As they left the church Agnes put down her veil, and trembled under the stare of a hundred investigating critics.
When they were in the street, Podge Byerly remarked:
"Oh! that we had a man to resent such meanness as that. I think that those who address God with slant arrows to wound others, as is often done at prayer-meeting, will stand in perdition beside the writers of anonymous letters."
"They are driving me to the last point," said Agnes. "I can go to church no more. When will they get between me and heaven? Yet the Lord's will be done."
CHAPTER V.
THE GHOST.
Spring broke on the snug little suburb, and buds and birds fulfilled their appointments on the boughs of willows, ailanthuses, lindens, and maples. Some peach-trees in the back yard of the Zane House hastened to put on their pink scarves and bonnets, and the boys said that an old sucker of Penn's Treaty Elm down in a ship-yard was fresh and blithsome as a second wife. In the hearts and views of living people, too, spring brought a budding of youthfulness and a gush of sap. Duff Salter acknowledged it as he looked in Podge Byerly's blue eyes and felt her hands as they wrapped his scarf around him, or buttoned his gloves. Whispering, and without the tablets this time, he articulated:
"Happy for you, Mischief, that I am not young as these trees!"
"We'll have you set out!" screamed Podge, "like a piece of hale old willow, and you'll grow again!"