"The thing that shall be is the thing for which all the powers of nature are at work.

We, you and Lizzy and I, will drop off our stems presently,--I, a good deal the first, for you and Lizzy have the blessing of youth, but I am old." "You are not old! You are the youngest person I know," exclaimed Mercy, impetuously.

"You will never be old, Mr.Dorrance, not if you should live to be as old as--as old as the Wandering Jew!" Mercy's eyes were fixed intently on the Parson's face; but she did not note the deep flush which rose to his very hair, as she said these words.
She was thinking only of the glorious soul, and seeing only its shining through the outer tabernacle.

Lizzy Hunter, however, saw the flush, and knew what it meant, and her heart gave a leap of joy.

"Now he can see that Mercy never thinks of him as an old man, and never would," she thought to herself; and while her hands were idly playing with her flowers and mosses, and her face looked as innocent and care-free as a baby's, her brain was weaving plots of the most complicated devices for hastening on the future which began to look to her so assured for these two.
They were sitting on a mossy mound in the shadow of great cedar-trees.