`The blow has come,' my father said, after a long pause.

I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.

`Yes,' continued my father, `I have received to-day a list of all that I possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men whose lips are sealed with terror; of what I have buried with my own hand on the bare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven. Does the air, then, carry secrets? Are the hills of glass? Do the stones we tread upon preserve the footprint to betray us? Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should have come to such a country!'

`But this,' returned my mother, `is no very new or very threatening event. You are accused of some concealment. You will pay more taxes in the future, and be mulcted in a fine. It is disquieting, indeed, to find our acts so spied upon, and the most private known. But is this new? Have we not long feared and suspected every blade of grass?'

`Ay, and our shadows!' cried my father. `But all this is nothing. Here is the letter that accompanied the list.'

I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time silent.

`I see,' she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading: ```From a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world's goods,''' she continued, ```the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of piety.'' There lies the sting. Am I not right? These are the words you fear?'

`These are the words,' replied my father. `Lucy, you remember Priestley? Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the summit of an isolated butte; we could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in any quarter of this land a man were safe from spies, it were in such a station; but it was in the very ague- fit of terror that he told me, and that I heard, his story. He had received a letter such as this; and he submitted to my approval an answer, in which he offered to resign a third of his possessions. I conjured him, as he valued life, to raise his offering; and, before we parted, he had doubled the amount. Well, two days later he was gone - gone from the chief street of the city in the hour of noon - and gone for ever. O God!' cried my father, `by what art do they thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in that thought more awful than mere death.'

`Is there no hope in Grierson?' asked my mother.

`Dismiss the thought,' replied my father. `He now knows all that I can teach, and will do naught to save me. His power, besides, is small, his own danger not improbably more imminent than mine; for he, too, lives apart; he leaves his wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited for an unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful price - but no; I will not believe it: I have no love for him, but I will not believe it.'

`Believe what?' asked my mother; and then, with a change of note, `But oh, what matters it?' she cried. `Abimelech, there is but one way open: we must fly!'

`It is in vain,' returned my father. `I should but involve you in my fate. To leave this land is hopeless: we are closed in it as men are closed in life; and there is no issue but the grave.'

`We can but die then,' replied my mother. `Let us at least die together. Let not Asenath and myself survive you. Think to what a fate we should be doomed!'

My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I could see he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to desert his whole estate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he had by him