Children of Cloverley

On the other side of the vast Atlantic Ocean, whose countless waves stretch three times a thousand miles between the coasts of our country and the shores of the New World, there lives a great nation, speaking the same language and reading the selfsame Bible as the people of England. Only a narrow strait of sea, which we can look across, separates our native land from France; but if we sailed over that we should find ourselves at once surrounded by people whose speech we could not understand, and whose books we could not read: and so strangely would sound the words they spoke, that we should feel sorrowfully that we were in a foreign country and among strangers. So, though they are so far away, our nearest brethren, and the place where we could feel most at home because we could understand the language, are on the other side of the great Atlantic Ocean in the vast lands of North America, which we could only reach by a long voyage.

There are very few families in England that have not some relation, or friend, or at least an acquaintance, who used to live in the same town or village, who has emigrated across the sea to the United States of North America, or to Canada, the country lying higher towards the north. Perhaps not a single day in the whole year passes by without at least one ship putting out to sea from some English port, and finding its way over the trackless ocean almost as well as if there were landmarks to guide it, sails on by day and by night until it reaches some town on the American coast; while from the American harbours other vessels, laden with many kinds of merchandise, start away for our little island, which, like a small but powerful magnet, attracts all manner of trade and wealth to its busy towns. These ships, crossing and re-crossing day after day upon the Atlantic Ocean, carry to and fro men and women belonging to both countries, who are, and ought to be, bound together by very fast ties of love and friendship; for so many of the American people belong to us by reason of so many families here having sent out one or more of their children to try their fortunes in those newer and larger countries, that the two nations are like brothers. They belong to us, and we belong to them. If every letter which passes over the ocean from us to them and from them to us --loving letters from parents to children and from sisters to brothers, -- if each one of them could weave only one little thread as filmy and weak as the gossamer and spider spins in the summer air, they would altogether form a cable so mighty and strong that no power on earth could break it.

About the time that our story begins a terrible war bad been raging for nearly three years among the nation who inhabit the United States. The great cause of this war was the question whether the people living in the Southern and warmer States, where cotton, and tobacco, and sugar were cultivated, should buy and sell negroes to do their work, or should be compelled by the people dwelling in the Northern States to set their slaves free. It was a very difficult question to settle; and at length the Southerners determined to make a separate country and nation of their own, quite independent of the other. But the people of the North would not permit them to do this; and so North and South went to war, and fought fiercely for a time against each other, perhaps with the greater anger and bitterness because they were so closely related to each other. A few months before they were living as we live in England -- buying and selling, making railways from place to place, visiting one another, worshipping God after the same manner, and dwelling in peace and brotherhood throughout the whole land. Then there suddenly broke out this terrible civil war, which had been smouldering for a long time like a slow fire hidden among embers; and from one end to another of the United States the people were filled with bitter anger against their brothers, and began to look upon them as enemies.

Both in the North and South great armies were raised to fight their battles; and many men who had been living peacefully at home were called upon to leave their families and lands, and go out to the war as soldiers for their country. Among these men in the Northern army there was a Captain Bakewell, whose home was a small farmhouse upon the shores of Lake Huron, where he had lived for many years in quietness and safety, almost from the time when he had emigrated from England in his youth. Not long after the outbreak of the war he had been obliged to leave his farm and his two children in the care of his wife; parting from them all with much anxiety and sorrow, though he went out with a willing heart; for he was a brave and hardy man, and he thought the cause of the war a just one.

The farm on Lake Huron was far away from any town; far away also from any school or place of worship. Only a few farmers lived round about, and their homes were scattered so far apart that Mrs. Bakewell and her children rarely saw any strangers, or conversed with any one out of their own household. It would have been almost a dreary life in its solitude, except that now and then the father came home, bringing stirring accounts of the war; but he could not long be spared from his post, and his visits could only be in the winter, when for a short interval the contending armies were agreed to rest.

Like all her neighbours, it was necessary for Elinor Bakewell to be very active and diligent herself in seeing after the affairs of her husband's farm; and as there was scarcely any help to be had in that distant part of the country, both Ben and Annie, her two children, were obliged to work well with their own hands in order to be useful to her. There were few tasks upon the farm, not requiring a man's strength, which Ben could not manage, from milking the cows and guiding the plough, to chopping wood for the house fires; while within doors Annie could work, as her mother said, like a little woman. The children did not think their life hard; but sometimes the mother would ponder anxiously in her mind about their education, and would long for the opportunity of getting some good instruction for them; but she was far away from any school, and she could not bear the thought of sending them away from her while her husband was absent. The small farmhouse on the shores of Lake Huron would be desolate indeed without Ben and Annie. Besides, every month she expected the war to come to an end, and then Captain Bakewell would come home and decide what was to be done with his boy and girl.

In the meantime, she taught them carefully all that it was in her power to teach, taking especial care that they should learn to read well; so that to hear the children reading in their clear, sweet, natural young voices, as if they fully understood every word, was a greater pleasure than to listen to the careless rattling upon a piano of many young ladies who have wasted several years upon their music. Yet, as often as Ben rode over to the distant post office, and brought home a letter from Mrs. Bakewell's brother in England, and she heard of the learning and accomplishments of his children, she always sighed sorrowfully over her own Ben and Annie, and often shed bitter tears when they were not near to notice them. As for the children, they were never weary of listening to the grand accounts of their cousins in Old England; and many a long conversation had they upon the shores of the lake, and in the deep green glades of the great wood which bounded the farm, concerning Gilbert and Dora, and their home among the beautiful hills of Cloverley, which their mother had so often described to them.

There were as few books in the loghouse as there was little leisure time for reading them; but there was one large picture Bible, which had been an unfailing treasury of interest to Ben and Annie ever since they could first remember it. It had this peculiarity, that a great number of the pictures were of those events and scenes in the Bible history in which angels have taken a part; and so often did they come upon the lovely and tender faces of these heavenly spirits, with their snow-white robes and glistening wings, that the children, while they were little ones, were used to call the picture Bible the 'angel-book;' and for hours together during the quiet Sundays, as there was no church nor chapel near enough for them to attend, Annie nestled in her mother's lap and Ben sat at her feet, while she read over and over again the familiar stories of the visits of angels to this world of ours. Besides this, over the hearth of the little parlour beyond the kitchen there hung a beautiful painting, the work of their uncle Ludlow at Cloverley, which represented a cluster of the faces of angel children, so sweet, and innocent, and happy, that Annie would stand and look up at them until her eyes grew dim with tears. Sometimes Mrs. Bakewell would fancy that her little girl's face had caught the pure and heavenly expression of those angel-children; and many a solitary hour in the night, after the children were in bed, she pondered over Annie's simple talk about heaven and the angels, as if it was a home, and they were companions dearer to her even than her father's house upon Lake Huron.

Mrs. Bakewell need not have suffered as she did from the secret dread which often weighed upon her heart, that God would call upon her to give up her beloved child to the home in heaven and the companionship of the angels. It was the will of her heavenly Father that she should leave Ben and Annie motherless in this wide and busy world, and herself enter into His rest. She felt no dread of appearing in the presence of God, for she knew that the death of His Son Jesus Christ had atoned for her sins and reconciled her to the Father; but the bitterness of death lay in her separation from her children, and her spirit had to pass through a very sore and bitter conflict before she could give them up, and say truly, 'Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven!' When that last trial and agony were over, she entered into a joy and peace such as she had never known before; and, committing Ben and Annie to the loving-kindness and tender care of their Father in heaven, she passed away into the eternal world, calmly and consciously, with her husband and children beside her, listening awe-stricken, but not terrified, to her farewell words of love.

It was nearly the close of the year when Elinor Bakewell died, and Captain Bakewell was at home upon a long furlough, the army having gone into winter quarters. During the dreary season of mid-winter he could still take care of his motherless children, and see after the business of his farm; but as soon as the spring began to return, he must expect to receive any day the order to return to his perilous post amidst the continuous dangers of a battlefield. It was not to be wondered at that white lines began to streak his dark hair, and deep traces of anxiety were marked upon his face, as he marched about his frost-bound fields, or paced along the shores of the great lake, with his head bent down, and his broad shoulders stooping as if with the heavy burden of grief and care that had fallen upon him. During the long dark nights, while the northern winds wailed round his solitary loghouse, Captain Bakewell would sit in the wide chimneycorner, sighing often as he gazed sorrowfully into the wood fire, whose bright flames danced and flickered cheerily until they lit up the farthest corner of the house place, and shone upon the faces of the children. The fireplace was built back in a large recess, in the front of which a thick beam of timber, almost black with smoke, stretched from one side to the other; and upon this during the winter nights Ben had been busily at work, under Annie's oversight, carving in deep letters that could never be filled up or effaced by time a motto which the children had chosen for themselves. Sometimes, as the work went slowly on, one deeply-carved letter often taking two or three evenings for its completion, Captain Bakewell's face brightened with a faint smile, and his lips moved as if whispering the whole sentence to himself. It was finished at last; and above the hearth of the old home there stretched from end to end, in letters that would outlast the lives of the young engravers, this motto: 'THE WILL OF THE LORD BE DONE.'

'Father,' said Annie, when Ben had carved the last deep line of the final letter, 'we have finished our verse. I have done a little of it with my own hands, for Ben said I should think more of it if I had worked at it myself. Father, isn't it beautiful?'

Captain Bakewell looked up at the beam, where the fresh letters showed plainly upon the blackened surface of the wood; and then he glanced down at the eager face of his little girl, and, taking it between his hands, he gazed, as if he could never be satisfied with seeing, upon the sweet and tender light that shone in her eyes as she looked up to him.

'Oh, my darling!' he cried; 'and my boy, my Ben! -- how can I ever part with you? I may never, never see you again. It will break my heart.'

It was a pitiful sight to see the brave and strong-hearted soldier, who had faced death a hundred times without fear, hide his face upon his child's shoulders, and give way to such a passion of weeping as shook all his frame with agitation. Annie laid her hands tenderly upon his thick grey hair, while Ben clasped his arms about him.

'Why do you cry, father?' whispered Annie, her own voice trembling with sobs. 'Was it not God's will that our mother should die? And so we chose that verse to comfort you. Is it no comfort to you, father?'

'Ay, my dear ones,' answered Captain Bakewell, raising his head, and looking fondly at his children, 'it ought to comfort me; but it is a hard thing to learn to say those words from the heart. Ben, my boy, if our general ordered me and my men to march up into the very teeth of the rebels' guns, though we knew beforehand one half of us would fall, what should we be bound to do?'

'To obey!' cried Ben, his brown face flushing, and his eyes sparkling through the tears of which he was half ashamed; 'even if you were sure you would be shot down the next moment. Father, you would be a coward and a traitor if you did not obey.'

'Ay!' replied his father, sighing; 'to fail in obedience makes one a coward and a traitor. Ben, the order is come for me to give up my son, my only son, and my little daughter, as the command came to Abraham of old. If Abraham had chosen, I suppose he might have withheld his son Isaac from God; but then he would have proved himself a rebel instead of God's faithful servant and friend. My boy, it is harder to obey the will of God at times than it would be to march up to the mouth of a loaded cannon. But we are cowards and traitors if we fail; if we do not say, like the Captain of our salvation, "Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt!"'

Captain Bakewell was silent for some minutes, holding Annie closely to him, and watching Ben's face as the light from the blazing logs shone upon it. The boy looked grave and thoughtful, and his eyes lost something of their brightness as he met his father's steady and sorrowful gaze. The sound of the waves upon the shore came into this quiet room with a continuous moaning, and the wind wailed through the crevices of the log walls. But there was no word spoken, until Annie's clear, low voice stole upon the silence in a quiet undertone.

'Father,' she said, 'the very last time I ever read my Bible to our mother, she showed me this verse, "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." We should have chosen that verse for our motto, only it was too long; and this one seemed like it. And our mother said that Ben and I might become the little brother and sister of the Lord Jesus, if we tried wherever we went to do the will of our Father in heaven; and then she showed me that other verse, where it says that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brethren. Not ashamed,' she said, 'even when He comes in His own glory, and of the Father, and of the holy angels. And she told me that a little girl like me could obey God as well as the glorious archangel Gabriel, who stands in His presence. I could not do such great things, you know; but if I would give up my own will, the little things God gives me to do might be done just the same as the angel's service. And she made me think how every morning and night I say in my prayers, "Our Father which art in heaven. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." And she told me it is because God is our Father, and has sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to bring us back to Him, that it is possible for us to do His will as the angels do it. If we are frightened at Him, we cannot do His will at all; and if we do not care for Him, and don't wish to be made good and holy like the Lord Jesus, we shall never try to do it. My mother said many other things, but oh, I forget them! Father, I feel as if I was almost forgetting my mother's face!'

Annie spoke steadily and bravely till she came to these last words, but then her heart failed her, and she hid her face upon her father's breast. It was some time before any one spoke again.

'Ben,' said Captain Bakewell at last, 'are you trying to be the brother of the Lord Jesus?'

'I am afraid not,' answered Ben, lowering his eyes before his father's tender but searching gaze.

'My boy,' continued Captain Bakewell, 'if I felt sure that you were a son of the heavenly Father; a brother of whom the Lord Jesus Himself will not be ashamed; a young faithful soldier fighting manfully under Christ's banner, -- I could part with you more readily. How long, Ben, will you be a rebel soldier, and a truant child?'

Ben's face wore an expression of solemn thoughtfulness, and he stood speechless, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, and the colour in his brown cheeks growing paler, as if with some inward struggle; but after a long deliberation he looked up brightly into his father's face.

'I'm going to try,' he said; 'mother has taught us over and over again how we may become the children of God. I'll try. I'll be His soldier and servant. I'll try to do His will like the angels; and when I'm like to forget it, our motto will make me remember. I could never sit down by the fire here without seeing it.'

'Yes, my boy,' answered his father, 'but you will have to leave the old hearthstone. I said that to-day I had received the order to part with my children. When I rode over to the post office this morning I found a letter from your uncle Ludlow, in England, who is willing to take the charge of you both, to be educated with Dora and Gilbert. It was your mother's last wish that it should be so; for you could not be left here alone, and the perils of the war are many. My darlings, I should be a better and braver soldier if I were sure you were safe among good friends, who would care for you, whatever befell me. Yet it is a hard and bitter trial to send you over the sea, so far away from me.'

'Father,' cried Ben, as Captain Bakewell's face sank again upon Annie's brown curls, 'let us stay here. I am almost fourteen, -- Annie is turned eleven; it isn't as if we were children! Why, in a year or two I shall be a man.'

'Nay, Ben,' answered the father, smiling sadly; 'you're a good way from manhood yet, my boy; and I dare not run the risk of leaving you orphans. "The will of the Lord be done." Your uncle Ludlow sends word that a ship leaves New York in ten days from this date, and he will be in Liverpool to meet it upon your arrival there. It removes a load of anxiety from my mind; for by that time I must be ordered back to my post. I've let the farm to our neighbour Harris, and everything is settled. But some day, Ben, you will come back to it as your own.'

There was no time after that evening for Captain Bakewell to saunter along the shore, holding Annie's hand, and listening to the ceaseless moaning of the waters; for there was a multitude of things to be arranged, both for himself and for his children. For the next few days they were all hard at work, packing up such of the old treasures and possessions as they could not bear to part with altogether. The picture Bible and the painting of angel-faces were to go with the children's luggage to England. But there was the mother's rocking-chair of maple wood, which Ben had once painted a bright red, with mouldings of yellow, to her great amazement and dismay; and the mother's large writing-desk, made by Captain Bakewell himself, at which she had been writing -- her thin white hand moving slowly over the paper -- only a day or two before her death; and mother's spinning-wheel, which had sung and hummed many a long winter's night by the fireside, while she spun the flax for Annie's clothes and the wool for Ben's jackets and trousers. They could not part with these treasured possessions; and they were all carefully packed up in cases and entrusted to the friendly neighbours who were to become tenants of the farmhouse, until, as Captain Bakewell said, with a heavy sigh from his soldier's heart, he had a home again for himself and his children. Besides all this, there was the packing up of the luggage which was to cross the great ocean with Ben and Annie. Many a token of their mother's love and forethought met them in their mournful task. There were clothes for each one of them, spun and made with her own hands, which would keep both Captain Bakewell and the children free from any need of assistance for several years to come. Many were the tears that fell upon them from Annie's eyes as she folded them up with loving hands, and laid them neatly in the large sea-chests which their father had provided for their safe keeping in the hold of the ship.

All the preparations were finished in time; and Captain Bakewell, with his two children, quitted the old house upon the shores of Lake Huron, where Ben and Annie had been born, and travelled across the country to the great and bustling city of New York. The order had come for Captain Bakewell to rejoin the army in a very few days; and he felt thankful that he was permitted to see his dear children safely started to England, under the care of the captain of the ship, who was to take charge of them until their uncle Ludlow should meet them in Liverpool, on the other side of the vast Atlantic Ocean.

It was a melancholy journey to New York for Captain Bakewell and his children; and when they found themselves in the noise and tumult of the busy streets, it seemed impossible that it could be true. But there was no time to spare; and early in the morning after their arrival they drove down to the wharf from whence the vessel was to sail. The deck was thronged with passengers and their friends who were come to see them off; and Ben kept back the tears that were stinging and smarting under his eyelids. Annie's face was very pale, but patient in its sorrowful look; and whenever she caught her father's eye, she smiled faintly, and pressed close to his side. Captain Bakewell threaded his way through the bustling crowd to the little cabin which the doctor of the ship had consented to share with Ben; and there, in the midst of the strange sounds and the hurrying footsteps, which echoed noisily through the thin wooden partitions, he felt that it was even a more sorrowful parting than when he sat in the stillness of his own quiet home, with his Elinor's cold hand resting in his, and her eyes closing into the sleep of death.

'My boy:' he said, looking earnestly into Ben's face, 'it may be the will of God that I should never see you or my little Annie in this life again. Remember, I commit her to your care, that you may always love and cherish her as a true and tender-hearted brother. Think of what the Lord Jesus would be when He was a boy like you, and in everything act towards Annie as He would have acted towards a little sister. I cannot give you any better direction than that. Bear in mind, Ben, the verse which says, "That servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes." Oh, my boy, you know the commandments and the will of God; take heed that you do not disobey them.'

'I will not, father,' answered Ben, lifting up his head, with a look of resolution upon his face.

'Tell me what I must do,' whispered Annie, clinging to her father's arm.

Captain Bakewell stroked her curls fondly with his large hand, and looked down at her face until the tears came into his eyes.

'My darling,' he said, 'it seems to me as if you had been trying to do the will of God all your little life. But you may forget, or you may grow tired. There are many temptations lying in the way before you. Out yonder in England, among strangers, there will be many new and unknown snares laid for my little girl's feet; and what will she do to escape out of them?'

'Father,' she answered, a smile lightening up her face 'Ben and I are not going out alone. We shall have the same heavenly Father in England, and the same Lord Jesus. And won't the same angels go with us to take care of us? We shall not be altogether among strangers. I could not bear to leave you and home at all if I did not believe that.'

'It is true,' said Captain Bakewell, 'but I was forgetting it. I have been fretting my spirit with the thought of my tender little Annie and my boy being sent among those who know nothing of their former lives. I was afraid of the strange home and the strange companions for you. But the Father will be with you, and He will give His angels charge concerning you. I will trust you to Him.'

The ringing of the bell to give warning that all the visitors must prepare to leave the vessel, prevented Captain Bakewell from saying any more to his children. He had only time to clasp them in his arms, and hold them to his heart for a minute or two, while he uttered a prayer that God would keep them and him in safety, and restore them to each other whenever and wherever He should see best; and then they were obliged to hurry on to the deck. There was a great confusion of parting among the crowd; but in a few minutes the gangway was drawn aside, and Captain Bakewell stood by himself upon the wharf watching the departing vessel; while Ben and Annie, hand in hand, turned their tearful eyes to the spot where their father lingered gazing mournfully after them, until they lost sight of him in the increasing distance.

A bitter sense of loneliness smote upon the hearts of Ben and Annie. All the years that they could remember they had dwelt peacefully in the solitary farmhouse upon the lonely shore of the lake; but they had never felt alone there, though no strangers came, and the neighbours visited them but rarely. Not once in twelve months had they looked into a stranger's face, or heard a stranger's voice. But now they were torn away from all that was home-like and familiar, and set down alone upon the deck of a ship, in the midst of a crowd of people whose faces were unknown, and whose voices had a foreign sound. Behind them the shores of their native land were fading from their sight, and the boundless sea began to stretch around them as far as their straining eyes could see. They remembered their mother's grave, in a far-off spot, where they had laid her in the early winter; and they thought of their father, who was already on his way to rejoin the army, which was about to enter again into the dangerous war. These lay behind them; and before them there was a new home, of which they seemed to know nothing, though they had so often talked together of Cloverley and their cousins, who lived in the heart of its valley, shut in amidst the green hills, which their mother had described to them over and over again. Everything was strange, and full of sorrow. Ben glanced round the littered decks, where the sailors were still busy with lowering the passengers' luggage into the deep hold, and at the faces of the strangers who stared coldly or curiously upon the children standing apart; and, laying his head upon the gunwale, a deep sob, deeper because he had kept it down so long, burst from his lips, and fell upon Annie's ear. In a moment he felt her arm stealing round his neck, and her sweet, low voice whispering softly to him.

'Ben,' she said, 'don't you remember how God told Abraham to get out of his own country, and from his kindred, and from his father's house; and he went out, not knowing where he was going to? We are better off than that; we know where we are going -- to our mother's brother, who is sure to be very kind to us. And we have one another, Ben: if one of us had to go quite alone, it would be much harder. But you know Joseph was stolen away from his father and his little brother Benjamin, and sold to be a slave. And there was the little maid who had been taken captive, and waited on Naaman's wife, all alone, with none of her own people with her. We are better off than Abraham, and Joseph, and the little maid, Ben.'

Annie could say no more, but she laid her cheek against Ben's, and he felt that it was wet with tears. The sailors, who were passing to and fro, looked pityingly at the lonely children; and the passengers noticed them standing by the gunwale, with their arms round each other, and their sad faces still turned towards the land they had quitted, though it was almost lost upon the distant horizon. But for awhile nobody spoke to them, or ventured to break upon the deep and quiet grief which kept them motionless and silent.

'Oh, Annie,' cried Ben at last, drawing her close to his side, 'I wish we could both have died with mother!'

Annie did not answer for some minutes, but she looked steadily into Ben's mournful face, until her own grew more peaceful in its expression, and the tender light returned into her clear eyes. 'I said so once to our mother,' she answered, 'and she showed me how Jonah was very angry against God's will, and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But it was only because God was not doing what he wished, and had taken away his gourd. Mother said that people oftener wished to die because they could not have all their own way in the world, than because they wanted to be with Christ, which is far better than being here. And she said that we were never, never to wish to die just to escape out of trouble, or get out of doing the work God has sent us to do. Oh, Ben, perhaps we have a great deal of work to do in England, even before we come home again to America.'

'Annie,' muttered Ben, 'it is very hard.'

'What is very hard?' she asked softly.

'I shouldn't mind how much I had to do,' he answered. 'I'd read my Bible, and say prayers, and hear sermons every day; and I'd work at any business like a man; or I'd go a long journey, or do anything that one could do. But I can't make out how I am to have no will of my own, and be quite satisfied with everything that happens, and take every trouble, and be tossed to and fro without grumbling, like you do. Don't you think we could have served God quite as well at home as out yonder in England among strangers? I don't like going to live with Uncle Ludlow, and Gilbert, and Dora. They are fine folks, I guess; and maybe they will look down on us, and be ashamed of us, though the children of Captain Bakewell, and American citizens, are as good as they are any day. But they have done nothing but learn all their lives, and we have done nothing but work.'

