On the first day of March, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty, I arrived at the parsonage. It was early morning when I saw the little wooden church-"steeple," in the distance, and the sun was not risen when she who said the "naughty words" and the grave minister came out to welcome me.
Ere the noontide came, I had learned who had gone from the village, all unattended, on the mysterious journey, since last I had been there. There were new souls within the town. And a few, that had been two, were called one. These things I heard whilst the minister sat in his study up-stairs, and held his head upon his hands, thinking over the theology of the schools; his wife, meanwhile, in the room below, working out a strange elective predestination, free-will gifts to be, for some little ones that had strayed into the fold to be warmed and clothed and fed. At length the village "news" having all been imparted to me, I gave a thought to my tower.
"How is the old place?" asked I, as my sister paused a moment in the cutting out of a formula for a coat, destined for a growing boy.
"Don't get excited about the tower yet, Sister Anna," she said; "let it alone one day."
"Oh, I can't, Sophie!" I said; "it's such a length of days since I sat in the grated window!"--and I looked out as I spoke.
Square and small and high stood the tower, as high as the church's eaves.
"What could it have been built for?"
I knew not that I had spoken my thought, until Sophie answered,--
"We have found out recently that the tower was here when the first church was built. It may have been here, for aught we know, before white men came."
"Perhaps the church was built near to it for safety," I suggested.