"But," Lois replied, " the voice, as you call
it, has never spoken such a word to me."

"Lois," he answered, solemnly, " it will speak.
And then wilt thou obey, even as Samuel did?"

"No; indeed I cannot!" she answered,
briskly. " I may take a dream to be truth, and
hear my own fancies, if I think about them
too long. But I cannot marry any one from
obedience."

"Lois, Lois, thou art as yet unregenerate;
but I have seen thee in a vision as one of the
elect, robed in white. As yet thy faith is too
weak for thee to obey meekly, but it shall not
always be so. I will pray that thou mayest
see thy preordained course. Meanwhile, I will
smoothe away all worldly obstacles."

"Cousin Mauasseh! Cousin Manasseh!" cried
Lois after him, as he was leaving the room,
"come back. I cannot put it in strong enough
words. Manasseh, there is no power in heaven
or earth that can make me love thee enough to
marry thee, or to wed thee without such love.
And this I say solemnly, because it is better
that this should end at once."

For a moment he was staggered; then he
lifted up his hands, and said,

"God forgive thee thy blasphemy. Remember
Hazael, who said, 'Is thy servant a dog,
that he should do such things?' and went
straight and did them, because his evil courses
were fixed and appointed for him before the
foundation of the world. And shall not thy
paths be laid out among the godly as it hath
been foretold to me?"

He went away, and for a minute or two Lois
felt as if his words must come true, and that,
struggle as she would, hate her doom as she
would, she must become his wife; and, under
the circumstances, many a girl would have
succumbed to her apparent fate. Isolated from all
previous connexions, hearing no word from
England, living in the heavy, monotonous routine of
a family with one man for head, and this man
being esteemed a hero by most of those around
him, simply because he was the only man in the
family,—these facts alone would have formed
strong presumptions that most girls would have
yielded to the offers of such a one. But, besides
this, there was much to tell upon the imagination
in those days, that place, and time. It was
prevalently believed that there were manifestations
of spiritual influence—of the direct influence
both of good and bad spirits—constantly
to be perceived in the direct course of men's
lives. Lots were drawn, as guidance from the
Lord; the Bible was opened, and the leaves
allowed to fall apart, and the first text the eye
fell upon was supposed to be appointed from
above as a direction. Sounds were heard that
could not be accounted for; they were made by
the evil spirits not yet banished from the desert
places of which they had so long held possession;
sights inexplicable and mysterious were
dimly seen—Satan, in some shape, seeking whom
he might devour. And at the beginning of the
long winter season such whispered tales, such
old temptations and hauntings, and devilish
terrors, were supposed to be peculiarly rife.
Salem was, as it were, showed up, and left to
prey upon itself. The long, dark evenings, the
dimly lighted rooms, the creaking passages,
where heterogeneous articles were piled away
out of reach of the keen-piercing frost, and
where occasionally, in the dead of night, a
sound was heard, as of some heavy falling body,
when, next morning, everything appeared to be
in its right place—so accustomed are we to
measure noises by comparison with themselves,
and not with the absolute stillness of the night-
season—the white mist, coming nearer and
nearer to the windows every evening in strange
shapes, like phantoms,—all these, and many
other circumstances, such as the distant fall of
mighty trees in the mysterious forests girdling
them round, the faint whoop and cry of some
Indian seeking his camp, and unwittingly nearer
to the white men's settlement than either he or
they would have liked could they have chosen,
the hungry yells of the wild beasts drawing near
to the cattle pens, these were the things which
made that winter life in Salem, in the memorable
time of 1691-2, seem strange, and haunted., and
terrific to many: peculiarly weird and awful to the
English girl in her first year's sojourn in America.

And now imagine Lois worked upon
perpetually by Manasseh's conviction that it was
decreed that she should be his wife, and you
will see that she was not without courage and
spirit to resist as she did, steadily, firmly, and
yet sweetly. Take one instance of the many,
when her nerves were subjected to a shock,
slight in relation it is true, but then remember
that she had been all day, and for many days,
shut up indoors, in a dull light, that at mid-day
was almost dark with a long-continued
snowstorm. Evening was coming on, and the wood
fire was more cheerful than any of the human
beings surrounding it; the monotonous whirr of
the smaller spinning-wheels had been going on
all day, and the store of flax down stairs was
nearly exhausted, when Grace Hickson bade
Lois fetch down some more from the store-
room, before the light so entirely waned away
that it could not be found without a candle, and
a candle it would be dangerous to carry into
that apartment full of combustible materials,
especially at this time of hard frost, when every
drop of water was locked up and bound in icy
hardness. So Lois went, half-shrinking from
the long passage that led to the stairs leading
up into the store-room, for it was in this
passage that the strange night sounds were heard
which every one had begun to notice, and speak
about in lowered tones. She sang, however, as
she went, "to keep her courage up"—sang,
however, in a subdued voice, the evening hymn
she had so often sung in Barford church—

          Glory to Thee, my God, this night—

and so it was, I suppose, that she never heard
the breathing or motion of any creature near her
till just as she was loading herself with flax to
carry down she heard some one—it was
Manasseh—say close to her ears:

"Has the voice spoken yet? Speak, Lois!