“How long has Amy Waring been engaged to your Uncle Lawrence?”

When they reached Amy’s door Lawrence Newt raised her hand, bent over it with quaint, courtly respect, held it a moment, then pressed it to his lips.  He looked up at her.  She was standing on the step; her full, dark eyes, swimming with moisture, were fixed upon his; her luxuriant hair curled over her clear, rich cheeks—­youth, love, and beauty, they were all there.  Lawrence Newt could hardly believe they were not all his.  It was so natural to think so.  Somehow he and Amy had grown together.  He understood her perfectly.

“Perfectly?” he said to himself.  “Why you are holding her hand; you are kissing it with reverence; you are looking into the face which is dearer and lovelier to you than all other human faces; and you are as far off as if oceans rolled between.”

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHURCH GOING.

The Sunday bells rang loud from river to river.  Loud and sharp they rang in the clear, still air of the summer morning, as if the voice of Everardus Bogardus, the old Dominie of New Amsterdam, were calling the people in many tones to be up and stirring, and eat breakfast, and wash the breakfast things, and be in your places early, with bowed heads and reverend minds, and demurely hear me tell you what sinners you always have been and always will be, so help me God—­I, Everardus Bogardus, in the clear summer morning, ding, dong, bell, amen!

So mused Arthur Merlin, between sleeping and waking, as the bells rang out, loud and low—­distant and near—­flowing like a rushing, swelling tide of music along the dark inlets of narrow streets—­touching arid hearts with hope, as the rising water touches dry spots with green.  Come you, too, out of your filthy holes and hovels—­come to church as in the days when you were young and had mothers, and you, grisly, drunken, blear-eyed thief, lisped in your little lessons—­come, all of you, come!  The day has dawned; the air is pure; the hammer rests—­come and repent, and be renewed, and be young again.  The old, weary, restless, debauched, defeated world—­it shall sing and dance.  You shall be lambs.  I see the dawn of the millennium on the heights of Hoboken—­yea, even out of the Jerseys shall a good thing come!  It is I who tell you—­it is I who order you—­I, Everardus Bogardus, Dominie of New Amsterdam—­ding, dong, bell, amen!

The streets were quiet and deserted.  A single hack rattled under his window, and Arthur could hear its lessening sound until it was lost in the sweet clangor of the bells.  He lay in bed, and did not see the people in the street; but he heard the shuffling and the slouching, the dragging step and the bright, quick footfall.  There were gay bonnets and black hats already stirring—­early worshippers at the mass at St. Peter’s or St. Patrick’s—­but the great population of the city was at home.