Half ashamed of himself, Ben spread out his rough hands, which had grown large and coarse with hewing wood and holding the plough; and he took Annie's little hands in his, hard and brown like his own with the work of the house; and he looked at both with an air of discontent spreading over his face, while Annie smiled until the smile deepened into a little laugh.

'Oh, foolish Ben!' she said; 'we have only been doing the work God gave us to do. Did not our Lord Jesus work with His hands? Dora and Gilbert know that, and they will not love us the less for it. They are not strangers, but our own cousins; and I am glad we are going to them.'

Ben could not answer, for the tossing of the ship in the open sea made him feel very ill. It proved to be a miserable voyage to him, for he suffered from sea-sickness all the way across; and many hundreds of times, in his impatience and restlessness, he repeated in his own heart the wish that he might die, and so escape the present suffering of mind and body. With Annie it was different; she was not ill at all, and she grew in favour with the ship's crew and her fellow-voyagers by her helpful and womanly ways, and by the patience with which she met every discomfort and inconvenience. Through all the long and wearisome voyage -- for the winds were contrary to them, and the ship did not reach England for several days after its time -- Annie went about doing little acts of kindness, and speaking gentle and pleasant words, until her own sorrow was lessened, and the roughest seaman on board loved to hear her voice and see the quiet smile upon her face.

The fresh bloom and health of Ben's brown face was a good deal faded, and his hands were thinner and whiter, before the vessel reached England; but he was no better satisfied with himself or his appearance, and his thoughts were constantly dwelling upon his unknown and dreaded cousins, and their opinion of him and Annie. When the ship sailed into the smooth waters of the river Mersey at Liverpool, he crept languidly on to the deck, leaning on Annie's arm. Everybody on board was looking eagerly towards the town which they were approaching; but it seemed to Ben as if no one could pass Annie without kissing her or lingering near her, as if unwilling to part for ever with the little voyager. Even the sailors found time, every one of them, to come and bid her good-bye, taking her small hand in their large and horny palms as if it were some precious and fragile thing which they were almost afraid to touch, however gently. It was early in the morning; for they had anchored outside the bar the night before, and crossed it with the morning tide as soon as the water was deep enough to carry the ship over the hidden sand-banks. The blue sky overhead was cloudless, and the busy vessels were passing up and down the broad river with their sails unfurled to the breeze, and glistening like white wings in the sunshine, The tedious voyage was ended; and though the hearts of the children beat anxiously while they looked for their uncle among the crowd which awaited their arrival at the landing-stage, they felt, as they stood once more side by side leaning against the gunwale, a courage and hope which had well-nigh forsaken them as they lost sight of the coasts of America.

Of all the valleys among the hills of England, there is none more lovely and more pleasant than the valley of Church Cloverley. It runs from north to south between the ridges of a group of mountains, over which the sun rises after a very long grey light of dawn in the morning, and sets below the opposite heights early in the evening, leaving a soft and shadowy twilight to linger fondly upon the cool slopes of the mountain-sides. Here and there the valley widens into a broader space, large enough to contain a few corn-fields or rich meadow-land, surrounded by hedgerows of hawthorn, with wide-spreading beech trees and thick-leaved sycamores. Through the whole length of the valley there stretches an old high road, once thronged with coaches and carriages; but, since the opening of the railway, so quiet and deserted that the youngest child can be trusted to play along its track, or go from cottage to cottage on busy little errands. About midway through the valley lies the village of Church Cloverley, nestling among the enclosing hills, which rise round it like sheltering walls, as if to guard it from the world, which can only creep in to disturb its peace by the two roads branching north and south, and by the by-paths over the mountains. About a mile on each side of the village there stands a little hamlet, like outposts to a camp; the southern one called Little Cloverley, and the northern one All Cloverley, consisting of a few pleasant dwellings, surrounded by thatched cottages, and separated from Church Cloverley by green fields and the spurs of the hills, which here and there jut out upon the road, and make it wind round them in many turns and curves. The eastern hills consist of separate and distinct elevations, standing apart, yet near to one another; but on the west there is one long range forming a large table-land at the top, with small vales and glens, beginning almost unseen in the very heart of the hills, and running steeply down into the valley, along which, both summer and winter, there fall clear little mountain brooks, rippling and singing over their rocky courses, and gleaming like lines of silver, until they reach the valley, and flow away in broad but shallow streams through the open country towards the river, whose current they help to swell. So narrow are some of these sidelong glens, that the boys, who go bird-nesting among the gorse bushes upon opposite hills, can talk readily across the deep ravine, though they are far away from one another if they measure the steep slopes between them; and the shepherds can hear the bleating of the lambs which have strayed from their own sheep-walks, though it will need a tedious and toilsome journey to fetch them back again to the flock. Among the eastern hills, and in the centre of the whole group of mountains, there rises the great Helmeth, rearing its head up proudly above the others, and looking, as it is, the king of the hills, with regal robes of golden-coloured gorse, and with a crown of time-worn rocks upon its brow; and round about its foot a belt of stern, sentinel-like fir trees, separating it from the meadows which lie under its shadow, and guarding it from the rude trespass of the cattle pastured in them.

Not half a mile from the belted foot of Helmeth lies the little hamlet of All Cloverley, with its two large dwellings, Helmeth Lodge and Cloverley Old Hall, and its farmhouses and cottages, set about with gardens and orchards. Helmeth Lodge is a sunny house facing south, and built with three pointed gables in front, with projecting eaves, and ornamental woodwork about each gable, where the swallows make their nests, in the firm conviction that they were intended for their accommodation alone; and all the summer months they skim to and fro about the roof with shrill cries of delight and joyousness. A little lower down the walls, which are covered with climbing rose-trees and Virginian creepers, the quiet fly-catchers and whistling black-caps hide their nests among the leaves, and wage war upon the butterflies and moths which flutter about in the bright sunshine, or fly with soft wings in the dusky evening. Everywhere about the garden at Helmeth Lodge, in the thick forests of the raspberry bushes, and in the branches of the fruit trees, and in the closely-grown hedgerows, lie concealed the homes of numberless innocent creatures, all beautiful in their kind, which are left unmolested by the inmates of the house; even by the children, who look upon the birds, and the timid field-mice, and the bolder squirrels that visit the walnut trees, as creatures to be loved and cared for. Many a time, if you stood for a few minutes under the hedge which divides the garden from the fields, you might hear the clear ringing voice of Dora or Gilbert singing these words among the chanting of the birds:

'He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small:
For the great God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.'

In the summer-time the house-door at Helmeth Lodge almost always stands open, and through it can be caught a glimpse of many pictures, which hang upon the walls of the entrance-hall and the staircase. Every wall in the house is adorned with them, even to the nursery and the bedrooms of the children; while in a room upon the topmost storey, under one of the gables, where the swallows tap with their dusky wings against the casement many times a day, there is such a collection of pictures, half-finished, or just begun, or only waiting for a few more touches to give the last and greatest beauty to them, that a stranger would know at once that the person who lived in that house was an artist, and that all his time was spent in painting those beautiful pictures.

It was about fifteen years before the time at which this story begins that Helmeth Lodge, with its pleasant garden, became the home of the artist Mr. Ludlow, upon his marriage with the niece of the old man who had built it Old Mr. Wyley had lived at the northern entrance to the valley of Church Cloverley, at a place called Botfield, where he possessed a small coal-field, lying many miles away from the greater coal-pits in the same county, so that the inhabitants of the valley were almost entirely dependent upon him for their supply of fuel before the railway brought it to them as cheaply. He had gathered together a good deal of money by his coal-pit; and part of it he had spent in building Helmeth Lodge, with the intention of quitting his old dwelling amid the dust and smoke of his work, and of coming to live at All Cloverley for the remainder of his life. But in the midst of his money-getting and hard dealings with his fellow-men, while he was thinking only of how he should increase his riches, and his own enjoyment of them, his soul was required of him, and he was compelled to leave his unfinished house, and to give up his shrewd schemes for heaping together more wealth. In his last will it was found that he had bequeathed the greatest part of his possessions, including Helmeth Lodge and the coal-fields at the entrance of the valley, to his niece, who had been living with him at Botfield Hall; and it had been agreed upon by her and Mr. Ludlow, at the time of their marriage, that instead of going away to London, or any other large city, they would fix their home among the beautiful hills of Cloverley, where they would be near to their people who worked for them in the dark and dreary chambers of the coal-pit.

The lives of Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow had been like the life of every other being in this world, mingled gladness and sorrow. Often they had been very happy in their peaceful home; but now and then their hearts had been well-nigh broken with deep grief. They had had several children; and their first-born son and daughter were growing up, the very pride and delight of their lives, and a little child, three years of age, played about the old nursery. But in the grassy churchyard at Church Cloverley, amid the solemn yew trees, and in the shadow of the belfry from which the bells echoed along the valley to call the people to the Sabbath worship of God, there lay three tiny graves, little larger than the molehills in the meadows; and every Sunday morning, as Mrs. Ludlow followed Dora and Gilbert along the narrow churchyard path, her footsteps lingered and fell softer, as week after week she looked upon the names of her lost children, and upon a verse which had been engraved underneath them, some months after the stone had been placed at the head of the little graves. It had been chosen by her husband's sister, Elinor Bakewell, who lived far away in America, upon the shores of Lake Huron; and whenever Mrs. Ludlow read it, she bowed her head, and passed on peacefully into the cool and dim aisles of the old church, saying in her secret heart, 'If this cup may not pass from me except I drink it, Thy will be done.'

The vessel which had carried Ben and Annie safely across the Atlantic Ocean entered the port of Liverpool, and the decks were again crowded by the rejoicing passengers, and strewn from stem to stern with their luggage. The great iron-bound sea-chest which contained the children's clothing, and such treasured relics as could not be left behind in America, was hoisted up out of the deep hold, and immediately claimed by Ben, who put Annie to sit upon it, and surrounded her with all the smaller boxes which they had had with them in their cabins during the voyage. Ben felt that it was necessary for him to display the activity and forethought of a man; and the spirit of the young American rose high as the occasion called it forth. Leaving Annie in safety amidst their possessions, he strode to and fro through the crowd which thronged the deck upon their arrival at the landing-stage, in search after his unknown uncle, whistling 'Hail Columbia!' and now and then addressing some stranger with the inquiry if he were Mr. Ludlow, of Church Cloverley. But no one answered to the name; and as the captain had gone on shore immediately after the ship's arrival in port, he could obtain neither information nor advice from him. It was some effort for Ben, weak and faint as he felt after his long illness, to return to the place where Annie sat amidst the luggage, with a smile upon his face and words of encouragement upon his lips. The little girl sat still, with the look of patience and quietness in her blue eyes which might always be seen there when she could do nothing for herself, but must wait until help came; and as Ben's spirit began to fail, and he stood weariedly beside her, gazing at the departing passengers and the gradual clearing of the deck, one of their fellow-passengers drew near to them. The help Annie was looking for was come.

'Why, Annie!' he said; 'what, here yet? I thought you expected your uncle to meet you. Have you seen nothing of him?'

'No,' answered Annie, her lips quivering for an instant; 'I'm afraid there is some mistake; and the captain is gone on shore. Nobody is come for us; and we don't know any one else in England. But this is my brother Ben; and I daresay we shall manage somehow.'

'Nothing easier!' said their friend cheerfully as he glanced at Ben's pale and gloomy face and Annie's trembling lips; 'I'll see you off to the station, and your luggage -- here it all is, I see; and I can put you into a train direct for Church Cloverley, and you will get there all right and safe. It is only about three hours' ride, and you'll be there an hour or two before nightfall. You can't get into much mischief while you have an English tongue in your head.'

In a few minutes Ben and Annie were driving through the streets of Liverpool, and started from the station by their friend, without any trouble, but still in anxiety and doubt about their Uncle Ludlow. They sat close together in the railway carriage, sometimes talking to one another of their anxiety, and sometimes silently thinking about it; and at every station inquiring eagerly if it was Church Cloverley. The innumerable green fields through which they passed were refreshing to their eyes after the long rolling of the waves past the ship in which they had been imprisoned for more than three weeks. Yet upon their hearts weighed heavily the sense that they were not in their own native land, but that they were strangers in a strange country. They felt that there was something peculiar in their own look, and they shrank, both of them, from the gaze of the passengers who occupied the same compartment; but Ben's face flushed, and his eye kindled with a feeling of pride and resentment; while the tears which gathered slowly under Annie's eyelids were wiped quietly away as she looked through the window up into the blue sky flecked with the white clouds of the April showers. Their lost home lay behind her many thousand miles away; but the friendly sky bent over these green meadows with the same aspect as in America, and she could not feel utterly forlorn while she could look up into its clear, blue depths and think of the heaven beyond it. Now and then Ben felt the warm, loving pressure of her hand; and when he turned his angry eyes upon her patient face, he felt his resentment and rebellion calming down, and his heart growing more tender towards his little sister.

They reached Church Cloverley at last without any hindrance or misadventure. The sun was just sinking behind the long, level line of the uplands, and its rays shone brightly upon the opposite peaks of Helmeth, with its gorse bushes glowing like burnished gold in the light; and the flocks of sheep winding down the furrowed slopes in white lines to their fold at the foot of the mountain. All around the village the hills rose up like high walls, and the sky overhead seemed to lie close down upon their summits, as if it was spreading brooding wings over the peaceful valley. A few country sounds alone could be heard: the deep low of the cattle in the fields echoing from rock to rock; the tinkling of the sheep-bells, and the barking of the shepherds' dogs far away up the glens. For a few minutes only there was the bustle and noise of the train stopping, and the departure of two or three passengers who had come by it; but as soon as these were gone the place settled into silence again, and once more Ben and Annie found themselves standing alone beside their heavy boxes.

'Annie,' said Ben, with a deep sob, 'I'd give the world to be back again at home. I feel as if I could not breathe here. These grand folks don't care for us, or they'd have come to meet us somehow. I can't bear to go and ask them to take us in for charity. I'm big enough, and strong enough, ay! and sharp enough, to get my own living; and if it was not for you, I'd go straight ahead to some town and work my own way. I guess I'd like to do it as it is, and show them that an American boy can do without any of their help.'

Ben stopped, and set his mouth ready to whistle 'Hail Columbia!' again, but his lips were too unsteady; and a big tear rolled down his cheeks on to Annie's little hand.

'Ben,' she said, 'we did not come here to do what we like, but what father thinks is best for us. You could get your own living, and mine too, perhaps; and if father had thought it right, I should have liked keeping house for you. Oh, it would have been so nice! But we are in England instead of at home, and we must try to do what is best. We are not quite alone, Ben. Sometimes I think ourmother knows all about us; because, you know, when the angels who take care of us go back to heaven she would be sure to ask them, and they would tell her. But even if our mother does not know, God knows.'

Annie's eyes looked up with a smile into Ben's gloomy face, and then higher up into the deepening blue of the evening sky. It was enough for her simple and childlike heart that God knew all, and that no sorrow or trial could touch her without His permission. A little troubled she might feel, and she might shrink a little from the disappointments she met; but in the depths of her spirit there was a peace which no storm from without could reach, and even now, alone and weary and anxious, the child's heart rested in simple trust upon the will of the Father in heaven.

'Annie,' said Ben in a softened tone, 'it will soon be night, so I will go and ask the stationmaster how we can get to Uncle Ludlow's house. Sit here, and keep this cloak round you till I come back.'

It was some time before Ben returned; and when he came at last he told Annie he had been to hire a donkey-cart to carry the luggage to All Cloverley, for he deemed it too precious to be left in the care of strangers. The stationmaster and the porters regarded the boy with mingled curiosity and amusement as he directed and helped in the packing of the cart. They were an outlandish couple of children, they whispered one to another -- Ben with his shrewd, quick eye, and his quaint suit of home-spun and home-made cloth; and Annie in her odd dress and her coarse hat, under which was hidden so fair and sweet a face that no one could see it without forgetting the fashion of her clothes. The loiterers about the station gathered into a little knot round the gate to watch them going slowly up the quiet lane, the donkey-cart well heaped with luggage going first, led by its ragged owner, and Ben and Annie following it hand in hand with tardy and weary footsteps. The twilight gathered deeper and deeper in the valley; but the children scarcely heeded it as they walked on in silence with thoughts that hurried before them to their unknown home. They remembered sadly the old American farmstead with its loghouse, and the hard work without and within which had kept their hands and minds busy; and Ben thought that a thousand times rather would he be leading the oxen down to the water, or chopping the wood for the evening fire, than thus creeping reluctantly along the English lane to seek a home amid strange kinsfolk.

Helmeth Lodge stood before them at last, the lighted casements shining brightly in the dusk. One of the windows down-stairs was still open, and Ben and Annie as they passed it stood for a minute or two looking in with throbbing hearts. Such a room they had never seen before, with its many ornaments and beautiful pictures, and the rich carpet covering the whole of the floor, and the long lace curtains drawn over the casement. Ben grasped Annie's hand tightly as he thought of the little parlour at home with its small square of carpet and quarried floor and painted furniture, which had only been used when Captain Bakewell was there. But a boy and girl were sitting near the lamp, and both of the children held their breath and drew closer to one another as they gazed with eager eyes. Never had Annie in her dreams of Dora imagined such long, bright curls, and hands so smooth and white, a dress so elegant; while Ben's most vivid fears had never painted Gilbert's refined and dainty air. For a minute they were spellbound, drinking in the impressions made by the scene before them; and then they flung their arms round each other, and stood heart to heart in a close embrace, as if only in that way they could be sure of one another's love.

'It is God who has sent us here,' said Annie in a whisper; but Ben could not answer. There was a wild whirl of thought in his brain that even yet he could make his escape, and get away into the world to try his own fortune. But through the half-open door of the entrance hall there glimmered a light across the lawn, and Annie led him towards it almost unconsciously to himself. A lady about their mother's age was descending the staircase as if she was coming down from putting her little child to bed, and the light of the candle shone upon her gentle and motherly face. Annie saw something there that dispelled her fears, and recalled the courage she had almost lost. She pushed the door wider open, and, drawing Ben in with her, met the lady as she reached the lowest step. The little girl's voice faltered and the tears filled her eyes, but she stretched out her hands imploringly towards the stranger and cried, 'Oh, auntie! we are Ben and Annie from America; and we have come all the way alone; and there's been nobody to meet us!'

It was more than ever like a dream after that; only it was a happy dream of fond kisses and joyful and surprised welcome. When Ben and Annie came to themselves a little, they found that they were sitting by the cheerful fire of the room they had looked into from without; while Dora and Gilbert were hanging about them, and doing all they could to show their gladness and delight. It was soon explained how the long delay of the ship's arrival had compelled their uncle to return home, but he had started off again as soon as he had received a message by telegraph to say it was in port; so that he must have been in one of the trains which had passed them on the way. So soothed and comforted were the poor wandering children, all their anxieties and fears having vanished, that before long Annie was nestling upon her aunt's lap with her head resting on her bosom, and Ben sat at her side with his hand fast locked in hers, just as they had been used to sit at home on Sunday evenings while their mother talked to them of the dangers their father might meet, and of the secure protection with which God could guard him even in the battlefield.

The life at All Cloverley was altogether different from that which Ben and Annie had led in their father's farmhouse on the shores of Lake Huron. There was no hard or rough work to do; no cattle to fodder, and no floors to brush. Dora and Gilbert knew nothing of work as Ben and Annie knew it; and even Mrs. Ludlow had such a life of quiet leisure and comfort as it had never been Elinor Bakewell's lot to enjoy. All the household cares were taken off her mind by a busy and thrifty servant named Martha Fern, who prided herself upon her good housewifery, and did not, as she was accustomed to boast, let the grass grow under her feet. The affairs of the family went on day after day with a smooth order and nicety, which made Ben feel strangely out of place. It seemed ridiculous to him when he awoke in the morning at sunrise, while every one else was still sleeping soundly, to dress himself in his very best suit of home-made clothes, which he was only to wear until he could have some made like Gilbert's, and when he came down-stairs to find no labour waiting for his busy hands to do. It fretted and chafed him sorely; and he tried to work out his idle time in digging in the garden, and transplanting every shrub which the gardener allowed him to move, until Dora declared that the trees looked as if they were performing a dance. Gilbert started off every morning to Longville, a village five miles away, where he was attending a grammar school, to which Mr. Ludlow decided upon sending Ben as soon as his new and fashionable suit of clothes came home. There was some difficulty as to what must be done with Annie; for Dora received lessons, with five other young ladies, in a very select class, under the instruction of a lady in Church Cloverley; but when it was discovered that the children could only read and write, and positively knew nothing of the ordinary branches of education as it is given in schools, Mrs. Ludlow decided to keep Annie at home, and teach her herself during the quiet leisure hours of the morning.

Perhaps there was no boy in all the valley, and upon all the hills of Cloverley, more miserable than Ben Bakewell. For the last two years he had been holding the post of a man, and doing a man's work upon his father's farm; caring neither for the heat nor cold, and being most glad when he had the hardest work to do; for his mother had never been slow to praise his industry and perseverance, and his heart would beat high with satisfaction when he surveyed his own labour. It was, therefore, a very mortifying thing to find himself brought down to the level of boyhood again; and, above all, to feel, hour after hour, his inferiority to Gilbert, who was far advanced in all the studies of which he was ignorant, and who seemed to keep instinctively the many little rules of good behaviour which Ben could not remember and observe. Dora's bright eyes seemed to notice all his roughness and awkwardness, until the boy grew afraid in her presence, and his frank face wore an air of sullenness and gloom. He wandered away for hours together over the hills, caring nothing for the heavy spring showers, which beat the birds back to their nests, and drove the ponies and sheep to the valleys for shelter. He rather liked to meet Gilbert riding home daintily on his pony, with an umbrella shielding him from the rain, while his own rough frieze coat was soaked through, and his thick shoes covered with the mud of the bogs on the hillside; though, whenever his uncle Ludlow laughed at him, and called him a Yankee bog-trotter, and a clodhopper, his brown cheeks would flush with a deep red, and he had to set his teeth together firmly lest he should utter some of the angry words which burned upon his tongue.

It was very different with Annie. There was one simple thought in the child's mind -- the desire to do and to bear the will of God in all things; which, like a shield, turned aside every influence that could hurt or grieve her. It had been the chief thought in her mother's mind; and for many an hour together had Mrs. Bakewell talked about it to her little daughter. So nothing could come amiss to Annie. When Dora thoughtlessly laughed, and looked with contempt upon the dresses which were unpacked out of the great trunk, the colour mounted to Annie's forehead, and the tears started to her eyes as she thought of her dead mother; but she owned meekly that they were not so fine and pretty as her cousin's; yet, she said, in a tone that made Dora sorry for her laughter, they were what God had provided for her. And when Gilbert was poring over his Latin lessons, and Ben sat by discontented and gloomy, and frowning when he was told he would soon have the same unwelcome work to do, Annie was always ready to slip her arm round his neck, and whisper that it was no fault of his that he was ignorant of things like this. She made herself busy following Martha Fern about the house, and saving her many journeys up and down-stairs, until Martha praised her far above Dora, who never liked to set her hand to any kind of house-work. Meek and busy, patient and active, Annie won her way quickly to the hearts of all; until her uncle himself loved to see her wistful face peep round the door of his study, and he would find portfolios full of pictures, over which she bent delightedly for hours, turning them over with a careful quietness that pleased and amused Mr. Ludlow.

