with envious eyes as their ancestors had done. How well I remembered that day as I paused on the threshold and took a long breath before turning the key in the rusty lock, the key handed me by the caretaker next door. The key I had in my pocket. It had been sent me by the lawyer who had apprised me of my legacy. I opened the front. Yes, there were the tiers of pigeonholes, filled with papers. These, however, were notes, historic and antiquarian. Perhaps some day I would make use of them in the Deacon's honor. I opened one by one the little drawers; they held nothing of special interest to me. The fourth drawer from the top stuck as I pulled it, warped by the dampness, perhaps. I took out the three upper drawers, the better to cope with the obstinate one. In doing In doing so I must have touched the secret spring, for suddenly the fourth drawer yielded. and came out in my hand, disclosing behind it a panel with a tiny. keyhole. Eagerly I searched for a key, and found it at last in the lowest drawer, rolled in a wad of paper. I fitted it into the panel, and with pressure it turned. The panel flew open, and putting my hand. into the space behind it I drew out something wrapped in chamois, something long and heavy. Nervously I pulled off the covering and disclosed, tarnished almost ironblack, a cup,-a communion chalice! For a moment I sat stupefied. Then hastily I took a corner of the |