It was the first Sunday afternoon after their arrival in England, and all the family were gone to church except Mrs. Ludlow, who stayed at home with her youngest child, when Ben and Annie strolled away together to a pleasant and quiet place near at hand on the hillside, which Ben had discovered a day or two before. A narrow sheep-track led to a little hollow, like a basin, in the steep slope of the mountain, which was quite hidden from the sight of any dwelling, save that a thin column of blue smoke rose from behind a rock at a little distance from the chimney of a cottage which was built behind it. Just above one side of the hollow could be seen the rocky peak of the great Helmeth; but in the front there stood a screen of tall trees, as if intended to hide the sheltered nook from a lane, which lay deep down below it between high banks and hedgerows of hawthorn. The tops of the larch trees, with their new green tassels of spring leaves and their rose-coloured blossoms, were just on a level with the children's heads; while behind them was the steep slope of the mountain, where the sheep were browsing undisturbedly, and where the ponies paused to look down upon them with a curious and deliberate survey. There was scarcely a sound to be heard except the soft note of the cuckoo, and now and then the plaintive bleating of a lamb as it toiled after its mother along the stony track. Ben and Annie also sat still for a long time in unbroken silence; for the boy's heart was very heavy, and Annie felt his trouble more keenly than her own.

'Ben,' she said at last, laying her hand tenderly upon his as he looked gloomily over the tree-tops, 'my father gave me a letter before we left New York, and we were to read it together the first Sunday we were in England, and at other times if we were in trouble. I have it here, wrapped up in this silver paper and sealed. Look, Ben, I've never broken the seals. Often and often I've wanted to open it, because I thought we were in great trouble; but my father said I must be patient, and keep it for the first Sunday we were in England.'

He looked curiously at the little packet, with its large black seals, as Annie's trembling fingers broke them open and unfolded the silver paper. Within lay a letter written in their mother's handwriting; and as the children saw it, there came back with a keen pang all the sense of their loss and loneliness. So far away was even their mother's grave, that they could not take the letter there and sit beside its little mound while they read it together.

'Ben,' murmured Annie after a while, 'I'll read the letter aloud to you. Maybe my mother is somewhere very near to us, or the angels may be waiting to tell her how we read her letter alone by ourselves, on the first Sunday we were in England. They will be sure to hear us.'

She glanced round for an instant with a bright light in her eyes, as if she could almost see angels near them in the solitary hollow on the hillside; and then, with the clear, low tone in which her mother had taught her to speak, she read the letter aloud.

'When my darling children read these words I shall be parted from them, not only by the great ocean which lies between America and England, but by a sea which they cannot pass over until it is the will of our loving God that they should come to me; for I can never return to them. I have been trying for many long weeks to submit myself to His will; and, though it has been very hard, more bitter than death itself, His own Holy Spirit has conquered my rebellious will, and at last I can give up my son and daughter solely to His tender care. I love Him more than all else; at last, I know that my Redeemer is dearer to me even than the beloved children whom I have cared for with a mother's love every moment of their lives. I tell you this, my darlings, that you may learn that you also must love God above everything else, and give yourselves altogether to Him. Above all things, I desire that you should think of Him as your Father. You can never do His will as the angels do it until you have this thought of Him in your hearts, and the Holy Spirit is willing to give you this feeling of being the children of God. It is only when we lift up our hearts to Him as our Father in heaven that we have a will subdued to His. Just now I opened my Bible to look how often the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of Him as your "Father in heaven" -- so many, many times, that it seems almost as if He did not love to speak of God to us by any other name. "My Father and your Father," Jesus says. So I laid down my Bible, and, hiding my face with my hands, -- for you, Ben and Annie, were in my sight, and I could not bear to look at you lest my heart should fail, -- I said, "The cup that my Father bath given me, shall I not drink it?" All the bitterness of my grief passed away, and I could smile again as I listened to your laughter.

'Yes. A boy and girl, weak and young as you are, may do the will of God like the angels who excel in strength. They do it by hearkening to the voice of His word; and you also have His word, which you must read and obey every day of your lives. I think that, in the home to which I am going, perhaps God will still let me know how you are passing through this life. He will do it if it would be well for me, for He knows what is in the heart of a mother. If it be so, I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children were walking in the truth. If the angels of God rejoice over you, how much more will your mother rejoice over her son and daughter! The first step to doing God's will is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; for to them that believe on His name will He give power to become the sons of God. "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty;" but you must consent to become His children, by believing in the Lord Jesus. The Lord Almighty does not compel you to become the brethren of His Son; but when you receive the Saviour, He gives you the power to become the children of God. Oh, choose it, my darlings! Trust yourselves to the love of Jesus, just as you used to trust yourselves to me when you were little children. I carried you about the house and the fields in my arms. I pray that this heavenly Father may bear you in His almighty arms through all the dangers and temptations of this life. May the blessing of Benjamin rest upon you both: "The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; and the LORD shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His shoulders." May He guard you all the day long of your earthly life; and when the night comes, as it is coming to me, you will fall asleep in Jesus.

'It is very sorrowful to begin the last words I shall ever write to you. When this letter is finished, I shall never more write your dear names -- Ben and Annie, my little children. But it is the will of our loving Father in heaven -- your Father as well as mine. See, Father, I give them up to Thee: Thou lovest them better than I do: Thou canst comfort them more than I can: Thou art wiser in Thy tender care of them than I am. Into Thy hands I commit them.

'Good-bye, my darlings. The bitterness of death is past. A few days longer I shall be with you; but these things have I written that even when I am dead I may yet speak to you. When you read this letter together in England, say within your own hearts steadfastly and bravely, and may the Holy Spirit say it also within your spirits, "Our Father, which art in heaven, Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven. Amen."

Your loving mother,

'ELINOR BAKEWELL.'

The trembling voice of Annie ceased, and she bowed her head over the open letter, while her lips moved as if saying the prayer with which her mother's letter ended; and Ben cast himself down upon the ground, and hid his face in the mossy turf from the sunshine which streamed down upon the mountain-side. So wrapped up were they in their own thoughts and memories, that they did not hear the scampering of the sheep up the hill, nor the crackling of the withered branches under a footfall that was coming near to them along the narrow track. It was that of a man about thirty years of age, with a grave but pleasant face full of kindly thought; and as he reached the front of the hollow, he paused for a minute looking down upon the children with a pitying smile, as of some shepherd who had found the lambs which had wandered from his fold. He could see the downcast face of Annie, her lips moving with soundless words, and the tears starting from under her eyelashes; and his heart was touched to its inmost depths.

'Children,' he said, lowering his voice to a soft and soothing tone, ' what ails you? My little lass, what makes thee weep? Please God, I might do something to help thee out of thy trouble, if thee could rightly tell it me. Thou'rt a stranger in these parts, for I never saw thee before; but thee need not be afraid of me.'

Annie lifted up her face, and Ben peeped through his fingers, for his eyes were red with weeping; but the sight of the stranger banished all shame or distrust. His clothes were of rough frieze cloth like Ben's, and his skin was sunburnt and brown with exposure to the weather; but there was a tender smile upon his mouth, and the tears stood in his brown eyes as he met the inquiring gaze of the children.

'We only came to Cloverley last Monday,' answered Annie, with a sob, 'and we've been reading a letter from my mother, who is dead. She died in the winter, at home in America, and my father is in the war; and she wants us to say from our very hearts, "Thy will be done!"

'Then you are the children of Captain Bakewell,' said the stranger, lifting his hat from his head for a moment, -- 'the nephew and niece of my dear mistress! I am Martha's brother, Stephen Fern. She came up to Fern's Hollow the other night, and she told us Master Ben and Miss Annie were come safe. My dears, I've known your cousins ever since they were little enough to ride on my shoulder over the hills; and if they were in any trouble, they would almost as soon come to Stephen for help as go to their own father. Will you let me talk to you as freely as I'd speak to them?'

'Oh yes!' cried Ben and Annie in one breath, as they made room for him to sit down between them on the grass. The kind face and homely dress seemed aImost familiar to them, and Ben laid his head upon Stephen's shoulder, while Annie slid her little fingers into the clasp of his large hand.

'My dears,' said Stephen, in the same lowered tone as before, 'we're going to talk about God's will. But, first of all, are both of you trying to be the disciples of the Lord Jesus?'

'Yes,' whispered Annie; and Ben nodded his head, though he could not trust himself to speak.

'It seems to me,' continued Stephen, 'that there are two sorts of disciples -- one sort that have just enough faith in Him to get their souls saved; and another sort that try to follow up very close in His steps. It's like a flock of sheep. Some of them keep quite close to the fold, and are never in any danger of being lost; and there are others that will stray away as far as ever they can from the track, till they almost lose sight even of that. I've had many a sheep that would only just creep home to the fold at night; and I've had others that would run to meet me whenever they caught sight of me along the hills. My dears, which sort of disciples do you wish to be?'

'Mother wants us to be like the little brother and sister of the Lord Jesus,' answered Annie.

'Miss Annie,' said Stephen, 'that is the hardest thing for poor sinners like us to be; but it's a blessed thing. Don't thee remember what He says Himself: "Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven"? My little lady, it is doing, not saying. Many and many a time I've knelt down and said, "Lord, Lord," as if I was willing to do anything for Him; and when I've got up from my knees I've been idle, or ill-tempered, or careless, or unbelieving, or any other evil thing I was tempted to be. I used to think "Thy will be done" was only to be said when I was in some great trouble, or had to give up something I cared about a great deal; but I've found out it means much more than that. You know we are to say "Our Father" every day, and so it means that every day, in all the little common things as well as the great ones, and in everything we do as well as suffer, we are to do the will of God. Do you understand this not saying, but doing?'

'Stephen Fern,' said Ben, his face reddening as he spoke, 'I've not been doing the will of God this week, at any rate. I've been used to do hard work, tending the cattle and chopping wood; and it is so different here, where I'm expected to be idle and a gentleman all day long. Dora and Gilbert are ashamed of our rough clothes. I heard Dora ask my aunt not to let us go to church this afternoon, because her grand schoolfellows laughed at Annie and me this morning; and I felt real mad. I guess I'm not ready to bear all God's will yet.'

'Master Ben,' answered Stephen, 'to do God's will is a hard lesson for any of us to learn, and it takes a long time to learn it. But surely, if it's His will that thee should be a gentleman, and get learning that will make thee a useful man, and set thee up above common work such as any poor, ignorant lad does, thee'lt not rebel against that. It'll be thy duty to learn as much as ever thee can; and Miss Dora and Gilbert will soon have no cause to be ashamed of thee.'

The gloom passed away from Ben's face, as he sat silent for a minute or two, looking thoughtfully across at the topmost branches of the fir trees, which were waving to and fro in the wind; but he was not noticing them, or the squirrel leaping from tree to tree; and an expression of courage and resolve followed the sadness, though he sighed a little as he turned his eyes to Stephen Fern's face.

'I'll try,' he said; 'but it is a whole week or more before I can go to school, and I've nothing to do down yonder. If they would only set me to fell some of those trees!'

'I'll tell thee what,' answered Stephen: 'if thee and Miss Annie would like it, there's room for you both up at Fern's Hollow; and I'd take you out on the hills, and down to the field at Botfield; and I'd find thee plenty of work to do. There's a nice little room to spare up-stairs, and Miss Annie could sleep there; and we could make thee a bed on the settle down-stairs. There's no place in the world like Fern's Hollow! I'd not change it for Helmeth Lodge, or the parsonage house at Danesford; and my Mary would be right proud to see you. Would you like to come to my home, Master Ben and Miss Annie?'

Ben gave Stephen's hand a grip, and Annie looked up into his face with a smile, which answered his question better than words. The letter was wrapped up again, and placed safely in Annie's bosom; and then Stephen walked down with them to Helmeth Lodge. Their aunt was glad to give her consent to any scheme which seemed pleasant to the exiled children, and the matter was speedily settled. The next morning Annie was to ride on Gilbert's pony as far as Botfield, while the two boys walked by her side; and Gilbert was to leave her and Ben at a little machine-house belonging to the Botfield coal-works, where they would be sure to find Stephen Fern, who was the bailiff of the coal-pits and lime quarries belonging to Mr. Ludlow. Gilbert wished heartily that he could go with his cousins for a week at Fern's Hollow; and even Dora owned that she should enjoy staying all night in the pretty cottage on the hills. 'Stephen Fern,' said Gilbert to Ben, 'is one of the best fellows in the world, and no mistake whatever about that.'

It was a fine, soft morning, with a light wind stirring the branches of the trees overhead, which were yet only half covered with tender leaf-buds ready to burst out of their sheaths. The children's road lay along the quiet highway tending northward, with hills on each side and narrow lanes winding down steeply into the road from lonely farmhouses and cottages, which were built upon the little platforms and terraces of level land upon the mountain slopes. One of these lanes led up to Fern's Hollow, but, as Ben and Annie did not know the way, they were to go to Botfield with Gilbert; and as they went along, Gilbert explained to them how he and Ben were to ride and tie to school at Longville; that is, how every morning they would take it in turns for one of them to start on walking ten minutes in advance, and the other, riding past him, would go as far as the Gorsty Bank, which he pointed out to them, and there dismount and tie the pony to a gate to wait for the one who was behind, while he would walk on himself as swiftly as he could; and the first would then ride on all the way to Botfield, and leave the pony at the machine-house until the second came up to finish the ride to Longville. The children agreed that it would be a very good plan, though Ben laughed a little, and said an American did not think much of eight miles out and in again -- he could do harder work than that, and it was nothing to the long marches his father was forced to take with his soldiers. The colour died away out of Annie's rosy face; and Gilbert, who was holding Strawberry's bridle, heard her sigh sorrowfully; so he turned the conversation, and, looking up pleasantly into the little girl's face, he told her to notice how the hills were leaving them on each side, and the valley was widening into a broad plain.

It was just as Gilbert said. The great Helmeth, which name, he told them, meant the middle height, lay nearly three miles behind them, and the range of mountains was branching out right and left, and dwindling down into smaller hills and smoother slopes. At one point of the road, where Gilbert stopped the pony for them to have a look at the landscape, they could see lying before them a wide plain, divided into innumerable fields, and stretching far away until at length it was lost in the haze of the morning; but near at hand there was one desolate-looking spot, covered over with great banks of rubbish, ugly and barren, save for a few plants of coltsfoot which were creeping over them. A tall chimney, black with smoke, stood in the midst of the banks, with rows of chains running along from it on the tops of poles to the mouth of a coal-pit at a little distance; but there was no smoke coming out of the black chimney, and the rusty chains were not creaking and clanging, as they would have done if they had been drawing skips of coal up the shaft. Gilbert's face grew grave as he told them that yonder pit-banks were Botfield works, and that they were just about to enter the village. It was like a long, straggling street, with scattered cottages, pleasant enough to look at or to pass through; for every dwelling had its own garden and potato-plat, in many of which there were beehives under the hedges, and here and there along the road might be seen a brood of young chickens or downy little ducklings, fluttering back to hide under the hen-mother's wings at the clatter of Strawberry's hoofs. But Ben and Annie were astonished to see most of the men idling about in a listless manner, though it was Monday morning, and time to be at work again; and the children about the cottage doors were more ragged and starved-looking than they had ever seen children in America. Most of the men touched their caps, and bade Gilbert good morning, and the boys and girls bowed and curtsied to him as they stood staring to see them pass by. Ben felt awkward and embarrassed, but Gilbert received their attentions as a matter of course; yet, though he answered them all frankly and heartily, he seemed to grow more and more serious, until they came in sight of the machine-house, where Stephen Fern was watching for them from the doorway.

It was a small square building, standing at the end of the lane which led to the pits; and before the door there was the machine for weighing the loads of coal and lime brought from the works. Inside there was a little counter, and a desk with a high stool before it, and account-books lying upon the lid, from which Stephen made out the coal and lime tickets for the buyers. Ben and Annie peeped in, but preferred staying out in the sunshine, and Stephen took his cap down from a peg to go over the field with them. Gilbert was still lingering in the lane as if he was in no hurry to go on to school; and at last he spoke hurriedly, and with a very anxious face.

'Stephen,' he said, 'how are things going on? I could learn my lessons ten times better if I knew. Poor mamma looks sorrowful often, and I know she is very careful to save expense; and papa says he must give up his journey to the Holy Land, though he wants to paint a grand picture there. Tell me, there's a good Stephen! They think at home it would be a trouble to me; and they forget how I have to come through Botfield twice every day, and see the poor fellows hulking about, and getting to look worse and worse, or hear of them going off to seek for work. How long is this to go on?'

'As long as it seems good to Him who knows what's best,' answered Stephen, looking thoughtfully at the boy's anxious face: 'please God, there'll be work and good times for us all again by and by. If we could only hit upon the right place for sinking a new shaft, I know there is more coal under ground. But the lime is doing well, Master Gilbert; and there'll be more call for bricks now the spring is set in. The master needn't give up his journey, and maybe he'll prosper mightily with his pictures. There are better times coming, my boy.'

'If I could only do something!' said Gilbert earnestly. 'I am nearly as old as Ben, and many a boy begins to earn his own living at our age. Ben could, I know. But just look at me, Stephen. Why, if anything happened, I should not know what to do to help my poor mamma; I should only be a burden to her. I do wish I was like Ben.'

Gilbert hid his face against Strawberry's neck for a minute, while Ben and Annie were struck with astonishment that he should wish to be like Ben; but before anyone else spoke, he raised his head again with a smile in his eyes.

'I know what you are going to say, Stephen,' he continued; 'whatever it is, you'll begin with saying, "Please God!" And I'll say it too. He knows that the seam of coal is finished, and the people have been without work all the winter, and mamma is sorely troubled about it; and, please God, Stephen, you will soon find the best place for a new pit. I'm glad you're here to take care of everything. Good-bye, all of you!'

The children and Stephen stood watching him until he looked round to wave his cap to them just as he passed out of sight; and then he turned down the lane to the works. A huge wheel stood by the road-side, with a runlet of water from the hills falling upon it; but it was not turning, and the trickling of the little stream made a tinkling music amid the stillness. A little further on the limekilns were smoking, and two or three men were flitting about, half hidden by the thick, white clouds of smoke; but all the rest of the field was deserted. The engine-house and the blacksmith's shop were shut up; and the roof of the cabin at the pit's mouth had been blown off by the winter winds, and not replaced. The pit, Stephen told them, was filled with water; and when Ben and Annie peered cautiously down the shaft, they could just catch a gleam of a faint and dark glistening in the black depths; and a sullen splash echoed up the round wall when Ben threw a stone down it. Stephen drew them back from the brink when he heard it, and a sorrowful look stole over his face; and then he led them quickly away to another part of the works. Every place looked decayed and ruined, as if it had been deserted for many years, though Stephen told them that it was only the autumn before that the seam of coal had run suddenly into what the colliers called a fault; that is, some layer of rock, or some abrupt dip in the soil underground had come across the seam, and the rest of the coal was lowered far beneath the level of the pit, or perhaps raised high above it. They had found it useless to try to work to the fresh coal from below, and the only thing that could be done was to sink a new shaft from the surface of the earth. All the winter through they had been waiting for the spring to come, and bring weather suitable for beginning the new works; yet it had not been so bad a time as the workmen and their families might have expected, for the mistress had established a savings-bank for the men while they were receiving full wages, and most of them had a little store laid by. Still they were anxious times anyhow, said Stephen, as he led them to the corner of a field where a number of labourers were just beginning the new shaft; it would cost several thousand pounds to make it, and if the coal should not be there after all, the money would be thrown away, and the time lost. It would dishearten anybody, he added, pressing Annie's hand, which he held in his, if they were not quite sure that all things work together for good to them that love God.

It was getting on for noonday before Stephen and the children started for Fern's Hollow, which they could see a long way off, its white walls standing out clearly against a coppice of fir trees, which was planted behind it to screen it from the north winds. It stood high up on the hillside; and as it had been built by old Mr. Wyley at the same time as Helmeth Lodge, it was something after the same style, with two small gables in the roof, which was very high and sloping, that the heavy snows might not lodge upon it in the winter. At one side of the cottage there was a barn of rough, unbarked timber, which reminded Ben and Annie of their own barn on the farm-stead by Lake Huron. All along the front of the house was a narrow slip of garden ground, planted with hardy flowers, and with a bowered seat at the point where the finest view could be seen over the plain, and across the valley to the great Helmeth. Their path to the garden wicket lay across a lovely meadow, sloping away to the south, and having a clear little stream rippling through it, which widened and deepened into a clear pool towards the middle of the field. Long before they could reach the gate they saw Stephen's wife watching for their arrival; and a handsome shepherd dog came bounding over the round brow of the hill to meet his master, and sniff inquiringly round the strange children, until at last he condescended to slide his cold nose under Annie's hand. Stephen's wife said it was a great mark of favour, for Sandy was sometimes stiff with her even; but Martha had told them when she was up at Fern's Hollow that nothing with life and sense could help loving Miss Annie.

The children thought that Stephen Fern had spoken the truth when he told them that there was no place in the world like Fern's Hollow. Besides the front garden, there was another laid out on the southern slope of the hollow, so sheltered by the hills and trees, and so warmed by the noonday sun, that the fruit trees were already white with blossoms, and the boughs of the currant and gooseberry bushes were laden with clusters of tiny berries. In the meadow, lambs and colts were frisking about on the soft sward, and broods of goslings and ducklings were swimming to and fro on the clear, cool little pool.

Behind the fir coppice there was a great tract of uplands, leading far away over the tops of the mountains, where many flocks of sheep and herds of wild ponies, some of them belonging to their uncle and to Stephen, lived through all the summer months, and sometimes all the year round. During the afternoon Ben and Annie rambled about this open tableland, startling the timid hares from their forms, and watching the heavily-loaded bees flying back to their hives in the valley so slowly that it seemed as if they could never reach home with their rich burdens. When Stephen returned from the works in the evening, there was not a trace of gloom or sadness left upon either of their faces.

Stephen's wife had prepared the little parlour for Ben and Annie; but Stephen gave them their choice whether they would sit there alone, or come to the kitchen fire with him and Mary. The air upon the hill was yet chilly at nightfall, and the children were glad to get close to the bright fire, sitting side by side, with Stephen and his wife opposite them, resting after the day's labour. Now and then Stephen sang for them some of the hymns which were favourites with him and his old comrades who were used to work in the pits; and Ben and Annie in their turn sang together the American hymns and choruses which Stephen had never heard. The time passed quickly, and it was getting late on in the evening, when there came a loud rap at the door, and the latch was lifted from without before Mary Fern could reach the threshold.

'God save all here!' said a rough voice; and a short, thickset man, with tangled locks of red hair hanging round his face, stepped into the house, followed by a woman whose face was sunburnt like a gipsy's, and looked the browner for the thick white border of her cap, which was quilled closely round it. They stood still for an instant when their eyes fell upon the children in the corner of the fireplace, until Stephen bade them welcome with a hearty voice.

'Come on, Tim and Bess!' he cried; 'draw up, old comrades. Here's a chair for thee, Bess, close beside the fire. Why, thee art wet, woman! Hast thee walked all the way from Botfield in the rain?'

'There was a scud of rain coming over the bent of the hill,' said Bess; 'but I was very wishful to come on and see thee, Stephen. We need heartening, and nobody can do it like thee. Tim there has had a fit of the dismals; for it's a wearing thing for a man to he pottering about the house and the little children all day long.'

'Ay is it!' said Tim. 'I've turned nurse and housekeeper, while Bess has been weeding and picking stones in Miss Reynolds' garden, at Cloverley Old Hall. That's three miles out and in again -- six miles; and breaking her back with stooping for twelve hours, barring her dinner-time; and she gets eightpence a day for it. I don't call that a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.'

'Nor do I,' answered Stephen, with a glance of pity, which called a faint smile upon Bess's brown face.

'I went down myself,' continued Tim, 'and told the old lady I'd no work to do, and I'd take the job; but she'd not hear talk of it. I told her I'd do it for the eightpence, if Bess might only go back to the children; but she said I only wanted to get the money to waste it in drink. As if a fellow like me 'ud work twelve hours for eightpence to take it to the public-house! Bess she would have, or none of us; so I was forced to come home to the babies.'

'There's mighty little nature in her,' said Bess, sighing; but she doesn't know what it is to have a lot of little children crying for their mammy. I met Mrs. Ludlow in All Cloverley; and doesn't she think of the children? Bless her! she gave me a lapful of good meat for them, as more than paid me for walking six miles. So Tim has no call to be down-hearted, has he, Stephen? We came past the new shaft, and it's getting on well. There'll be plenty of work by and by.'

Bess spoke cheerily, with a frequent glance towards Tim, who had seated himself before the fire, and was staring moodily into its red embers. She nodded her head meaningly at Stephen, and went on speaking.

'Stephen,' she said, 'thee knows I'm no scholar; and Tim can't make out much, so as to enjoy himself at his book. Maybe our little Nan'll soon get learning enough to read for us; but there's no school, save the dame school, nearer than Longville, and the children can't go half their time. But I reckon there'll be something in the Bible to meet our case. Does it tell of any colliers being thrown out of work, and what they did, and how God Almighty helped them out of their trouble? Surely, Stephen, thee will read us something to give us heart.'

'There is comfort in it,' said Stephen, smiling, 'but there's no case exactly like thine, Bess. It would be a big book that held all our lives. But it does say plain enough, "Take no thought for the morrow, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."'

'That's very good,' said Bess, with a glance at Tim; 'your heavenly Father knows you want clothes and meat. Sure He knows all about us; and when things are at the worst they'll mend.'

'It says, too,' continued Stephen, 'that God hath chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him.'

'Hearken, Tim!' cried Bess; '"rich in faith!" Well, we can be rich in that, I reckon ; though we are as poor as crows in everything else.'

'It takes a deal of faith,' said Tim, 'to see the little children wanting almost everything, and thee eager and strong for work and getting none to do. It takes a deal of faith to believe that God cares. A lot of the men are going off to Netley to seek for work; but it's hard to leave the place where me and Bess and the children were all born. Rich folks don't know our troubles. The mistress herself seems to let them go by lightly. Why, Stevie, I can scarce keep out of the public-house when I'm sauntering about all day with my hands before me. My feet go their own ways there, and I can scarce stop them on the doorstep.'

'That's bad,' answered Stephen, while a grave look clouded his pleasant face, 'and the other men say the same. I don't know what's to be done. If we could only fill up the time a bit till the new shaft is finished, it would be a good thing.'

'Tim,' said Bess eagerly, 'dost thee remember the old times, when Miss Annie, before she married to Mr. Ludlow, used to have a night-school for you grown-up men? And they used to go, ay, from twenty to thirty of them, to learn their reading and writing, till the public was well-nigh empty those nights. If there'd be something of that sort two or three times a week, it 'ud help to keep their hearts up; and they'd have something to do at home, thee knows, with writing copies and getting their reading ready. Why, I've Tim's copybook laid by yet; he set such store upon it; and he was getting on rarely. It's the men that feel it the most; us women can always find plenty to do.'

They sat silent for some minutes in grave thought, while Bess glanced anxiously from one to another with her hard-working hands lying weariedly upon her lap. Ben and Annie, who had been listening attentively in the chimney-corner, were as deep in thought as the rest. Out in America there had been no lack of work; the want had been all on the other side -- that of workmen to do it. It was a new thing to them to hear of men strong and eager for labour, yet not finding any to do.

'I can't see how to manage it,' said Stephen sadly; 'I'm too busy with the works, and my own farm to see after. What with one thing or another, I'm kept on till eight o'clock, and it 'ud be too far for any of you to come up from Botfield at that time of night. The machine-house would be the place for a school if we had any teacher; and, please God, He may send us a teacher.'

Annie's face grew crimson as Stephen spoke, and she laid her hand in Ben's, as if to gain courage from his grasp. It seemed a hard thing to do, but she knew how to read and write well; they were the only things she did know; and she might help this poor man in his trouble. She thought of the unfaithful and slothful servant who had only one talent, and went and hid that in the earth instead of using it for his lord. Keeping a fast hold of Ben, she touched Stephen's arm with the other hand, and he turned his grave face towards her.

'Stephen,' she said, 'I know how to read and write very well; and I have nothing to do. If auntie would let me, I could teach this poor man. Ben and Gilbert will come through Botfield to their school, and every Wednesday and Saturday they only go for half the day; if it would do for him, I could come with them those mornings, and they would take me back at dinner-time. I am nearly twelve years old; and, Stephen, our Lord Jesus was only that old when He went to the temple, hearing the doctors and asking them questions. I don't think I should be too little to try to teach reading and writing.'

'Yes, Stephen,' Ben added promptly, 'and I'm quite willing for Annie to do it; and perhaps Aunt Ludlow would let Gilbert and me stay an hour longer to teach the men better than Annie could. We could fix it first-rate; the machine-house will do for the school, and the men and boys could come at eleven o'clock and read to Annie till we came, and we would take the writing. In America every boy and girl is taught to read and write well Annie shall read you a chapter out of the Bible if you like. Dora herself cannot do it better.'

Ben looked proudly round the circle gathered about the fire, and he smiled confidently as his eye fell upon a Bible which lay upon a small table under the window. Before Stephen could answer, he had sprung from his seat, and, reaching it down, opened it and laid it upon Annie's lap; while he held up his hand to enjoin them to silence, and told her to read the chapter at which the book opened. The child's voice faltered a little, but it soon grew clear and steady; and while Stephen shaded his face with his hand, and Tim fastened his eyes upon Annie, and Bess from time to time wiped away the falling tears with the corner of her check apron, Annie read aloud the history of the Saviour's great agony in the garden of Gethsemane, where even to Him the will of God was so hard to bear that He cried out, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.'

'Bless her!' said Bess in a low voice when Annie finished and sat looking up timidly into Stephen's shaded face; 'there's not a man in the works but 'ud be proud to learn reading of her. It's as good reading as the parson's any day. Eh! but Tim'll be set up if ever he reads his words out as glib as that.'

'My little lady,' said Stephen, looking down fondly upon Annie, 'I think that would be doing God's will if thy auntie says nothing against it. But the child Jesus was subject to His parents, and so must thou be, even to giving up what seems good and right to thyself; for He left the doctors and the temple at His mother's bidding. Shall we go down to Cloverley to-morrow and ask thy auntie about it ? and if she's willing, we can settle everything while thou'rt here, and begin the school next Saturday.'

'Yes,' answered Annie, with a little sigh as she looked at Tim's red face and the thick shock of hair surrounding it. She thought of the machine-house filled with rough men like him, with loud, hoarse voices which would drown her low and quiet tones, and she shrank for a moment from the task she had taken upon herself. But the face of Bess beamed with pleasure, and Stephen's eyes rested upon her approvingly, and Ben looked proud and satisfied. When Tim and Bess at last pushed their chairs back, and made an awkward bow and courtesy to their mistress's nephew and niece, Annie went forward and held out her little brown hand to them with a glance of interest and confidence in her grown-up scholars. Tim's voice was more husky than ever as he said, 'Good-night, and God bless thee!' and, though Stephen walked across the meadow with them to the head of the lane which led down to Botfield, he did not speak a word until they were about to part.

'Yon little lass is one of thy sort, Stephen,' he said; 'I reckon it 'ud be better for every soul among us if we could read our Bibles like her. She read it with heart, man -- with her whole heart, and it thrills through mine now. I'd walk to Cloverley and back every day just to hear yon little lass speaking the verses out in that way.'

The school at Botfield was begun the next Saturday morning; and Tim Cole and five of his comrades came to it as Annie's scholars, the roughest-looking but gentlest-mannered scholars in the world. In a few weeks, more of the men who were out of work placed themselves under the little teacher. It was a fair sight to be seen every Wednesday and Saturday morning in the old machine-house at Botfield, as Mr. Ludlow gazed upon it one day through the half-open door until he thought it a more beautiful picture than any which decorated his walls at home. There sat Annie, perched up on the tall stool which stood before the desk where Stephen kept his account-books, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes bright with eager interest, as she looked round upon her rough pupils, and listened to their stammering efforts at reading like herself, while the men knotted their hard faces and twisted their bodies into various expressions and attitudes of laborious study. But upon every man's face there came a light and a smile when Annie spoke to him, and in his eyes there was a look which spoke of his love for his young teacher. 'A little child shall lead them,' said Mr. Ludlow to himself as he turned away and sat down under a tree in the hedgerow to wait until Annie was ready to walk home with him; and he began to consider solemnly and sadly how much he had been living for his own pleasure, and how little he had done to bring his workpeople to the knowledge of their Saviour.

The sinking of the new shaft went on but slowly, for many hindrances were met with in the flowing in of water beyond the force of the water-wheel to pump out; yet the hearts of the men, who were waiting for work in their native village rather than wander away to seek it in a strange place, kept up bravely. The summer would be less hard in its pressure upon their homes than the biting winter had been. The children played out of doors after their meals of dry bread with almost as much merriment as if they had had dainty and abundant food; and the soft breezes which ruffled their thin and ragged clothing did not sting their tender limbs as the keen frosts of the winter had done. Besides, there was more work to do upon the farm lands lying round Botfield; and such of the men as did not stand off foolishly from doing any work that was not in their own line of labour, picked up many a shilling by doing some odd job upon the farmsteads, or by tending the sheep and ponies on the hills. Stephen Fern strode more cheerily about the desolate coal-field of which he was the overseer, encouraging the colliers who were waiting patiently for the time when the fresh seam of coal should be found; and promising the children who flocked round him wherever they caught sight of his pleasant face, that very soon their mothers should go to Cloverley market again to buy them the shoes and clothing of which they began to stand in need. When Ben and Gilbert rode through Botfield, and saw its cottages basking in the summer sunshine, and the little rivulet with waters fresh from the mountains sparkling and singing down its pebbly channel, while groups of children all along its course were setting up their tiny water-mills, or paddling with bare feet in its cool ripples, they felt that there was no reason for any more care or foreboding. It was true what Annie was always saying, thought Ben and Gilbert: God was the heavenly Father; and if everybody would only do His will as the angels do it in heaven, this earth would be almost as happy as the garden of Eden, which once formed part of it.

But neither summer heat nor brightness could remove the heavy load of anxiety from the spirits of Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow. Mr. Ludlow was afraid that the coal was altogether exhausted at Botfield, and it had been with great reluctance that he had consented to spend so much money on the sinking of the new shaft. He busied himself with greater diligence than ever at his painting; and Dora, whose talent and skill in her father's art were very great, stayed at home to help him to complete several pictures which he was preparing for the autumn exhibitions, for she could fillin the backgrounds, and paint the less important portions of his works. Almost from sunrise to sunset, Dora and her father were in the studio, sometimes not speaking to one another for hours, while they stood before their easels, so intent upon the beautiful forms and faces which grew upon the canvas, that they scarcely heeded how the time flew by. It was no doubt because Dora and Annie were at home, and watched the shadow of anxiety darkening day by day upon the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow, that their minds were more filled with thought and care than Ben's and Gilbert's; and that when Annie went to her school at Botfield she asked Stephen and Tim Cole, who was one of the head colliers, many various questions about the new shaft.

Nobody who passed by the pretty house of Helmeth Lodge, with its thick clusters of roses hanging round the casements, and its tribes of swallows skimming in and out of the gables, would have supposed that there could be much care or disappointment in so peaceful-looking a dwelling. But, even more than any of the poor colliers at Botfield, Mr. Ludlow was weighed down by the failure and confusion of his hopes and plans. He had intended to give Dora and Gilbert a thorough and finished education, and he felt that if a year or two were wasted just at their age, nothing could afterwards repair the loss; yet if the Botfield works remained unproductive, or, worse than that, continued to swallow up the money which he had laid by, it would be necessary for him to give up his cherished plans for his children. More than this, he had designed to accompany a party of artists to the Holy Land, there to paint a picture which should establish his fame, and be worthy of the art he loved. Hitherto his success had been moderately even, and his pictures of English scenery had sold at fair prices, but he felt that he had within him powers which had not yet been called forth, and the young and warm enthusiasm of Dora, who was treading swiftly after him, spurred him on to do some greater work than any he had yet attempted. But darker than their disappointment, darker far than the mere failure of his hopes and plans, was that secret dread that the coal-field was exhausted; and that there would be no more wealth brought up for him and his children from the dark chambers under ground. To the colliers it would be only the moving away to another place of labour; but to him and his household it would be giving up comfort for poverty, and parting with all that made life pleasant to them. It appeared impossible to Mr. Ludlow, as he worked away with redoubled diligence at his painting, that he could reconcile himself to the will of God, if it demanded of him to see all the future prospects of his children blighted.

It was much the same with Mrs. Ludlow. Before her marriage she had been a simple, earnest, active follower of Christ, seeking to do the will of God from her heart, in diligent service among the workpeople whom God had put under her; but the cares of her house and children had occupied her until all her heart and thoughts were wrapped up in them. Like her husband, she still trusted in God, and loved Him in a little measure; but every year her faith had been growing less, and her love more faint, while she allowed her mind to be careful and troubled about many things, and neglected the one thing needful. She fretted herself secretly with the dread of poverty, never thinking that the Son of God Himself was poor, and that she should be willing to tread in the same steps as His blessed feet had trodden. In earlier days Mrs. Ludlow had been used to look up to God as her Father to whom she could take the smallest trouble; but that thought of Him had faded away gradually, like the fading away of a flower that has little root and is choked among thorns; and though she still trusted in Him, it was with a feeble sense of His tenderness and faithfulness towards her; and she felt as if He were a Master, who sent His commands to her from a distance, rather than the heavenly Father in whose house she was always dwelling.

It was no wonder that Dora had but little thought of God, though she read her Bible and said her prayers daily; for when the highest and happiest thoughts of Him died out of Mrs. Ludlow's heart, she found it was difficult to speak of Him to her children, and she was content that they observed all the outward forms of religion; for she grew shy of talking of God's goodness and loving-kindness as she became more burdened with worldly anxieties and troubles. So it seemed a great marvel to Dora that Annie could be happy and at peace, when her mother's grave was lying far away on the shores of Lake Huron, and her father's life was exposed to perpetual peril in the terrible war that was destroying thusands upon thousands of her fellow-countrymen. Yet there was no mistaking the quiet and calm repose of Annie's face, which just now was constantly before her eyes; for her father was painting it into a picture of Christ raising the daughter of Jairus. Whatever sorrows had left their traces upon it, they all seemed chased away by some light from within; as if, like the child to whom Jesus said, 'Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise,' she had opened her eyes from the sleep of death, and fastened them upon the face of the Saviour Himself.

The picture of Jairus' daughter, with another painting executed by Dora herself, were bought by a gentleman in the neighbourhood early in the summer, for the sum of fifty pounds. It was at once decided that Mr. Ludlow should join the two artists who were setting off immediately for the Holy Land, and Dora should be trusted to fill up such portions of his paintings as he was compelled to leave unfinished for the exhibitions. There was no doubt now that her skill was great, and her knowledge of the art sufficient for the minor parts of the work. She was only fifteen years old, and a long life lay before her, which she could employ in the beautiful art for which God had given her a talent, and in which she took so much delight. When her father kissed her again and again, before he could tear himself away from home, and said that to her he owed the possibility of enjoying the long-cherished desire of his heart, and that he should more ardently seek to distinguish himself because it would pave the way to her success, Dora resolved within herself that no difficulty or hindrance should prevent her climbing to the height of her ambition, and becoming one of the most famous painters of her time.

It was a severe trial of Ben's patience and submission to the will of God in little things, to be obliged to attend the grammar-school at Longville, and every day to take his place amongst the youngest boys on the first form, for he knew nothing of grammar; while Gilbert, who was a few months younger than himself, was one of the head boys in the school, for he was a clever boy, and had been well taught from his childhood. In strength of body, and in actual knowledge of work, and in shrewdness of understanding, Ben was far ahead of his schoolfellows; and as he strode to and fro in the playground, humming 'Hail, Columbia!' which was the only tune he could master, the lads about him acknowledged the breadth of his shoulders and the sturdy weight of his fist. But in the schoolroom, where only scholarship and book-learning were of any account, he sank low down beneath the level of the least boys. Shut up in the crowded room, with the hum and buzz of many voices ringing in his ears, while he vainly tried to fix his mind upon the lessons set before him, Ben's fancy would carry hita away to the cool and shady shores of the lake at home, and the pleasant tone of his mother's voice, as she taught him all the learning she possessed herself, until the hot tears tingled under his eyelids, and his teeth had to be set firmly together to keep down the rising sobs.

It was after an unusually hard day during the midsummer examinations, when even Gilbert had laughed aloud and coloured up at some of his blunders, that Ben started off homewards in a state of angry resentment, which would not suffer him to take his turn at riding, when Gilbert came up with him on the pony. Ben stooped his head and rounded his shoulders with a look of dogged determination, and bade Gilbert ride on like the fine gentleman he was; for his part, he would take off his shoes and stockings, and walk home barefoot like a tramp. It was all in vain that Gilbert explained and entreated. Ben sat down on a heap of stones by the roadside, and, ridding himself of his shoes and stockings, set his bare feet upon the dusty ground, with a glance of contempt at Gilbert's polished boots. In a few moments the pony had cantered out of sight; and the long, lonely, heated road stretched before Ben, as he trudged sulkily and uncomfortably along it, with his shoes under his arm instead of upon his feet.

The way home lay through Botfield; and the women who were leaning over their garden wickets, gossiping in the cool of the evening, stared hard at the barefooted boy, and laughed as they bade him 'Good evening.' Bess Cole was washing at her cottage door, and ran to meet him to send a message to Annie, and she begged that he would let her wash his feet, and make them comfortable before he went farther on; but Ben would not listen to her. A little beyond the village he met Dora, with one of her companions from Church Cloverley, riding on their ponies; but, though she glanced indignantly at him, she passed by as if she did not know him. It was the last provocation to Ben's anger; and, as he sauntered along more slowly than before, he felt as if he hated all England, and everything that lived in the country.

In this mood he reached All Cloverley, and saw the upper window of Helmeth Lodge rising above the lime trees which grew behind it. He stopped to look at it for a minute or two, and leaned against an old mossy wall, which enclosed the homestead of their next-door neighbour, the Miss Reynolds who had paid Bess Cole eightpence a day for weeding. The garden and orchard lay close beneath the nursery window at Helmeth Lodge; but neither Dora nor Gilbert had ever set their feet within the old wall and the crazy gate, which seldom turned upon its rusty hinges. The house itself was falling into decay; and three storeys of blank, uncurtained windows, with many broken panes in them, looked out upon the neglected garden; but no face was ever seen at them, except the grey and grim face of the lady who dwelt in the desolate building, with no other companion than a gaunt, bad-tempered servant, who was always at war with Martha Fern. When Mrs. Ludlow had first settled at Helmeth Lodge, she had made several efforts to become acquainted with her neighbour, but her advances had been rudely repulsed; and to Dora and Gilbert, Cloverley Old Hall had been a place of mystery from their earliest childhood.

Ben was still leaning against the wall, listlessly delaying the moment when he should have to enter his aunt's dwelling barefooted, for his pride would not suffer him to put on his shoes and stockings again, when he heard on the other side a sound so unlike any which had ever caught his quick ear before, that his curiosity was instantly awakened. In a moment he climbed to the top, and stood upon the copestones surveying the kitchen garden of the old mansion. This side of the house looked more inhabited than the front, for the kitchen door opened into a little courtyard separated from the garden by a low paling, and there were signs of life within and without. But Ben's interest was centred upon the sound which had excited his curiosity; and his sharp eye was not long before it fell upon a pig tethered to an apple-tree growing in the middle of a small grass plot, which was cropped bare to the roots as far as the pig's tether would reach. But a creature so famished and miserable, so bony and hollow, such a mere skeleton of a pig, Ben's keen eye had never rested upon. Just beyond the reach of the rope which fastened it to the tree was a bed of young spring cabbages; and it had vainly stretched its tether, until its dim little eyes were starting from their sockets; and the sound that had caught Ben's ear was the low, echoing grunt from its almost strangled throat.

Ben did not hesitate a moment. With a bound which drew after him two of the heavy copestones, he leaped to the ground; and, opening his huge clasp-knife, -- an American knife he proudly called it, -- he severed the rope from the pig's neck. At first, his indignation against England was boiling over; but when the pig rushed head foremost among the cabbages, darting here and there with hot haste, and snatching mouthful after mouthful in frantic delight, such a laugh rang through the evening air as reached Annie in the nursery at Helmeth Lodge, where she was playing with Daisy, and brought Miss Reynolds and her servant in breathless consternation to the kitchen door. There stood the boy, bareheaded and barefooted, his brown, ruddy face glowing with unrepressed merriment; while the famished pig, with its keen, sharp hunger, was revelling, undisturbed by the commotion, in the new luxury of abundant and delicious food.

Before Ben could recover himself from his fit of laughter, both his arms were seized, and he found himself dragged along towards the door of the house, with a violence not altogether agreeable. He did not like to put out his strength, as he would have done if his captors had been men; for Captain Bakewell had taught him that gentleness towards every woman was a necessary part of true courage; so he suffered himself to be borne along without resistance into the kitchen. The grey face of the mistress of the house grew more grim as she frowned at the boy, who was still chuckling with the laughter which he could hardly control; and it was a minute or two before he could answer her questions as to who he was, and where he came from.

'I'm Ben Bakewell,' he said at last, --' Mr. Ludlow's nephew, ma'am. I live at the next house.'

'Mr. Ludlow's nephew!' repeated Miss Reynolds; 'barefooted and bareheaded! You must tell a better tale than that, lad! But, Mr. Ludlow's nephew or no, you shall go to jail for trespassing upon my property and damaging my wall and garden. Climbing over into my grounds, you young rascal! I shall lock you up in one of the attics till Rachel can fetch a policeman from Church Cloverley; and to jail you shall go, as a vagabond and a thief!'

'I'm neither vagabond nor thief!' answered Ben hotly; 'I'm a citizen of the United States of America, and the son of Captain Bakewell. I heard your pig choke as if it was near dying, and I cut the rope that was strangling it. Why, there isn't such a disgraceful pig in all America, not in Cincinnati even: we'd be ashamed to look the universe in the face if we owned such a pig as that. It is only in a poor, paltry, beggarly country like England that such a pig could live at all. But it's getting a meal now; and perhaps you had better set Rachel to catch it again, instead of going off for a policeman.'

'I'll see you safely locked up first,' said Miss Reynolds, with a grim smile, as she and Rachel grasped his arm again, and led him between them up the dusty and creaking staircase. Ben made no effort to escape. He did not dislike the idea of an adventure, and he felt sure that he should be released as soon as the policeman arrived. Up two flights of stairs he walked quietly between them; and the door of a garret under the roof being opened, he was thrust within it, and he heard a padlock on the outside secured upon him.

It was several minutes before Ben's eyes, filled with the light of day without, grew accustomed to the obscurity of the garret. It was a long, low room, with the slope of the roof coming close down to the floor on each side, and with one small square of glass almost level with the floor in the gable at the end, looking across the hay meadows, through which there was no path, up to the very foot of the Helmeth. He lay down on the floor, still laughing at the remembrance of his frolic, with his face against the pane, which he rubbed bright with his jacket-sleeve; and then he gazed for a long time upon the beautiful and still landscape. There was no sound to be heard except the lowing of some cattle, answering one another from distant pastures with a deep roar, which echoed through the narrow valley of Cloverley. Not a single human being was in sight, unless a tiny moving speck upon the rocky brow of the mountain was the figure of some shepherd seeing after his flock. The peak of Helmeth glared in the sinking sunshine; and he watched the line of light creeping slowly up the hill, until it faded away into the cold clouds that hung over the summit. Not a sound yet: everything was very still, and Ben grew quiet.

It would never do, he thought, for an American citizen to shout from the place of his imprisonment, even if there were anybody to shout to; but he began to look forward with a feeling of relief to seeing the face of the policeman. Presently, as the twilight, long as it was in the valley of Cloverley, grew deeper and duskier, and the bats flitted past the little window, the thought of Annie's uneasiness crept into Ben's mind, and could not be shaken off. Gilbert would tell of his foolish anger; and no doubt Annie would think he had run away, as he had threatened to do, to her great distress. He pictured Annie, so very near, yet so separated from him, standing at the garden gate, and looking out for him anxiously along the road, and checking her tears lest they should dim her sight. His darling little Annie, so gentle-hearted and so loving! As the darkness gathered deeper and deeper, Ben let his pride go, and knocked loudly at the garret door, calling to the women who held him in captivity either to bring the policeman or to let him go free; but there was not the slightest sound in the house, save the echoes which rang through the empty chambers. It was not long before Ben's shrewd mind came to the conclusion that they intended him to spend the night there.

Ben had often wished for hardships, but he discovered that there was little gratification in an unappeased hunger and a bare floor for his bed. He tried to fortify himself with the recollection of his father's endurance of the discomforts and grievances of a camp; but he bore them in the path of duty, and Ben could not convince himself that duty had brought him into his position. He paced up and down the garret until his feet were nearly blistered; and then he stretched himself upon the floor again, with his face against the little pane to wait for the faint glimmer of the morning. The solemn night seemed to reprove him for the folly and wilfulness of his conduct since he came to England, and set his own will against the purposes of his best and kindest friends; and this last piece of his foolish resentment, in which he had tried to vex Gilbert, and display his own rough independence, began to appear very contemptible in his eyes. He knew that he was causing Annie to suffer more than he did, and that even now she must be passing a night of sleepless anxiety. Ben never prayed more earnestly and humbly in his life than when he lay weary yet wakeful on the garret floor, watching for the dawn to break behind the black mountains of the east.

Even the placid good-humour of Gilbert's nature had been ruffled by Ben's petulant anger; and he spurred on Strawberry into a quick canter, with the wish, almost uttered aloud, that his American cousins had stayed in their own country. But no sooner did he see Annie's wistful face looking out for their arrival, as soon as the pony's hoofs clattered along the road, than he withdrew half his wish. Dora lived so much for herself, amid the paintings she loved so dearly, that she had never been a companion for her brother; while Annie, whose happiness seemed to consist in the pleasure and gladness of those about her, had won her way to the very core of Gilbert's heart. Without speaking of Ben's ill-temper, he told her that he had chosen to walk all the way home; and then he carried his books up into his own room to prepare his lessons for the next day. Annie lingered about the garden for a long time waiting for Ben; and once, when she had run up into the nursery to Daisy, she thought she heard his laugh not very far off; but still he did not come, and as the tedious hours dragged slowly by, a vague dread stole over her spirit.

Mrs. Ludlow was from home, and Martha had been left in charge of the household. When the night began to close in, and Gilbert told his tale of Ben's angry mortification at school, and the bitterness of his words, there remained little doubt in Annie's mind that he had after all fulfilled his threat of going away to seek his own fortune in the world. The child's anguish was great; but, though her face grew white, and in her eyes there was an expression of deep pain such as Dora and Gilbert had never seen, she controlled her tears, and listened patiently to their attempts to comfort her. None of them thought of going to bed; for Martha said as soon as the morning dawned she would hurry away up to Fern's Hollow for Stephen, while Gilbert should ride to Botfield and Longville, making inquiry after Ben all along the road. It seemed a long, long night; and the three children sat together in the darkness, for they would not light the lamp lest they should miss the earliest gleam of the dawn; while Annie, in low whispers broken by sobs, repeated to Dora and Gilbert the letter which her mother had written to her and Ben, every word of which she knew by heart.

At last, Martha and Gilbert started in the dim, grey light, which mantled silently and solemnly behind the outline of Helmeth, until the morning was spread upon the mountains lying opposite its height. The fresh draught of the southerly wind rushing through the valley lifted the hair from Annie's heated forehead, with a pleasant touch like that of her mother's hand, as she walked slowly homewards after accompanying Martha a little way along the lane to Fern's Hollow. She stood still for a moment or two under the mossy wall over which Ben had trespassed the evening before; and surely, yonder upon the flat top of the copestones, wet with the dew of the night, was one of Ben's books! Almost as quickly as Ben himself, Annie climbed up the wall, and stood looking down upon the scene of his adventure. Below her were the heavy stones which had been thrown down with his spring from them, and underneath one of them was Ben's cap, and the bundle he had made of his shoes and stockings. The laurel bushes about were broken, and the leaves and twigs lay scattered on the ground, while the cabbage-bed and carrot-plot beyond bore many traces of the active chase which the famished pig had given to Miss Reynolds and her ancient servant. Annie did not comprehend the full story of the havoc and ruin before her; but she understood enough to convince her that Ben had been there, and, with the faithfulness and courage of a loving heart, she climbed down the inner side of the wall, and, making her way to the kitchen door, she sat down patiently upon the lowest step, to wait until the inmates of the house should be stirring.

She had not very long to wait; and her heart beat quickly as she heard the rusty bolts drawn back, and the key turned in the lock. The door was thrown open with a sudden jerk, and above her stood the tall and gaunt old lady, whom Dora had pointed out to her on the way to church, dressed in an old satinet gown and a China crape shawl, whenever the Sunday morning was fine. She stood motionless upon the top of the three steps which led up to the door, and her eyes, fixed upon the ruin of the kitchen garden, overlooked the trembling child, who, with a strange mixture of courage and dread, was wishing for and yet shrinking from her notice. At last, Annie ventured to speak in tremulous tones.

'If you please,' she said, ' I've lost my brother Ben. He has never been at home all night; and there are his things. Is he in your house, Miss Reynolds?'

Annie's voice was very low and frightened, and her white face was raised imploringly to the astonished gaze of Miss Reynolds; but there was a gentleness in the child's manner which disarmed her swift displeasure; and, after regarding her keenly and silently for a minute or two, she answered in a tone not quite as harsh as usual.

'There's a strange boy here,' she said; 'we found him trespassing in my garden, and he is locked up till we can send for a policeman to take him to jail. If he's your brother, he's one to be ashamed of; and you'll be a silly girl to trouble yourself about him.'

'Oh, I couldn't help troubling about Ben!' cried Annie, the tears rolling down her cheeks; 'there are only us two, and our mother is dead, and our father is in the war. Oh, don't let him be sent to jail! He did not know he was doing any harm. We came from America; and we don't know all the English ways yet'

'English ways!' repeated Miss Reynolds; 'I suppose American ways are to break down your neighbour's wall, and let your neighbour's pig loose over the garden. Look at the damage he's done! What is the use of telling me you come from America? That is no excuse.'

'Yes, it is,' answered Annie, looking up earnestly into the old lady's face: 'we are strangers in England; and the Bible says that God loveth the stranger, and therefore you are to love them. And our Lord Jesus will say in the day of judgment, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." We are trying to be the little brother and sister of the Lord Jesus; and if you are kind to us, He will count it as being kind to Him.'

Miss Reynolds stood speechless upon the doorstep, looking down upon Annie's tearful face, and pondering in some bewilderment upon her simple words. She had often heard the verse which Annie had repeated, but she had never thought of the duty of putting it into practice in her own life. What! did it mean that the Lord Jesus Christ would really and truly reckon what she did, either of kindness or unkindness, to these children, as done unto Himself? If she drove Annie away with harsh and bitter words, as she had at first felt inclined to do, would it be the same as if she drove the Saviour from her door? If she dealt gently with her, and felt some love and pity for the child so far away from her own land, would the Lord regard it as being done and felt for Him? She pondered so long over these new thoughts that Annie's heart sank within her, and she bent her head upon her hands and sobbed aloud.

'Come in, child,' said Miss Reynolds. 'I'm not sure what I shall do yet; but your brother may go home for the present. I shall know where to find him if I want him. But tell me, how do you know you are trying to be what you said?'

'Everybody may be that,' answered Annie, a smile breaking through the clouds and tears of her face. 'Our Lord Jesus said Himself, "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." And I'm trying to do His will, and so is Ben. We are nothing but the least of His brothers and sisters; but whatever you do for the least of His brethren, you do it for Him. I'm very glad Jesus said the least.'

With a sudden impulse Miss Reynolds descended the steps, and, taking Annie's hand in her own, led her gently into the house and through the kitchen. The sunbeams struggled through the sullied window upon the dusty staircase and the long passages, as the grim old lady and the smiling child walked along them hand in hand until they reached the padlocked door of the garret. Ben sprang to his feet the instant he heard the key turned in the lock; and, as Miss Reynolds opened the door, he appeared upon the threshold with an air of resolute determination to face his way through every obstacle. But Annie's arms were thrown around him, and it was she who was clinging to him in a close embrace. The great joy of their meeting seemed to blot out the memory of the pain and trial of the long night; and though Ben's hunger was ravenous, he yielded to the gentle touch of Annie's hand upon his arm, while Miss Reynolds lectured him about his trespass upon her grounds, and assured him that for his sister's sake alone she consented to release him from his imprisonment.

'I question, young sir,' she said in conclusion, 'whether you have any true claim to be considered a Christian boy; but I have heard of this child before, and she makes me feel ashamed of myself. Little girl, if you have an hour or two to spare at times, and will come to see a poor solitary old woman like me, I shall be glad to see you.'

Miss Reynolds stood on her doorstep and watched the children walking soberly down the weedy path to the gate; Ben's arm round Annie's neck, and her face turned fondly to his. What thoughts passed through her mind we cannot tell; but she looked no longer at the uprooted beds in the garden; and when she turned to enter the lonely house behind her, her eyes were so dim with tears, that she had to wipe them away before she could find her way to her customary corner in the kitchen fireplace.

Miss Reynolds had told Annie that she was a poor solitary old woman; and it was perfectly true. The many rooms of her large hall were empty and unfurnished, and the walks in her garden were moss-grown, because so few feet trod along them. More than five-and-twenty years ago her last brother had died, and ever since then Miss Reynolds had shut herself up within herself, with no care for anybody in the world, except a little selfish consideration for her servant Rachel, without whom she would have been left utterly desolate. She had given herself up to a life of slothful indolence and selfishness, which had grown upon her until it had become too great a trouble even to keep her dwelling from falling into decay. As for thinking of the comfortless lives of the poor people who dwelt in the same neighbourhood, or exerting herself to try to increase their happiness in any way, Miss Reynolds would have scoffed at the very idea of such a thing, as if the poor had nothing to do with her. There was another thought which had never found an entrance into her mind -- that thought which kept Annie's spirit in perfect peace. Never during the long and dreary sixty years of her life had the lonely woman thought of God as her Father, and of the Lord Jesus Christ as her elder Brother, through whose atonement she might be reconciled to the Father whose love she had rebelled against. After she had watched Ben and Annie walking away, their arms clasped about each other, she glanced mournfully round the large old kitchen, which had been solitary and quiet for so many years, and her lips murmured, half aloud, 'The least of these my brethren!'

There had been no need for her to be solitary. It was not God who had set her down in a miserable and lonely life. Though she had neither husband nor children of her own, and her brothers and sisters were dead, God had placed her in the midst of His family, and all around her, on every hand, there had been the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; and if she had rendered any service to them, even to giving one of them a cup of water, or showing the smallest, feeblest token of good-will to the least amongst them, it would have been counted to her as being done to the Lord Himself; but, instead of trying to do anything to help others, she had wasted her time in moping idly in her chimney-corner until her temper had become sour and crabbed, and her own features, when she looked at herself in the glass, frowned back upon her with so harsh an expression that she was glad to turn away from it. She began to think that if, instead of brooding over her single and forsaken life, she had tried to go out cheerfully among her neighbours, both rich and poor, no doubt her empty home would have been filled from time to time with pleasant faces, and her empty heart might have found some one -- a little child, perhaps, like Annie Bakewell -- who would have brought warmth and sunshine into its chilly darkness.

It was an utter amazement to old Rachel to see her mistress descend from her chamber early in the afternoon, dressed in her old-fashioned satinet gown and China crape shawl, which seldom saw the daylight except on a fine Sunday, when Miss Reynolds went to church. She watched her pace to and fro irresolutely along the overgrown walk from the kitchen door to the front gate, as if her mind had received some great shock from the occurrences of the night before. But at length Miss Reynolds lifted the rusty latch of the gate and stepped bravely out into the quiet high road. She felt stiff and embarrassed, as if with long disuse of her limbs and faculties; and it was with some difficulty that she assured herself that she was indeed Deborah Reynolds, of Cloverley Old Hall. As her tardy footsteps drew near to Helmeth Lodge her hesitation and reluctance increased. Mrs. Ludlow had been her neighbour nearly sixteen years, and during that time new life and early death had alike entered her home without any token of sympathy from her; and how could she face her after so long an estrangement? She was about to sink back again into the dreary solitude out of which she was venturing, when Mrs. Ludlow herself, with Annie at her side, came down the path from the porch towards the gate.

When Mrs. Ludlow, upon her return home, had first heard of Ben's imprisonment during the night, and had seen the pale faces of the children, who had been kept wakeful and anxious throughout its long hours, her feeling had been one of great displeasure and indignation against her unfriendly neighbour; but, as she listened to Annie's account of her conversation with Miss Reynolds, and to Ben's history of his thoughtless trespass into her grounds_, her auger passed away, and she determined to call upon the offended lady and make some apology, and offer to repair any injury done to the garden. It was no small surprise to her to meet Miss Reynolds standing irresolutely before her gate, with the scowl which had been deepening upon her face for many years changed into an expression a shade softer and milder.

'Mrs. Ludlow,' said Miss Reynolds, feeling shyer and stiffer than ever as she began to speak to her neighbour, 'I found your nephew trespassing upon my grounds last evening; and I locked him up all night. I'm sorry I did it.'

Mrs. Ludlow's surprise was greater than before, and she glanced at the gloomy face of Miss Reynolds in the utmost amazement. As soon as she saw her she had prepared herself to listen quietly to an angry accusation against Ben; and she could scarcely bring herself to believe that Miss Reynolds of Cloverley Old Hall would own herself sorry about anything.

'We were just coming in to see you,' she answered, in her pleasant voice. 'I was anxious to tell you how sorry I am that my nephew should have been so thoughtless. Ben seldom stays to think how he acts. I shall be very glad to supply you with vegetables from our own garden in the place of those that have been destroyed; and Ben is anxious to put your plots to rights. He is a good gardener, and he will not think you have forgiven him unless you allow him to do it.'

'Oh, never mind, never mind,' said Miss Reynolds, -- 'unless he would like to come, and this little girl will come with him. I should like to see your niece now and then, Mrs. Ludlow; my house is very lonely.'

'She will be glad to come,' answered Mrs. Ludlow, pressing Annie's hand tenderly, and sighing within herself as she thought how quickly she had given up her efforts to lighten the burden of dull solitude in her neighbour's life, and to break through the unfriendly coldness that had existed between them. She invited Miss Reynolds to enter her house, but she declined with a frightened air, and so she and Annie walked back with her to her own door; when, to the increased consternation of Rachel, her mistress shook hands with Mrs. Ludlow, and pressed her thin lips upon Annie's uplifted face.

Even to Miss Reynolds' own mind it was a marvellous thing to discover that she was, after all these years, once more beginning to care about somebody besides herself. It seemed like a century since she had been used to listen for the sound of a footfall and the tone of a voice which she was glad to hear; but now, whenever there was a chance of Annie Bakewell coming, she felt restless and wishful, and kept watching for her through the small dim panes of the kitchen window. She could not explain to herself what it was that drew her heart towards the child, for she could do nothing for her; yet she could not help longing for her to come, and being sorry and grieved when it was time for her to go away. Annie was neither very clever nor very amusing; unless she was spoken to, she would sit perfectly silent and quiet for a long while, and much of what she said was so uneducated and trifling that she might have been taken for a much younger child than she was. Yet with all this there was a charm about Annie which Miss Reynolds felt but could not explain. It might have been that at all times when she spoke of heaven -- and out of the abundance of her heart her mouth spoke often of it -- it was with a loving and simple-hearted familiarity, like that of a child talking of a well-known household in which she was no stranger. She scarcely spoke of her home on the shores of Lake Huron with more simplicity and tenderness; and it seemed as if the heavenly home were nearer than that far-off, forsaken log-house, which had passed into other people's hands. It was plain to the single and solitary woman that to Annie no spot could be desolate or lonely, for every empty place was peopled for her with the society of angels; and everywhere, whether alone or surrounded by companions, she was conscious of the perpetual and loving presence of her Father in heaven.

Before long Miss Reynolds shared Annie's knowledge of the names and circumstances of all the people at Botfield; and, like everybody else, she became greatly interested in the success of the new shaft and the revived prosperity it would bring to the cottages of the colliers. Once she marched, gaunt and grim, through the village, with such a frown upon her hard face as frightened the children at their play, and drove them cowering dumbly under the hedges until she was passed by. But her heart was softening towards the poor; and before she returned to All Cloverley she stalked stiffly into the cottage of Bess Cole, and bade her tell Tim she would find him work to do until the new pit was open, and give him twelve shillings a week wages.

The bright, warm days of midsummer were come, and all the cottagers from Botfield and the valley of Cloverley went up morning after morning to the broad tableland on the top of the mountains to pick the rich fruit of the bilberry wires, which through all the showery spring-time had been growing with no toil or care of theirs, and bringing to ripeness the fruit that was to supply their homes with the comforts they required. All day long upon the uplands there were groups of women and children searching here and there among the ling and heather for the best wires; and, towards the evening, gathering the dried gorse and leaves to make into fires for the boiling of their tin kettles, which they had carried up from home in their empty baskets. Everywhere it was a busy and joyous time. On all the mountain farms, and down in the rich lands of the valley, the hay was being mown, and laid in long scented bars across the fresh green of the meadows, or raked together into cocks ready for carrying. The holidays at Longville Grammar School had commenced, and Ben and Gilbert were occupied from morning till night helping the neighbouring farmers, who were anxious to make their hay while the sun shone. The colliers out of work found full employment in the harvest; and along the lanes and in the new-mown fields might be seen waggons heavily laden, with merry bands of labourers surrounding them; and down the mountain slopes came lines of women and children, returning home from the hills, with their lips dyed purple with the juice of the bilberries they had been eating.

But before the harvest was ended, or the most plentiful time of bilberries was come, the summer weather changed; and long, gloomy days of sullen rain followed. Such a season had never been known in Cloverley. All day long the clouds hung heavy and dark upon the sides of the mountains, and seemed as if they grew no lighter, though the continuous lines of rain fell without ceasing upon the watery soil. The hay lay drenched and spoiled in the meadows; and the bilberry wires far up on the table-land, where no one saw them except the shepherds, looked as if all their wiry stiffness was soaked out of them. In the cottages the children huddled together in corners, fretful and impatient, and longing to get out of the narrow house, where every minute they were in their mother's way. It was uncomfortable and trying enough in those houses where the fathers were regularly employed upon the farmsteads, and went away every morning to their masters' houses; but at Botfield, where the colliers had to stay in their own cottages, or had only the public-house to go to out of the racket of the children, every day seemed to be more miserable than the one before it.

Such pitiless, incessant rain as it was! Many times a day Ben and Gilbert went out to see if the peak of Helmeth still kept on its nightcap; but there hung the thick, leaden cloud, which hid all the slopes and furrows of the mountain-side, as if there had been no such hill in existence. Even Dora up in her father's study, and so deeply engrossed in painting that she scarcely gave a thought to the harvest and the bilberry picking, became impatient for some glimpses of sunshine. But Mrs. Ludlow and Annie bore a heavier weight of thought upon their minds than either the boys or Dora, and more anxiously than any of them looked up to the leaden sky for some break in the clouds; and with patient earnestness morning and night prayed for the fair weather, which every day grew more necessary for the welfare of the poor people at Botfield.

It was one of the rainiest days of this rainy season that Stephen Fern walked through Botfield on his way to All Cloverley. The shallow rivulet was swollen to within an inch or two of the wooden bridge across it, and rolled along in a swift and muddy current. The cottage doors were open, for the damp air was warm, but the sounds from within were those of children crying and women scolding; while, through the window of the village alehouse, he could see many of the men, who had been good and steady labourers when there was work for them to do, throwing away the little money they had left. Stephen's face was sad when he left the coal-field, but it grew sadder as he passed through the village, and walked slowly along the miry lanes, his head bent down and his heart sorrowful; while his dog shuffled along at his heels with his ears drooping and his tail motionless, as he picked his way delicately over the wet clods, as if he had never enjoyed a reckless run across the hills after some swift rabbit. Stephen's fields were sodden, and his oat patch, which had been reaped just before the rain came, would yield no oats this year; but he was not downhearted for himself; yet as he and Sandy wended their way to All Cloverley, the depression of their spirits became more and more visible, until they stole into the garden of Helmeth Lodge, as if they were culprits conscious of some great crime.

'Miss Anne,' said Stephen, after Martha had taken him into Mrs. Ludlow's sitting-room, 'I'm come to bring ill news; and God knows it's the hardest work I've had to do ever since you took me into your service. Ay! it's almost the hardest thing I've had to bear all my life. We can do nothing more with the new shaft, Miss Anne. We're come right across a watercourse; and the engine is no more use than a child's squirt to pump it out. It 'ud be only a waste of time and money to try to go on with it where it is. There's coal underground, well worth getting at, and may be ten times more than was ever in the old pit; but this shaft is done with altogether.'

Mrs. Ludlow's face had grown very pale as Stephen spoke, and she covered it for a minute or two with her hands, while Stephen stood by silent, and Annie, who was writing a letter to Captain Bakewell, left her desk, and crept closely to her side, neither of them knowing what to say to comfort her. But at length she lifted up her head, and looked at them with a sad smile.

'I was prepared for it, Stephen,' she said calmly. 'I deserve sorrow; and I bless God the sorrow falls where I shall feel it least. He might have taken away my husband or one of my children. Stephen, my dear friend, in my prosperity I was forgetting God, as if I had less need of His love. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

'Thank God!' murmured Stephen in a trembling voice. 'I was fearful that you'd take it very hard, and not as if it was His doing. It's better to lose everything than to lose the feeling of His love. Miss Anne, you know what I owe you; and whatever I have in the world is yours. If money should be wanted, I'd part with Fern's Hollow itself; and it 'ud fetch a pretty sum now.'

'Stephen,' said Mrs. Ludlow, with a brighter smile, 'I'm not thinking of our own loss only. You know all our spare money was spent on this shaft; and it will be impossible for us to do anything more at present, if ever, for Mr. Ludlow believes the seam is finished, and there is no more coal to be found. But what can be done for the poor patient men? Oh, Stephen, what are we to do with the colliers at Botfield?'

She covered her face again and wept bitterly, until Annie laid her arm round her neck, and spoke to her in her quiet tone.

'Auntie,' she said, 'is not God caring for the colliers as well as for you? Perhaps it is a good thing, somehow, for them. Let us go and see them, and try to make them believe that God will take care of them. I know they'll be troubled as soon as they hear the shaft is flooded. Even Tim Cole will be afraid, though he knows better than the rest. Auntie, shall we go and try to make some of them feel sure that God is caring for them?'

'God bless thee!' cried Stephen; 'sure it would give them some heart to see thee and the mistress. Ay, come, Miss Anne; the men were crowding to the Red Lion to hear the news as I came by, and you would keep them from drink. Every man amongst them values a word from thee. I'll get out the pony carriage, and wrap thee up well from the rain. Maybe it will keep the poor lads out of worse mischief if they could catch a sight of thee and the little lass.'

In a short time Stephen was driving Mrs. Ludlow and Annie along the road, under the overhanging branches of the trees, whose leaves were heavy and dank with moisture. The brook at Botfield washed through the little carriage, and nearly carried the pony off his feet, but none of them gave much heed to the danger or discomfort. Before them lay the village, and in spite of the rain the women were running from house to house, and talking over their garden hedges. The door of the Red Lion was thronged by a crowd of careworn men, whose faces were turned anxiously towards the inner room, which was already full of colliers and the sinkers of the new shaft, in earnest discussion of the failure of their work. The colliers could not believe in the calamity which doomed them to quit their native homes, or be starved for want of labour. 'It was only the rain,' they said over and over again to one another, as if they dared not face the full meaning of the news that the shaft was flooded, and the engine useless; and some among them cursed the thick clouds which hung over all the sky. A band of them, the oldest and best workmen they had, had gone to the field to look for themselves down the flooded shaft; but just before Stephen returned to the village they had come back with the gloomy intelligence that it was true. There was no more hope of work in their own coal-field for the poor pitmen of Botfield!

When Mrs. Ludlow and Annie followed Stephen into the kitchen of the village alehouse, with its sanded floor and rows of benches round the walls, they found all the colliers, and most of the other men of Botfield, assembled together in a state of great excitement. Some of the elder men were wiping away the fast-gathering tears, as they thought of the old homes they would be compelled to leave; while others were storming and raging with foolish passion. In the midst of them stood Tim Cole, vainly trying to make his voice heard through the din; and the landlord was hurrying in and out of his barparlour with jugs of ale, which he pressed upon them as a means of drowning their grief at the great misfortune. But when Mrs. Ludlow appeared in the doorway, looking round with a sorrowful face upon the assembly of her workpeople, there was an instant hush; and so still was the crowd of excited men that the patter of the raindrops falling from the eaves sounded distinctly through the open casement.

'My lads,' said Stephen, 'our mistress and the little lady here have come to see if they could not say something to comfort and hearten you. We've worked for Mrs. Ludlow now, most of us, ever since the old master died, and a good time it has been for all of us; God bless her!'

'Ay, ay! God bless her!' echoed the men with one voice, as Stephen paused.

'We're Englishmen,' continued Stephen, with a bright but keen glance round, --' every mother's son amongst us; and sure we can bear trouble, when God sends it, without making drunkards of ourselves! I don't believe there's a man here will get drunk to-day, though it is a sore day for us all. Comrades, you know how I think of the women and children -- ay, and you care for them too in your hearts. Now, do you think it will help to make the trouble this day any lighter for them if any of you go home drunk, after wasting the little money you have left? Let every man who's made up his mind that he'll keep from drink this day, leastways, hold up his hand before our dear mistress.'

Every right hand in the room was lifted up with a general murmur of assent; and even the landlord of the Red Lion raised his high above his head.

'Thank you, my men,' said Mrs. Ludlow, --' thank you, every one; I take it as done for my sake. Now, let Stephen tell you of the plan he has formed for you in his own mind.'

Her eyes were filled with tears, and her voice was so unsteady that she could hardly utter those few words. The grey-headed men who had been weeping before bowed their heads down upon the table before them, and sobbed aloud.

'Oh, miss,' cried Tim Cole, 'it's like losing life to lose work here. We shall have to give up thee as well as the old place, and the hills where we played when we were lads. I feel afraid to face out into the world like. I'd clem for want of victuals myself before I'd go; but there's Bess and the ruck of little children.'

'Mates,' said Stephen, 'the worst seems to have come now, and we're bound to meet it like men. The new shaft is flooded; but it's my belief there's coal underground yet; and, please God, we shall find some means, somewhere or other, of trying another shaft in a better place. I don't know where the money is to come from, nor how soon it will come; but God will send us better times sooner or later, and we shall have coal again at Botfield. My plan is for two of you to take a letter from me to a charter-master in Netley, a good man that I know, as soon as ever you can, -- say to-morrow, it's no more than five-and-twenty miles away, --and he'll tell you if you've a chance of work thereabouts; and you can see whether you and your mates would like work there. It's better to go there than farther off; for maybe your wives and children would stay in their cottages yet awhile, till we can see what can be done here, so as you might come back again when the coal is found. And if you are no farther off than Netley, and any trouble came to the home of any man among you, why, I could run over with my little spring cart, and fetch you back at once. My lads, I'd take as much thought of your wives and little ones as if they were my sisters and my sisters' children.'

'We'd trust thee, Stevie,' answered Tim Cole; 'but eh, lad! it's a hard thing to leave thy native place! I can hardly think what the Almighty is doing, letting things run on to this pass! Maybe He doesn't care about us after all, or things 'ud never run right contrary to reason this way. It's bitter to be driven away from thy own place, Stephen, if it be only a poor place.'

There was another low murmur of assent, and all the men turned their gloomy faces towards Stephen, as if to ask him what he could say to that. Annie laid her hand upon his arm, and he stooped his head down to catch her quiet whisper.

'Tell them,' she said, 'how Ben and I have come all the way from America; and that we know it is the will of God; so we are happy, though mother is dead and father is in the war.'

'Mates,' said Stephen, his voice trembling a little, 'every one of you knows our little lady here. Well, she bids me tell you how it was the will of God that she and Master Ben -- you know him too -- should be sent away nigh upon four thousand miles from their native place, with their dear mother in the grave, and their father like to be killed every hour of his life in the cruel war in America. Yet my little lady says she is happy, because it is the good pleasure of the Father in heaven, and He knows what is best. You'll not be anything like as far from your own place as they are, the poor orphan children. But every day of her life Miss Annie says, "Our Father which art in heaven, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Mates, will you try to say that prayer with the little lady here?'

A deep sob sounded through the kitchen, and every man looked at Annie's sweet face, as she glanced round them all with a loving gaze, which was only a little timid when she met their eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Once more she laid her hand upon Stephen's arm.

'Tell them,' she whispered, 'that they may have God for their Father as well as us.'

'Ay, lads,' said Stephen, holding Annie's hand in his, 'every soul among you may be of the family of God, if ye'll only come back to the Father through His Son Jesus Christ. It's the will of God that every one of you should have His Spirit in your hearts, crying "Abba, Father!" Why, it would be no such bitter thing to leave your homes for a little while, ay! or for ever, if ye knew ye were the sons of God, and were only doing His will'

'If we only knew it for sure,' murmured Tim Cole, looking round at his companions.

'Ye may!' cried Stephen, in a tone of earnest persuasion, while his face shone with a happy smile. 'I'm not made different to any of you; my heart is as evil by nature, and I'm as likely to fall into sin as any man here, if God was to leave me to myself. But I read in the Bible that I must be converted and become like a little child before God. And now I am as one of His children; and because 1 try to keep close to Him and His love, why, He keeps me safe and happy, just as you take care of your little ones at home; only a thousand times more carefully and tenderly. Ye know I'm happy. When I'm going over the field at Botfield, looking after the kilns and the brick ovens, and weighing the waggonloads of lime; or when I'm crossing the hills after my sheep, I say to myself, "This is doing my Father's will, because it is my lawful work." And when I'm sitting at home reading a book, or talking to my Mary, or taking my pleasure in many ways, I think, "This also is my Father's will, because it is my lawful pleasure." We have not to go out of our daily life to be like the angels; for if we're the true and loving children of God, we are always doing His will.'

There was silence again in the alehouse kitchen when Stephen's words were ended, and many of the men raised their rough hands to their faces, and closed their eyes as if in deep thought. It was Tim who spoke first again, and he addressed himself to Annie.

'Miss Annie,' he said, 'we're getting almost too old to understand it. It feels like as if my heart was too heavy and dull to believe that such a fellow as me can be God Almighty's child; but if thee'd only teach the little children while they're young and soft, maybe they'd grow up to understand it all like thee. There's nought but the dame school for them to go to in Botfield; and the dame learns them to read, but she never learns them anything of this sort. We could leave our homes happier if we knew thee would teach the children these things.'

'Yes, Tim,' answered Annie, 'we will all teach them -- Stephen, and Ben, and Gilbert, and I. And we can write letters for Bess and the other women. So when you're away you'll feel as if you knew all that's going on at home. And Stephen says you can see the Cloverley hills from Netley on a fine day. Tim, it takes many days to bring us a letter from America; and our father might have been killed a long, long time before we could hear of it.'

Annie's voice broke down, and she turned away from the earnest faces about her, while Mrs. Ludlow passed her arm tenderly round her. The men glanced at one another with looks of shame, and wiped their eyes with the backs of their hands, and murmured, 'Poor little lass!' in low tones, but in a minute or two Annie lifted up her head, and smiled gently as she looked at Stephen.

'Stephen,' she said, almost in a whisper, but the room was so still that every man heard the words, 'won't you pray for them here, before we go away? They will think of it when they are gone to Netley. It would do us all good.'

Before Stephen could reply, there was a great shuffling of heavy feet upon the sanded floor, and the whole company of disappointed and toilworn men stood up, covering their faces with their hard hands. Even the landlord, who had been listening through the half-open door, knelt down upon the mat outside, with his face against the chink through which he had been watching the proceedings within. While Stephen prayed, there was no other sound to be heard than a deep sigh now and then from the sad heart of one of the colliers who would be compelled to quit Botfield; but when the prayer was ended, every face looked calmer and brighter, and there was a light in their eyes; as if the sullen cloud had been lifted up from the face of the hills, and the sunshine was resting upon them once again.

Tim Cole, and a brother of Bess, Ishmael Thompson, were the men chosen to carry Stephen's letter to the charter-master at Netley; and the next morning all the colliers of Botfield, the husbands and eldest sons of a score of the cottage householders, walked with them some miles of their long day's journey. The rain had ceased; and for the first time for many days the clouds were rolling up the slopes of the hills behind them in great columns of vapour, which mounted into the sunny sky, and melted away altogether. The farm labourers were going into the field, and bade them 'Good morning!' cheerily, as the band of men passed along the lanes; but they continued sad amidst all the brightness and gladness of the returning sunshine. However the harvest sped now, their doom was fixed; and in a few days, at the farthest, they would be turning their backs upon their native hills, and going away for an uncertain period into the crowded and black country, where the coal-pits were at work for many miles, and where there were neither harvest fields nor pleasant meadows near at hand. When Tim and Ishmael shook hands with them at parting, the hard grip many of them gave to their delegates unconsciously betrayed how deep and grave their thoughts were; and as they retraced their steps to Botfield they spoke but few words to one another, and turned aside as they came to the coal-field to look mournfully down the new shaft, where the water was slowly but surely rising up the sides.

Tim and Ishmael came home the next night with a favourable answer from the charter-master. Work was plentiful at Netley; for as they passed by one of the parish churches they had heard a joyous peal being rung upon its bells, because a new rich seam of coal had been found in the township. The merry sound had grated a little on their ears when they were told the cause, for such a discovery at Botfield would make their mistress rich, and enable them to remain in their own homes. But most of them could obtain employment in the new pit at good wages, and they could go to work without any more delay. Tim and Ishmael had engaged for the whole band; and at midnight the next Sunday, after the worship and rest of the Sabbath were over, they started off in a company, with their bundles over their shoulders, and short sticks in their hands, intending to reach Netley in time to make half a day's work, for their families began to need all the money they could earn.

The holidays were drawing near to an end; but Ben and Gilbert learned, to their great dismay, that the latter was not to go to school at Longville that half-year. Mrs. Ludlow told them, reluctantly enough, that in their present circumstances, when their income from the mine was quite lost, and there was no apparent prospect of it ever being restored to them again, it was necessary to avoid every expense; so Gilbert must endeavour to pursue his studies at home, while Ben must continue to attend the grammar school, both because his education had been so long neglected, and because Captain Bakewell forwarded money for the express purpose of paying for it. It was all in vain that Ben implored that Gilbert should take his place, and that Gilbert's dull face and languid step about the house troubled his mother's heart greatly. It would be wrong, she told them, either to send Gilbert while there was a doubt of being able to pay his teacher, or to use Captain Bakewell's money for his education instead of Ben's. She was going to send away her under servants, only keeping Martha Fern, that she might not incur any expense she could possibly help. The boys must take their share of the calamity. Gilbert must give up school, however much he loved it; and Ben must continue his studies, however much he hated them.

The very name of Botfield coal-works grew hateful in Ben's ears; and as he rode by morning and evening, and saw the deserted coal-field lying barren and desolate under the autumn skies, with only a few lime-burners flitting to and fro amid the white and choking smoke of their kilns, he used to spur Strawberry on into a quick canter, that he might get out of sight of it. God's will was very mysterious, he thought; and if, indeed, His will was being done on earth, it was a very strange, trying, and unaccountable will. Annie said to him once that very likely the angels themselves did not always know the meaning of what was going on, but that they would be satisfied in leaving everything to the love and wisdom of God; but Ben was no angel, as he told her rather sharply. To speak of nothing else but the harvest, there had been the frosty winter, and the soft, showery spring, and the early summer full of heat and sunshine; until the rich meadows were mown, and the hay was drying in beautiful condition, and the corn was filling in the ear, and the ripe bilberries upon the hills were yielding work and wages to the women and children; when down came the rain, that incessant rain, which had flooded the fields, sweeping away the hay and spoiling what remained, and beating down the corn until it began to sprout in the warm, damp weather, and spoiled the wild bilberries. The showery spring and the sunny summer had been eaten up by the rainy weeks of harvest. As for the new shaft being flooded, and the men driven from their homes, and Gilbert obliged to give up school, and himself compelled to keep at it, Ben could not bear to think about such perplexing events.

After a few days Gilbert's easy nature became more reconciled to his new circumstances and his freedom from his favourite school duties. He had been one of the monitors in Longville Grammar School, approved by his masters, and popular among his schoolfellows. He found it hard work to continue his studies alone, without any help or competition; but he set himself faithfully to the task, alone and unapplauded, except by the kind and loving glance of his mother's face, and the gentle sympathy of Annie. Now he was at home he could see Annie busy at household work, such as she had been used to do in her American home, sweeping and dusting and brushing, and taking charge of Daisy, like a little housewife, until Mrs. Ludlow and Martha declared that she was as useful as any of the servants who had been dismissed. Once Gilbert took her little brown hands in his, as Ben had once done, and showed her how rough and hard they were growing; but she answered him that the little sister of the Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be ashamed of any kind of work which He set her to do, and he went back to his solitary books, thinking that this lonely task was what Jesus had appointed him to do; and the thought seemed a better helper and companion than the assistance of his teacher and the presence of his class at Longville Grammar School.

It never entered Dora's mind to think whether the purpose for which she was sent into this world was only to shut herself up from dawn to dark in her father's study, painting the beautiful subjects which her fancy suggested to her. No doubt it was her lawful work, for God had given her this talent to cultivate and improve; but she never thought of using it in subjection to His will. She would have been happy enough, after her solitary and selfish manner, but for one unsatisfied desire. She and her mother had packed up Mr. Ludlow's paintings, and sent them to the exhibition; and now her whole heart was bent upon going up to London, to see them hung amongst the productions of other artists. At every meal, whenever she came down to her meals (but often she asked Annie to carry them up to her, though she knew her mother wished her to sit down with the family at the dinner table), she would repeat her great longing to go to London, and ask again and again if it were quite impossible for it to be gratified. Mrs. Ludlow bore with her patiently and sorrowfully; for, whenever Dora's self-will was manifested, she remembered, with grave regret, how little she had endeavoured to train her children into submission and surrender of their own will.

From the time when Annie told Miss Reynolds of the departure of the colliers from Botfield in search of employment elsewhere, she seemed to fall back into her old habits of silence and seclusion, which she had been trying to shake off for a short season. She sat idly in her kitchen corner, watching Rachel go about her lazy housework, as she had been wont to do formerly. Annie was welcomed cordially to her kitchen hearth; but when she was there, Miss Reynolds did little else but fasten her sunken eyes upon the child's peaceful face, with its quiet and loving smile, and so sit and listen without reply to all the news of the forsaken homes at Botfield, and Ben's trouble, and Gilbert's disappointment. Often when Annie was gone she roamed in and out of her empty rooms, muttering to herself, but in tones so low that Rachel could not catch a word of what she said; though once, when she had not heard her moving about for a long time, she stole up-stairs in her stocking feet, and, creeping cautiously over the creaking boards, with a quietness which no stranger could have managed, she peered through a crevice in the old door of Miss Reynolds' chamber, and saw her kneeling before the antique chair in which her mother had died, while the tears were rolling slowly down her wrinkled cheeks, and her thin lips were moving as if in earnest prayer. Rachel retreated, shaking her head ominously; and for many days afterwards she kept a close watch upon her mistress, for it was plain that Miss Reynolds was in great trouble and distress of mind; and as days and weeks passed by, the trouble and distress deepened.

It was late in October, three months after the colliers bad quitted their homes, when one afternoon Miss Reynolds asked Annie to walk with her as far as Fern's Hollow. The lane which led from All Cloverley to the open hillside was carpeted with fallen leaves, and the branches overhead were changed from their summer green into a thousand lovely tints; and the air was heavy with the many scents of autumn. The bramble-bushes were still laden with blackberries; and here and there were boys hunting among the hazel bushes for nuts; while from the tops of the larch trees the brown squirrels looked down in disappointment and dismay at the noise below. On the hillside the withering ferns spread a mantle of rich bronze over the turf as far as their eyes could see through the fine, filmy haze which hung over all the landscape, and filled up the valley of Cloverley beneath them, until it looked like a calm, white lake of vapour, surrounded by the summits of the mountains. The coppice of fir trees behind Fern's Hollow had caught the thin mist upon their pointed branches, and let it float about them in the still air like a veil; while the soft, grey cloud hid the great plain which could be seen from the garden bower upon a clear day, as if it were blotted out of the view altogether. Miss Reynolds seated herself on the bench in the arbour, and told Annie to call Stephen to her; and while she waited for him her face lost the mild expression which always rested upon it when she was alone with Annie, and became harsh and grim as it had been wont to be in former times.

'Mr. Fern,' she said sharply and abruptly, when Stephen stood before her bareheaded, with an air of respect and attention to which she had been long unaccustomed, 'I want to know the reason of these works stopping at Botfield, and throwing so many poor people out of employment.'

Stephen's face grew graver as he explained to her the cause of the failure of the new shaft by the breaking-in of a watercourse; and he sighed heavily as he glanced down towards Botfield, which was hidden by the mist.

'There's coal there yet,' he said, 'but we might lose a sight of money in sinking for it. It would pay in the long-run, I know; and the people might come back again, and prosper upon it. It's a heart's grief to me to see the old place forsaken, and times going so hard with my comrades, and my dear lady. If this shaft had only succeeded, we'd have been all right again now.'

'But I suppose you will say it is the will of God,' said Miss Reynolds sharply.

'Ah,' he answered, smiling, as he looked up into the tiny space of blue sky overhead, 'this trouble does not spring out of the ground, but it is His will. Nothing that we can do or leave undone can alter it; and we must have patience. The hymn says, "He works His sovereign will." When the fault came in the old pit, it was because He willed it; and when the watercourse flooded the shaft, it was the same. We could do nothing. But the mistress and I didn't say it was God's will when the smallpox and the typhus fever broke out in Botfield, and the children weren't vaccinated and the houses not drained. That was our own fault, and we set about to mend it. But these troubles we cannot help, any more than we could help the rainy harvest. If we could, it would be downright sinful to be praying, and saying, "Thy will be done." It 'ud be nought else but mocking God with our Saviour's own words.'

Miss Reynolds sat still for some minutes, a heavy frown lowering upon her face as she looked away into the mist; until at last Stephen spoke again.

'There's one way, maybe,' he said, 'for me to do God's will, and it's often laid upon my heart that I must do it. I could sell Fern's Hollow, and try another shaft! It's worth more than a thousand pounds now, ay, or fifteen hundred, with that spinny of young trees behind it. It 'ud be a hard thing; but all my mates have had to quit their homes, and if I could bring them back again by parting with Fern's Hollow, why, my Mary and I could be happy down at Botfield. Anyhow, if it's His will, we are ready to give it up.'

'Stephen Fern,' answered Miss Reynolds, 'I believe you are a good and true man; and I don't mind owning, before you and little Annie, that I am going to turn over a new leaf; I mean to do the will of God better than I have been doing. How much money will it take to sink another shaft?'

'We spent nigh upon £3000 on the last,' replied Stephen; 'and the next might cost us less or more, according to how we prosper. But when we get to the coal, it will soon repay.'

'I've a little money,' interrupted Miss Reynolds, -- 'a few thousands that do me no good. Tell your mistress she may have the use of it; whether I ever get it back or no, it will make very little difference to me. Don't let Mrs. Ludlow speak to me about it. It's no sort of obligation; and I'm doing it for my own sake. I'm an old woman with nobody particular to leave it to; and it seems as if it would help you all out of this trouble. What's the good of me saying, "Thy will be done," when I've got the money to do it with in my own hands? Set the men to work as soon as you can; and don't mention this to me, or anybody else, except when you want the cash.'

Before Stephen could answer, she rose quickly from her seat, and, taking Annie's hand in hers, walked with brisk steps down the garden path and across the meadow, until he lost sight of them in the mist. Stephen rubbed his eyes and gave himself a shake to make certain that it was no dream; and his wife assured him that it was indeed Miss Reynolds and Annie who had been talking to him in the arbour. But better evidence than anything else was an envelope which Miss Reynolds had put into his hand, containing a cheque upon her bankers in the county town for a hundred pounds. Among all the thoughts which had crossed through his brain as to where he could get the funds necessary for his scheme, no thought of Miss Reynolds had ever entered his mind; and it seemed to him almost as marvellous as if the money had come down direct from heaven.

Miss Reynolds paced on along the hills, clasping Annie's hand tightly, but without uttering a word, until they had again reached the shady lane which led down to the valley. There was quite a soft smile upon her hard features, and a light in her dull eyes, as she turned her face towards Annie, and, stopping for an instant in her rapid walk, stooped down and kissed her forehead

'Child,' she said, 'tell me if it is too late for me to begin the work I have so long neglected. Am I too old to try to be the sister of the Lord Jesus? I'm an old woman, Annie; a hard, covetous, indolent old woman, loving nothing but my own ease and my own money. I can never do God's will as well as a young and tender child like you. I've been wasting all my life; but am I too old to begin to work now?'

'Miss Reynolds,' answered Annie, looking up with tearful eyes, 'when my mother talked to me about doing the will of God, she showed me how the Lord Jesus says, "My sister and mother;" and she said those who were young and strong might work to do God's will like sisters, but older women, who were growing too old to work much, might try to be like the mother of the Lord Jesus. She said it did not signify whether a woman was young or old, rich or poor; all we were to think about was how the sister or the mother of the Lord Jesus would have done in our place. And she told me that ever since we were born she had loved to think of the mother of Jesus, and she tried to feel and act as she would do with her child. My mother did not live long enough to be old; but if you try to do the will of His Father in heaven, the Lord Jesus says you will be to Him as His mother.'

For a minute or two only the squirrels could be heard rustling in the hazel bushes in the hedgerow, and the rooks cawing far off in the valley, so silent were Miss Reynolds and Annie in the lonely lane. Miss Reynolds was looking back through all her long life, and thinking how different it would have been if, from the time she was Annie's age, she had been simply trying to live like the sister of the Lord Jesus Christ; and as they went on slowly down the lane, her heart was very busy with the thought. If she had only been doing the will of God, her old home would never have become so dreary; the nettles would not have sprung up so rankly in her garden, nor the broad dock-leaves overgrown her gravel walks; all the cobwebs, black and dusty, which choked up the windows would have been swept away; and instead of the rust and the mildew about her dwelling, there would have been beauty and cleanliness. Her very home, the house of her forefathers, stood before her as an accusing witness, while she paused before opening the broken gate to gaze thoughtfully upon it. The dwelling where the sister of the Lord lived could never have worn such an appearance of blight and ruin as did Cloverley Old Hall; and Miss Reynolds rested her trembling hand upon the moss-grown pillars of the gateway, and, leaning her head upon it, prayed for help to conquer the indolence and covetousness which had held her all her lifetime in weary bondage.

There never was more amazement among the gossips of Cloverley than was excited by the unheard-of news that a whole staff of builders and painters were at work upon the interior and exterior of Cloverley Old Hall, clearing away the accumulated rubbish of thirty years, and setting the house in neat trim and order. Bess Cole had a month's employment at cleaning; for all the oak floors had to be well scrubbed, and every casement washed, until the long-excluded light streamed in brightly and freely through each glistening pane. Martha Fern and Rachel grew friendly under this new order of things, for Martha was proud of her housewifery, and glad to lend a helping hand; and though no word betrayed that she had guessed the secret, she was very well aware that it was Miss Reynolds' money that was sinking the second shaft at Botfield. Whenever Ben had an hour to spare from his lessons he was sure to be found busily at work beside the gardener, who was employed in putting the garden to rights; whilst Annie and Gilbert spent most of their time in carrying messages and running errands for the furtherance of the cheery business. They were astonished that anybody should call the November days gloomy; and Miss Reynolds herself began to think it the pleasantest month of the year. What mattered the heavy fogs and early darkness outside, when within there were fires blazing upon the hearths which had long been cold, and happy feelings visiting her heart, which had long been desolate?

In the secret heart of Dora there was lurking a little rankling jealousy and unkindness towards Annie, which she did not even dare to own to herself. She felt irritated when she heard Martha speak of her in fond terms which she had not been wont to use to her; and she could hardly bear to see how Gilbert sought for Annie's help and sympathy in all his pursuits, and how little Daisy pattered about after her with tottering steps. It seemed as if none but her mother cared for her as much as they used to do; and even she did not come up-stairs to the quiet and lonely study as often as she would have done if Annie's willing feet had not been ready to run up with messages to Dora It never occurred to her to ask if the fault were not in herself; and if Annie did not, without intention, win the love of those around her by sacrificing her self-love. Every day this single, simple question was on Annie's conscience: 'Is this the will of my Father in heaven?' and if it were a duty to be done, she did it heartily as unto the Lord; or if it were a disappointment to be borne, she bore it patiently because it was His will; and thus she proved the truth of that saying of the Lord Jesus, 'Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, shall save it.' For, by giving up and losing her own will, she gathered to her the love and tenderness of all who knew her; while Dora, who was saving her life, keeping it all to herself, and living just for her own pleasure, lost that which makes life really happy, and felt that she was almost alone and unloved.

Yet it seemed as if Dora, of all the family, was to have every desire of her heart gratified. She was not required to do anything that was unpleasant to her, or to give up any of the pursuits she so greatly enjoyed. Even her longing to see her father's pictures in the London exhibitions was satisfied during the very time that so many changes were being made in Cloverley Old Hall, for an old friend of Mr. Ludlow's, who had herself been an artist, sent for Dora to accompany her to London. At first it was almost a rapture of delight to feast her eyes upon the beautiful paintings which covered the walls of the various picture galleries; but there was a little worm in the bud which would not suffer that enjoyment to live long or come to perfect bloom. Dora's spirits sank, and her heart was pained to the quick, when she sought for the pictures upon which she and her father had wrought with so much patience and hope, and found them hung almost out of sight, and in so bad a light that not half their beauty could be seen. Not one of them was likely to be sold; and in the very gratification of her cherished wish, Dora turned away, and wept bitterly unseen and unnoticed, while she seemed to be closely examining one of the other paintings.

When Dora returned from London she found Cloverley Old Hall looking quite a different place. The garden was trimmed as well as it could be just at the approach of winter, and the crazy gate in the front was replaced by a new one. Inside the house, though most of the large rooms were yet empty, every nook and corner was clean and bright, as if only waiting for furniture to be placed in them and guests invited. Miss Reynolds was reluctant to spend more money than was needful to set her house in order, until it was known how the new shaft would succeed; but Ben and Gilbert found some quaint old pieces of furniture in the lumber-rooms, and after they had cleaned them well, and fastened them together with nails and laths, they looked very well in a pleasant, wainscoted parlour, which opened out of the kitchen, and where Miss Reynolds could receive any visitors who might choose to call upon her, -- for the neighbours seemed to think that she would like them to look in to see her now she had beautified her old house. She felt shy of them all yet, especially of Mrs. Ludlow, but the children were always welcome; and to Ben's own surprise, he discovered that the oak parlour, looking out only into the great garden, was the best place in the world to learn his lessons in, the more so as Miss Reynolds, who had been well taught by a Latin master in her girlhood, was always ready to give him some help, and encourage him to persevere in his distasteful studies.

Coming home to this great change, Dora heard and heeded many foolish tales which had not reached the ears of Mrs. Ludlow and the other children. It was reported by the gossips of Cloverley that Miss Reynolds was going to adopt Ben and Annie, and make them the heirs to her fortune; and though they knew very little about her circumstances, they said positively that during her long single life she had gathered together a very large sum of money, which would enrich the American children upon her death. Everywhere that Dora went in Church Cloverley she heard her cousins' prospects spoken of as if they were sure of inheriting great wealth; and some persons went so far as to tell her that the old lady had already made her will, and appointed Annie Bakewell the heiress of the larger portion of her property. It seemed very hard to Dora to go back to Helmeth Lodge, where the servants had been dismissed and every expense was avoided, even to comforts which she had regarded as almost necessaries. Annie was only an untaught girl from a remote farm in America, who was used to rough housework, and had little need of money; while she had talents and abilities that would distinguish her even among the elegant and accomplished circles of London society, if she only could have the fortune which would be thrown away upon her cousins.

Even a letter from her friend Miss Beaumont, containing the news that one of the greatest of living artists had seen her paintings, and said there was so much promise in them that in a few years she would win fame and wealth by her beautiful art, only served to deepen the bitterness of Dora's thoughts. If their rich neighbour had only taken a fancy to her instead of Annie, she might have sent her to Italy, where she could study the works of the great old masters of painting, or she might have placed her under the teaching of the great artist who had praised her sketches. But now, by the failure of the coal-pits, she would be doomed to waste her time in this narrow valley of Cloverley, where she knew every dell and rock and mountain brook, and had noticed every change of the seasons upon the face of the hills. Thus in Dora's secret heart, almost unconsciously to herself, so sly and subtle is sin, like the serpent in the garden of Eden, who was more cunning than any other creature, to selfishness there was added jealousy, and to jealousy covetousness; and only one little step lay between her soul and that hatred which is called in the Bible by the terrible name of murder.

But if Dora scarcely knew her secret fault, much less did Annie suspect its existence; and, so far from supposing that Dora could be jealous of her, it never entered her mind that there was anything in herself to envy. She regarded Dora as being so much more clever and elegant and educated than herself, that she would have laughed heartily at the idea that she could wish to change places with her in anything. Besides, their lives had both been ordained and settled according to the will of their heavenly Father, and Annie was satisfied. She rejoiced over Miss Beaumont's letter almost as much as her aunt Ludlow, who sent it on at once to the Holy Land, where Mr. Ludlow was to remain during the winter, as he had received several commissions for painting views there, which made it worth his while to stay until the following summer. The letter brought more real gladness to all the rest than to Dora herself; for, while they were exulting in her success, she was fretting at the imaginary prospects of her American cousins. She had done her own will, and nothing had hindered or crossed her; but she proved the other part of the Lord's saying, 'He that loveth his life shall lose it.'

The new shaft had been set about with all expedition; but it seemed as if no one could hit upon the right spot for sinking it in the coal-field at Botfield. The miners who came over from Netley agreed with Stephen Fern, that almost certainly there was coal lying underneath in even greater abundance than in the old seam; but wherever a bore was made they came upon the hidden watercourse which had flooded the first shaft, or upon the great fault which had stopped the working of the old pit. Miss Reynolds' money appeared to be wasting away rapidly, without any good being done by it; and Stephen grew almost shamefaced whenever he had to ask her for more. All Botfield had need of patience. There was a great deal of pinching and starving to be borne as the winter set in again; for though the men had constant employment at Netley, their living cost more than if they had been at home in their own cottages; and every family had fallen behindhand with the world, and stood in need of many comforts. Stephen could scarcely keep his faith firm when, day after day, he walked over the black and desolate coal-field, and through the village, where the careworn women waylaid him to pour into his ears some new tale of privation and suffering. His own frieze coat was well patched, and his hat was as brown and shaggy as the wool of the mountain sheep; while the little stock of money which had been laid up in his name at the bank was taken out and invested in quite a different manner. There was not a child in Annie's little school in the machine-house who did not wear something which had come out of Stephen's store.

There was a new cause for tenderness towards children at work in Stephen's heart. Early in December a child had been born to him in his own home at Fern's Hollow, which made the place doubly dear to him. All Botfield rejoiced with him, and it seemed as if the baby belonged to every mother in the village. Even when Martha pronounced it the most wonderful child in the world, nobody contradicted her. As for Stephen, for a few days the coal-field itself could not chill the warmth of joy that filled his whole soul and beamed upon his face; but it was to Annie alone that he could speak of it.

'My little lady,' he said, looking down into Annie's blue and smiling eyes, 'it makes me feel as if I love all the world better; and when I hear the voices of little children, my heart yearns towards every one of them. I don't wonder at the Lord saying, " Suffer the little children to come unto Me." That wee baby up at Fern's Hollow teaches me more of our Father in heaven than I ever knew before. Why, He feels about us just as I feel toward the tender, helpless creature who can't stretch out its little hand without me longing to feel its fingers clip round mine, though it doesn't know I'm his father. And when Widow Thompson told me the little lad was the very image of me, it made my heart throb with pleasure. Then I thought I caught a glimpse of what the Bible means about us having the likeness of God, and being conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the first-born among many brethren. Miss Annie, the Father takes delight in seeing us changed into the same image.'

The midwinter came; but such a winter had not been known in the valley of Cloverley for many years. Upon the slopes of the mountains there was scarcely a peak of rock to be seen for the thick mantle of snow which covered every hill and lay in deep drifts up every sidelong glen. The beeches and sycamores in the hedgerows were crusted over with white rime to the smallest twig at the farthest end of the great branches, until they stood out against the wintry sky like trees of ice; while the hedges underneath them were bent into arches, and church aisles, and bridges of dazzling hoar-frost. The great Helmeth alone reared its rocky brow high above the white world around it with no more than a silvery touch upon its grey crown; but far and wide on the uplands, a dreary wilderness of driven snow, with no landmark upon it, stretched away bleak and glaring to the cold and icy sky, where unemptied snow-clouds hung heavily upon the horizon. Down in the ravines and glens, where the snow had been blown into deep drifts, many of the mountain sheep were buried alive, having sought shelter there from the wild storms upon the open tableland; and day after day the rough little ponies, which had galloped across the plains through many a summer evening, died unseen and far away from any help. But in the villages there was great fun and merriment, for from every house door there was a snowball ready to be hurled at the chance passerby, and peals of laughter rang through the clear air from time to time -- the only noise that could be heard, for the wheels of the carriages rolled along the roads in muffled stillness, and the cattle confined within their cribs lowed so feebly that the faint sound died before it reached the farm-yard walls. Ben could not keep himself from talking largely of the snowfalls in America and of the sleigh rides they had been used to have in the winter; even in the matter of sharp, wintry weather, and bitter, ice-bound frost, he maintained that the old country was on a milder scale than the new one.

But upon the thoughtful face of Annie rested a grave, sad look, as she watched the whirling snowflakes, and remembered that her father and his men were still dwelling in their camps, and marching to and fro from battlefield to battlefield, through all the inclement season; for the army had not retreated into winter quarters as in former years. The same sorrowful look came into her eyes when she rode through Botfield twice a week to her little school, and thought how poor the fires must be in the cottage grates, when so thin a line of smoke came up through the chimneys; for, since the coal-pit had failed, fuel had become too costly to be burnt, as the people had been used to burn it in other winters. The old machine-house was crowded with shivering children, who crept through the snow, even from the scattered huts on the hills, to feel its comfortable warmth, and to learn the pleasant lessons which Annie and Stephen taught them. Stephen's heart ached for the little stray lambs, as he called those who came from the distant and comfortless huts which were built here and there upon the waste lands of the mountains; and, before the new year was a week old, he and Annie had established a Sunday afternoon school for them in the kitchen at Fern's Hollow.

So January was nearly passed; and everybody began to think that old winter had scattered all his snowflakes down upon them. The sinking of the shaft was at a standstill, but it was to be continued as soon as the expected thaw came; and that could not be long delayed, for the days were creeping out into greater length, and the sun mounted higher every noontide in the blue sky. Under the thatched eaves the icicles sparkled and melted a little every day in the cold sunshine; though as the night set in they froze again harder and longer than they had been before. The snow giant which the children had made on the grass plot opposite the sitting-room window seemed to defy the feeble sun; yet secretly drops of water trickled down his face, but turned to ice before they could reach the ground. Still there seemed a faint whisper now and then in the daytime that by and by the south winds would be sighing up the valley, and the joyous swallows shrieking round the gables, and the icebound trees waving their branches full of leaves in the soft air again; but, as if to contradict that whisper, every night the north wind came roaring off the great plain, and down the slopes of Helmeth, and, catching up the topmost flakes of the snow, drove them before it in blinding clouds.

It was the last Sunday afternoon in January, when Annie rode up the steep lane to Fern's Hollow, which was more like a lane in fairyland than in this every-day world of ours. Overhead the branches of trees met one another, all silvered over with delicate frost-work, and under the hedges thick wreaths of snow lay curled and twisted into a thousand fantastic shapes. A little waterfall, which had dripped down a channel in the rocks restlessly all the year through, was ice-bound and motionless. But out on the uplands there lay before her a great undulating plain of snowy mounds and dells, glistening coldly and tranquilly in the frosty sunlight; while in the valley beneath, and in the open country towards the north, there seemed to be a vast, white sea of snow, with little islands here and there, where the woods had shaken off a portion of their burden. The fir coppice behind Fern's Hollow stood out thick and dusky upon the mountainside; and Strawberry gave a neigh of delight when he saw it. With slow and cautious steps the little hill-pony had picked his way up the ascent from the valley; but now, as he caught sight of Stephen standing at his wicket with a sieve of oats in his hand, he quickened his pace, and in a few minutes he was comfortably sheltered in a stall; while Annie was sitting on the warm kitchen hearth surrounded by the mountain children.

The early sun had dipped behind the hills when Annie mounted Strawberry again; and a low, sorrowful wail of the north wind, which for several evenings past had sprung up at sunset, was moaning through the slender stems of the fir coppice, and dying away upon the snowy uplands. Annie stood for a minute or two listening to it, and watching the last gleams of sunlight fading away from the grey sky, while Stephen was lacing his strong boots and putting on his fur cap, that he might take care of her across the open hill, until she reached the cover of the lane; though there was no fear of being benighted, for the long twilight would give her plenty of time to get home before it was dark, even if it could be dark all the night through with the glittering snow lying upon the ground. All the little scholars had gone home, down to their cottages below; for Fern's Hollow was the highest homestead on that side of the hills, and the hardy mountain children had made tracks to it for themselves, knowing that there they were always sure of food, and warmth, and a kindly welcome. The baby lay asleep in the cradle by the fireside, and Mary was setting the tea-things ready against Stephen's return, as he and Annie looked in through the window for a moment before they started; and then, taking Strawberry's bridle, Stephen led him away reluctantly, under the shelter of the fir coppice, until they came to the opening of the wide uplands.

Such a fierce, wild, boisterous gale met them at the end of the coppice as made Stephen stagger and Strawberry stand still with snorting nostrils. Across the open table-land the wind was driving great clouds of snow before it in tall columns and spinning eddies, which whirled giddily as they flew before the storm. The valley of Church Cloverley was nowhere to be seen, for the sky was thick with dancing snowflakes, which quivered dizzily before their eyes. Where was the tranquil evening light gone to? And what was the yellow, murky darkness that was closing round them? Strawberry picked his cautious footsteps along the sloping path; and Stephen left his bridle to walk at Annie's side, and shield her from the wind. She told him, laughing, that an American girl had no need to be afraid of English storms; and, placing her hand in his, they ventured forward into the great, whirling tempest, which swept along the white wilderness of the familiar uplands.

'It is but a little way, Miss Annie,' said Stephen in cheerful tones, 'and we'll be at the Cloverley lane in a few minutes; but I'll see thee safe at home to-night, as how it is. Old Helmeth never looked upon a wilder night than this promises to be. It's darkest before the dawn, Miss Annie; and maybe the winter is almost done, and this is the last storm. Anyhow, it's God who giveth snow like wool, and scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes; and every snowflake does His bidding. I heard thee singing the chant we had in church this morning, "Praise Him, snow and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling His word;" and I thought, Why, the snow and wind are like the angels, for they also do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.'

But as Stephen spoke, the stormy wind sweeping up from the northern plain rushed upon them with so wild a fury, that he was thrown down upon the soft and slippery snow; and Strawberry scarcely kept his footing against its fierce strength. Stephen struggled to his feet again, and laid a firm hold upon the saddle, with a laugh which sounded pleasantly in Annie's cars.

'It never served me so before,' he said: 'I've known these hills, boy and man, for thirty years, and this is the first time the wind was ever too strong for me. But we must make haste, my little lady, and get under the bent of the hill before the next blast comes. We can hardly see a yard before us.'

It was true, for all the air was full of feathery flakes, falling swiftly but silently, which had already gathered thickly upon them, and clogged Strawberry's hoofs, until every step he took was a long slide upon the soft surface of the snow. Stephen did not speak again for some time, so occupied was he in keeping up the stumbling pony, and in taking care that Annie should not lose her seat. At last she leaned forward to lay her hand upon his shoulder, as he walked at Strawberry's head; and Stephen turned and looked into her pale face.

'Stephen,' she said, sobbing, 'aren't we come to the lane yet? It seems a long, long way; and the snow makes me giddy.'

'My darling,' he answered, kissing the little hand that rested upon his shoulder, 'please God, we shall be there in a minute or two now. If the snow 'ud clear a bit, you'd see the Long Spinny right before us; we should have been there benow but for the slipperiness of the snow. But thee shut thy eyes, and trust to me, and I'll hold thee safe. Miss Annie, it minds me of a song thy auntie used to sing long ago. I only know a verse or two:

"There shall no tempest blow;
No scorching noontide heat;
There shall be no more snow;
No weary, wandering feet.

So we lift our drooping eyes,
From the hills our fathers trod,
To the quiet of the skies,
To the Sabbath of our God."'

As Stephen's voice ceased there came a faint flush of gladness over Annie's pale face, and her eyes, which had been dimmed with starting tears, brightened with a light that cheered Stephen's heart, as he gazed stedfastly upon her through the deepening gloom. Every moment the night appeared to close in with a darker and darker shadow; and the whirling snow dazzled his eyes, and bewildered his memory of the mountain tracks. The Long Spinny, under whose cover they would find protection from the wind and tempest, seemed to be farther away than ever it had been before, though many a time during his life he had made his way safely to it through dense fogs and midnight storms. Strawberry was trembling and snorting, as he slipped at every step, and hung back upon his haunches, as if fearful of adventuring his forefeet upon dangerous ground. The distance back to Fern's Hollow must be greater than that which lay before them; and Stephen stopped and rubbed his eyes, as if to clear away the film that hid the Long Spinny from his view. For an instant the whirl of the snow ceased; and he clasped his arm more closely round Annie, and his fingers tightened upon the pony's bridle, as there flashed across his mind the conviction that he had lost his way, and that he and the little girl were benighted in a snowstorm upon the desolate uplands.

The night was set in, though it could not yet be six o'clock; but all round the horizon the clouds hung heavily and thickly; and the yellow glare that had shone faintly through them had faded away altogether. For the little distance that Stephen could see around them there was nothing but the white snow, lying level and even, without track or landmark of any kind. Behind them there was no trace whatever of their own difficult progress, for the snow had blotted out every footstep; so that there was no return by the way that they had come. The wind had lulled a little, and the flakes that were now falling came more slowly; but the air was piercingly cold, and Stephen felt that the snow that had gathered upon his coat and under his fur cap was freezing into solid ice. The pony was whining piteously, and shivering in every limb. Stephen could see Annie's face no longer, with the light in her eyes and the smile upon her lips; but, as he pressed closer to her, she clasped her arm about his neck and rested her cheek against his.

'Stephen,' she said, in a low, steady tone, 'we have lost our way, haven't we?'

'Ay, my little lamb,' answered Stephen, and his voice trembled greatly; 'but, please God, we shall come to some place I know by and by. I know every spot on the hillside; only this evening there is neither north nor south, east nor west, to guide us by; and the moon's too young to shine through clouds like these. Many a night I've found my way by moonlight across the hills. If we could only catch a sight of old Helmeth now! I'm thinking, Miss Annie, we'll give Strawberry the bridle; he was born and bred on these hills, and maybe he'll find his way home. Hold fast by me, darling; and I'll keep my arms about thee safely.'

For a little while Strawberry stumbled through the darkness, and Stephen kept up to his side; but presently, almost without warning, his forefeet slid far out, and Stephen had but a moment to snatch Annie from the saddle before they heard him falling over and over down the steep sides of a ravine. Then all was still; so awful a stillness that Annie pressed closely to Stephen's side, for it seemed as if throughout all the world no sound would ever be heard again. Not a whistle of the wind, nor the feeblest cry of any living creature, nor the faintest echo of a whisper anywhere. Stephen himself was dumb, and stood upon the margin of the steep precipice, as if struck into speechless awe; and Annie could not tell whether it was the throbbing of his heart or her own which beat in her ears, and seemed to make them deaf in the midst of the death-like silence.

'Stephen,' she said, and her voice sounded strange and far off to herself, 'perhaps Strawberry will get home safely, and they'll send somebody to seek us. The Bible says it is God who says to the snow, "Be thou on the earth;" so He knows all about it. Tell me what you think God would have us to do. My mother used to tell me we could never be anywhere in the world where we could not do the will of our Father in heaven. What do you think His will is now, Stephen?'

'His will be done, whatever it is,' answered Stephen, sighing; 'but it will be a sore grief to Mary and the little babe at home; and to thy auntie, and thy poor father in the war! Eh, my little lady! I scarcely dare call Him my Father just now. He is a great and terrible God; and I'm nought but a poor, sinful man, and my sins are as many as these flakes of snow that cover the ground, which none can count save Himself. Ay, more sins than snowflakes! I've seen all my life pass before me while I stood here on the brink of death. Everything -- like as if a flash of lightning showed me all the hills; and it was an awful sight, Miss Annie! Maybe we're making a mistake in calling Him our Father.'

'No, no!' cried Annie, clinging more closely to him; 'it was the Lord Jesus who taught us to call God our Father, and He could not make a mistake, Stephen. He is our Father here just the same as if we were safe at home. If it is His will, He can take us safely home again; or, if it is His will, it would not be so very hard to die even here. The angels are not far off, and God Himself will take care of us.'

Annie's voice had grown calm and strong; and in the dead stillness it sounded like music in Stephen's ears. He lifted up his eyes, and looked up into the murky sky. There was a little rift in the clouds that were flying past before the wind, and one bright and solitary star shone down upon them for an instant, as tranquilly as it had done for innumerable years upon the hollow where his peaceful home was built. It was like looking into the steady eye of a friend; and Stephen's heart was strengthened. Once more, by a fresh act of faith, he trusted his soul to the Saviour for the forgiveness of his sins; and in his inmost spirit he cried humbly and lovingly, 'Abba, Father!' and then he shook off the dread and terror which had held him motionless upon the edge of the glen.

'My little lamb,' he said tenderly, 'it's worse for thee to bear than me; and the cold 'ud conquer thee the soonest. But we mustn't stand still, or get drowsy. Thee said we could do the will of God anywhere; and it must be His will now that we should bear up bravely, and keep moving on till He sends deliverance. Maybe He'll guide our feet to some place of shelter; and somewhere or other, nigh at hand, there must be old Molly Clarkson's hut in one of the hollows. The snow lies on a level over the roof, and if we came upon the chimney-pipe we could find our way to the door, and then we'd be safe till the morning.'

With slow and careful steps, stopping every instant to sound his way before him with the strong staff he had brought with him from home, Stephen crept along, with Annie half following and half clinging to him. They dare not waste their strength with talking much to one another; and soon, in spite of the hard exercise, their hands and feet were benumbed with the stinging cold. The night was never quite dark, for the snow shed a pale gleam around; and when the snowflakes ceased to fall, the air grew still and clear. Sometimes they fancied they saw shapes before them on the uplands, large shepherd dogs or stray ponies; but when they drew near to them, they found them to be only wreaths and drifts of snow, which had been tossed into strange forms. It seemed to Stephen as if every now and then he could see his own garden wicket, with Mary standing inside it, and the baby in its long white dress lying in her arms; but before he could reach them they melted away, or changed into a little peak of rock, with the snow curling over it. Already he felt as if the dreary night had lengthened into a year; and Annie's weary feet began to falter, and her voice, when she spoke to him, sounded indistinct and drowsy.

'Stephen,' she said, 'I can hear the waves upon the shore at home, like they used to send me to sleep when I was a little child. It makes me sleepy now to listen to them.'

'Miss Annie,' he cried, turning round and catching her in his arms, 'hearken to me. Thee must not go to sleep. It's God's will that thee should keep awake. Oh, think of it, my darling! Think of thy poor father in the war; and don't give up. We must be near help now, or the morning will break. Sure, God will send some of His angels to take charge of thee.'

'Stephen,' said Annie softly, 'there's been an angel walking beside me a long time. I can see the white robes, and the wings like snow; but it makes me cold, very cold. Is it ever as cold for my father and his soldiers?'

'They're strong men, my poor little lamb,' answered Stephen; 'but thee must bear up against it a bit longer. Don't thee look at that angel, deary; only clip hold of my hand fast, and talk to me to keep my heart up. It isn't the waves upon the shore that thou hears. I've heard many a strange noise upon the hills at night; but no harm ever came to me. We're bound to be safe in God's keeping.'

'Stephen,' said Annie steadily, 'if it's God's will that you can save yourself, and not me, will you try to get home to Mary and the baby without me? A strong man like you, and my father's soldiers, can bear what a little girl like me can't. If you're obliged, if I should go to sleep in the cold, will you leave me to God's care, and do all you can to get home safe yourself?'

'Oh, I cannot, I cannot!' cried Stephen; 'He will not require me to do this. I cannot leave my little lamb. Nay! it 'ud be contrary to Himself for me to forsake thee. Look, my darling! Isn't it the morning that is dawning yonder? Surely it is time for day to come.'

But, though they strained their aching eyes, there was nothing to be seen save the dark and heavy midnight sky lowering down all around them, with no break in its gloom to show them where the east was. Every token both of time and place was lost; and they knew nothing but that they were benighted in the snow upon the great tableland, of which Stephen fancied he could tell every ravine and rock by night or day. But now, as they groped along, stumbling over the peaks of hidden crags, and only just saving themselves from falling over into the snow-filled glens, his heart was weighed down with dismay that almost amounted to despair. The bitter, numbing cold was producing upon him the painful drowsiness and the desire to lie down upon the soft snow for a little while and yield to the fatal slumber, from which he never would have awakened, when Annie's voice again broke upon his dreamy thoughts, speaking in a distinct and clear tone, but as if she was a very long way off.

'Stephen,' she said, 'is not this the head of the Coombe, where the upper mill-pond lies? Listen, I can hear the brook falling over the rocks. If we could get down to it, it would lead us home to All Cloverley. See, Stephen; the valley lies close before us.'

'God bless thee,' cried Stephen. 'I'd well-nigh given in. Yes; surely this is the Coombe, and the brook runs straight down to thy home. My little lamb, stand thee there for a minute, while I find the best way to get down; and shout while I'm out of sight, so that I may hear thee. It's silent enough now.'

He stopped for a moment to hold Annie to his beating heart, while he thanked God aloud for the guidance that had led their wandering footsteps to this familiar place; and then, with a kiss upon her cold forehead, he loosed her hand, which was clasping his own tightly, and left her to seek the safest path over the dangerous crags at the head of the Coombe, which were slippery with the frozen snow. The instant they lost sight of one another, and while he was still only a few yards distant, he heard her sweet, dear voice calling to him, and he stood still upon the edge of the precipitous rocks to answer her call; but the momentary pause, and the effort to raise his voice into a cheery shout, made him lose his balance, and, unable to arrest his swift descent, he was thrown down the face of the precipice into a deep drift at the bottom of the glen.

It was many minutes before Stephen, by dint of hard struggling, and burrowing through the soft snow, succeeded in rescuing himself from the dangerous drift; and when he felt himself again ascending the steep sides of the glen, he could not tell at which point he had got out. So far as he could see, for it was darker down in the narrow valley than upon the uplands, there were great walls of black rock, with patches of snow lying on their peaks, surrounding him on every hand. He shouted; but there was no answer to be heard, though his ear seemed ready to crack with the strain to catch the lowest and most distant sound of Annie's voice. In a frenzy of terror and anguish he scrambled up the frowning rocks; and once more upon the ridge of the glen, though where he knew not, he called a hundred times for Annie, until the echo of his own cry sounded in his ears like that of some one mocking him from afar off in the snowy wilderness. To and fro he wandered; but every moment he grew more bewildered. Were these indeed his own familiar hills, where as a lad be had rambled safe and happy along every sheep-track and over every crag? Or was it some horrible dream, from which he should by and by awaken to listen to the soft breathing of his little child, slumbering sweetly in its mother's arms? After a while his wandering brain could not tell whether he had come out upon the uplands to seek for Annie, or for some lost lamb which had strayed from his fold; and as his frozen feet stumbled upon the dark mountains, carrying him hither and thither almost unconsciously, Stephen kept murmuring to himself, 'My little lamb ! my poor, lost little lamb!'

Early in the morning, before the light had fully dawned over the Helmeth, there came, staggering and reeling at every step, down the glen of the Coombe which led into All Cloverley, the figure of a man whose hair was frozen into a mass of ice, and whose face was ghastly with the sufferings of the terrible night. He could see nothing clearly, and his limbs were dead to all feeling but when the affrighted cottagers who gathered round him told him that he had reached All Cloverley, and asked him, with bated breath, where the child was who had been lost with him in the snow, Stephen Fern could answer only by a bitter groan, and then lost all consciousness of his peril and deliverance,

At home in Helmeth Lodge there had been no great anxiety aroused in the hearts of the household when Annie did not return in the evening; for when the storm came roaring tempestuously through the valley, driving before it thick clouds of snow and sleet, every one concluded that she would stay at Fern's Hollow all the night. But there was not one in the house who from time to time did not stand at the windows watching the violence of the storm, and speaking pitifully of the poor creatures exposed to it upon the hills; for early in the afternoon many of the hardy little ponies had made their way into the village, and strayed up and down the roads, seeking some shelter from the coming tempest. Even after they had gone to bed, the wild wind moaned under the gables and beat against the casements, until all thought of sleep was banished from their minds. Ben fancied that out in the lane he could hear all the time the tramping of ponies' feet upon the snow, and their distressed neighing, as if they were imploring his help, -- until at last he opened his window, and, looking out, saw the black head of a pony over the top bar of the gate. It was like the appeal of a fellow-creature to Ben's heart, and in a few minutes he and Gilbert had determined to go down and try to let it into the stable at the back of the house. The snow had already drifted deeply against the door, but the boys worked with a hearty will to clear the way to the gate, while Ben boasted, as usual, of their marvellous feats in America, where a storm like this, he declared, would seem but child's play. From time to time he spoke cheerily to the stray pony, which stood as still as if it knew for what purpose they were at work; but what was the astonishment and terror of them both when they discovered that it was Strawberry himself, with the bridle hanging to his frozen mane, and the saddle torn and broken, but securely fastened by the girths.

It seemed as if the heart-troubling news was carried through the house by some strange means, for, before Ben and Gilbert could utter their dread, Mrs. Ludlow and Dora and Martha were standing in the doorway, and gazing in terrified silence upon the pony, as it was led shivering and trembling up the path which the boys had dug through the snow. Even the cottagers nearest at hand were aroused, and crowded out in the biting air of the night to see, and wonder, and fear for themselves. Before Mrs. Ludlow dare own, even to herself, the awful conviction that was waiting to fill her mind, all the village, by some means or other, had heard, and the men turned out to offer any assistance they could give; and Ben and Gilbert were making ready to start out, and force their way up to Fern's Hollow through every obstacle of the wild night and tempest. Few words were spoken, but the boys' faces were white and resolute as they kissed Mrs. Ludlow and Dora, and set out, foremost among the band of men, to find out if Annie were at Fern's Hollow.

It was hard work to make their way up the sheltered lane, which was choked up with the driven snow; but it was all in vain to strive to get out upon the uplands. They were beaten back by the snow and the wind before they could get many yards upon it, though Ben and Gilbert refused to give up the attempt, and again and again ventured from the cover of the Long Spinny into the white wilderness stretching before them, but only to be brought back faint and exhausted by the men, who knew the peril better than they did. There was still a faint hope that Strawberry had broken loose from his stall and started off home before Annie was ready to leave Fern's Hollow, so that she might still be there in safety; but nothing more could be done till morning came; and slowly and sadly the men and boys fought their way back to All Cloverley again, and waited for the day.

But with the dawn Stephen came alone; and, as soon as he could be recovered from his deep swoon, he told them how he had lost Annie upon the awful hills. The morning was calm, as if the wind had wearied itself; and the men, with Ben and Gilbert again at their head, set out to cross the uplands to the head of the Coombe, where Stephen and Annie had been separated. Even with the light of day the adventure was dangerous, and the progress they made but slow. Here and there they came upon the track of Stephen's wanderings, and looked down shuddering into the deep ravines where he had fallen, but they could find no footsteps save his. The men shook their heads, and whispered one to another that it was impossible for Annie to be alive; but Ben and Gilbert could not speak, and when their eyes met they looked away instantly, for they could not bear to see the expression that was in the other's face. At last, under the shadow of a great rock, where the snow was not so deep, they came upon Annie's little Bible, and between its leaves the letter that her mother had written with her dying hand. Ben knelt down upon the snow, and leaned his head upon the Book, sobbing aloud; while the men who stood aloof, not knowing what to say, heard him praying in broken words.

'Let me only find Annie,' he said, 'and all my life long I'll say, "Thy will be done!" O Lord! show us where she is. If she is gone to heaven, let me come very soon; or, if I must live to be a man, make me like her, and help me to do Thy will. Let me be the brother of the Lord Jesus truly and really. For Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.'

Every voice answered 'Amen!' and when Ben rose from his knees, Gilbert flung his arms round him, and they stood for a minute with their hearts beating against each other with a deeper and stronger love than they had ever felt before, as if this sorrow had made them brothers. A little farther they found the trace of Annie's light feet by Stephen's footmarks, and they followed them on till they came to the head of the Coombe, where Stephen had lost her. Beyond this point the uplands were smoother, and a path went from it sheltered by a low ridge of an old encampment, which had been one of the earthworks made by a tribe of the ancient Britons, when they were defending these mountains of Siluria against the Roman conquerors. The footprints were plainer here, for the wind had not driven the snow over them; and, as though Annie's path had been guided by some tender hand, they led over the smoothest tracks, and away from all the perilous rocks. Presently the little steps turned towards the brow of a hollow, and the seekers, hurrying thither in mingled hope and fear, found themselves almost upon the snow-covered roof of an old hut.

The dangerous search had lasted for several hours, and had been so hopeless that the spirits of the men had failed them at the very outset; but now, when they had reached the place of refuge, and looked at the track of Annie's feet down the snowy slope to the very door of the hut, they could not restrain their tears and sobs. The storm-beaten and hard-featured men who had not wept for years hid their faces in their hands lest their comrades should see how womanish they were; while Ben and Gilbert, standing hand in hand, felt as if they could not move a step farther. But as the sound of voices and footsteps were heard by those within the hut, the old woman appeared at the door and beckoned to them to descend. Scarcely knowing what they did, Ben and Gilbert flung themselves down the bank and hurried to the threshold. Annie was saved -- was there!

There was no fire kindled upon the hearthstone, for the old woman had used her last burn of fuel the day before; and down the wide chimney the snow had drifted upon the grey ashes. There was a low bed in the corner of the poor hut where the thatch was soundest, and Annie was lying upon it, wrapped up in Molly Clarkson's thin blankets, with her head raised by the pillow, and her face turned towards the open door. But when Ben and Gilbert saw Annie's face, so white and small, with a look of heavenly quiet upon it that was happier than a smile, and a shining light in her clear eyes, as if no earthly tears could ever dim them again, they stood motionless upon the threshold gazing towards her in awe-struck silence, until Ben suddenly roused himself with a bitter cry, and, springing forward, threw himself down by her side.

'Oh, Annie, Annie!' he cried; 'I promised that if God would only let us find you, I would say, "Thy will be done!" all my life long. And we have found you.'

'Say it again, Ben,' whispered Annie, laying her arm round his neck; 'and Gilbert will say it too. See how safely God has brought me here! I thought the angel walked beside me all the way.'

But Annie could say no more, and her languid eyelids closed feebly; while old Molly drew the boys away, and beckoned to the men, who were standing about the door, to be very quiet lest they should disturb her light slumber.

'The pretty dear!' muttered the old woman, wiping the tears from her eyes; 'she came to me in the dead of the night, and I couldn't do any more for her than I have done. She asked me would I rub her poor hands and feet with the snow; and I lapped her well in the blankets, and fed her with bread-crumbs like a chicken: but I'd nought else to give her, and no fire to hot any water for her. She's been sleeping off and on like that ever since God Almighty led her to my hut; but it's no place for the like of her.'

The old woman was right; for through the broken thatch the snow was already melting into the room, and the clay floor was damp and slimy. It was far away, too, from any help, and the path over the hills to All Cloverley would be impassable for several weeks to come. But the distance to Fern's Hollow was a little less than a mile, and the way to it lay under a protecting ridge of hillocks which had kept it nearly free from drifts. It was settled that it would be best to carry Annie thither on a litter, which was quickly made of an old door belonging to a shed beside the hut, upon which they lifted the chaff bed that Annie was lying on, and covered her well over with their warm coats. With measured and cautious steps, guided by Gilbert, who knew the uplands almost as well as Stephen, the silent procession wound its way across the snowy plain; while Ben walked beside the litter, looking by turns at the sweet white face of his young sister with that strange smile upon it, and at the bright blue of the sky above them, from which all the clouds had passed away, as though they had never been.

As soon as Stephen had recovered sufficiently to make the effort, he started off homewards, accompanied by such of the villagers as had not gone in search of Annie. Terrible as the night had been for the household at Helmeth Lodge, it had been tenfold worse for Mary Fern, who had passed through its dreary hours almost alone, having no other companions than the baby and one of Bess Cole's children, who lived with her to help to nurse. The fir coppice behind the house had protected it from the utmost violence of the storm, but the wild roaring of the wind through the trees and the crash of the broken boughs as they were snapped off by the force of the tempest made her quail with unutterable terror. Several times she had forced her way down to the garden wicket, and shouted as loudly as she could against the din of the falling branches and the swelling uproar of the storms; but there was no voice to answer her. Even when the daylight came she found that it was impossible for her to venture across the hillside to All Cloverley; and she could do nothing but set her house in order, and then, sitting down with her baby in her lap, wait until some help or intelligence was brought to her.

It was getting on for noonday when Mary fancied she heard a shout amid the profound stillness of the snow-clad hills, and, snatching up the baby in her arms, she hurried to the house door. There, upon the knoll from whence the first glimpse could be caught by Fern's Hollow, stood a little knot of men from Cloverley, whose voices came with a muffled tone across the snow. And surely it was Stephen whom they were lifting up on their shoulders, and who was waving his cap above his head! He could not see her, for his eyesight had been dazzled by the glare of the snow; but his comrades told him that Mary was standing at the wicket with the baby in its long white frock lying in her arms, and Stephen remembered how often he had thought he saw her thus during the long and awful night upon the hills. But, though he was coming home again in safety, his heart was very heavy; for as yet he knew nothing of what had become of his little lamb.

But before the afternoon was ended there came across the uplands the little procession guided by Gilbert; and as soon as Stephen heard that they were close at hand, and that the men were bearing a litter amongst them, his heart seemed to die within him. Only this time yesterday Annie was sitting by his fireside, with the little children gathered round her, listening to her gentle teaching and looking up into her loving face. Once before Stephen had suffered the great sorrow of a sudden death, and his tender nature shrank from this new trial. Yet, as the voices of the bearers speaking in hurried and lowered tones upon his threshold reached his ears, and his misty eyes saw an indistinct group gathered about his door, he bowed his head and said solemnly, 'The will of God be done !'

'I'm not dead, Stephen!' answered a voice, which made his heart cease beating for an instant, and then throb with sudden gladness, as he pressed forward to the side of the litter, to try if he could not see Annie. But Ben, who never took his eyes from her white face, held him back, and spoke in a quiet and commanding tone.

'She must not talk,' he said; 'we must keep her quiet. Make haste, Mary, and get her into bed. And some of you men hurry off to Cloverley, and bring a doctor here quickly. Let my aunt Ludlow know that Annie is found, and Gilbert and I are going to stay up here till morning. And tell her Martha had better come to tend Annie. Stephen, Stephen, the will of God is very hard to bear!'

It was very hard to bear; for before the snow had melted off the mountain, it was known for certain that Annie's life could never rally from the shock it had received. Slowly and solemnly she was passing away with the melting of the snow and the coming of the spring; and a change, which all of them could feel but could not comprehend, had been wrought upon her, so that none of them would have kept her back from the life eternal to which she was going, to dwell with them any longer in this world of sin and sorrow. Whether it was that Annie had been in truth in the company of angels that solemn night when she wandered alone over the pathless snow, or whether it was only the perfecting for ever of the will of God in her spirit, they could not tell; but whoever looked upon her face, with its deep, grave smile and its serene joy, saw it as it had been the face of an angel. She could not be removed from Fern's Hollow, for the snow lay too deeply upon the uplands until it was too late for her to be borne across them; and the little room under the gabled roof, looking towards the sun-rising, became such a hallowed place as that where Jacob dreamed, and 'beheld a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending upon it.' Whatever passionate grief filled the hearts of those whom Annie was leaving, it became soothed and calmed into a tranquil submission to God's will when they entered into her chamber and looked upon her face. Even Ben and Gilbert, in the full strength of their unbroken wills, and in the impatience of sorrow which all young creatures feel grew quiet in Annie's presence, and day by day repeated after her, with gentler and more trusting hearts, the prayer, 'Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven.'

It was a happy time for Annie; a time of perfect rest and peace. It was the will of God that she should not endure any great pain, and that her mind should remain so clear that every moment she could understand the sweet and pleasant thoughts which His Holy Spirit put into her heart. Her aunt Ludlow stayed at Fern's Hollow with her; and Ben and Gilbert and Dora spent a portion of every day in her room, and she could still talk to them with even more than the gentle playfulness with which she had been used to enter into their pursuits. Only now and then there came a shade of sadness over her, as she remembered her father in the battlefields of America, and thought of the men who had been driven away from their homes in Botfield.

'Stephen,' she said, one evening when he had been reading to her, 'I've only two great wishes in the world, and I know God will do what is best. But, oh, I have two great wishes!'

'What are they, my little lamb?' asked Stephen, who now always called her by that name, as if he could never forget their weary wandering on the mountains.

'I should so like the war to be over,' murmured Annie in her languid voice, 'and the coal to be found at Botfield, before I die, Stephen.'

'The Lord grant thee thy desires,' he answered tenderly, bending his head upon his hard hands in earnest prayer that the child's two great wishes might be fulfilled.

But still the works at Botfield were unsuccessful; and it seemed as if Miss Reynolds' money would all be wasted. Nearly every day she came up with Dora to Fern's Hollow, and sat in Annie's room, with her dim eyes fastened upon the child's face, as though she gathered her only comfort and strength from its look of peace and gladness. Sometimes Annie would be strong enough to sit up, and talk as if she were really recovering; and then the hope of Miss Reynolds would revive, and the grey gloom of her countenance would pass away, as she laid plans of what they would do when she was well again. But in the secret, unsounded depths of her heart she knew that never more would Annie's feet cross her desolate threshold, nor Annie's voice be heard in her lonely dwelling; and she longed to learn more of the child's simple wisdom before she passed away altogether out of her sight and hearing.

'Annie,' she said one day, after she had drawn a large sum out of the bank to carry on the works at Botfield, 'when you first found me, I was an indolent and covetous old woman, only living miserably for myself; and it was you who taught me that it is the will of God that I should use my money for the good of other people, and that I should keep my house in order, as if I were trying to be like the sister of the Lord Jesus. But it is of no use. I've given my money to God, and I'm trying to please Him; but I am as miserable as ever. I don't feel any more than I used to do that He is my Father. My money is doing no good to the people; and my house will be as desolate as it was before I knew you, now He is taking you away.'

Annie's shining eyes were fixed searchingly upon Miss Reynolds, until she turned away as if she could not bear to meet their clear light.

'If we had all the world, and gave it to God,' said Annie slowly and thoughtfully, as though she was repeating some lesson that had been carefully taught to her, 'we should not be doing His will, unless we first gave ourselves to Him. The Bible says, "Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart."'

Annie's still, faint voice ceased; and Miss Reynolds sat silent. For the last six months she had been trying to do God's will; but she had supposed it consisted in works which could be seen and which her hands could do. She had signed the cheques for withdrawing her treasured money from the bank; she had made her dwelling clean and beautiful; she had given many things to the poor; but all the time she thought God required these works as sacrifices and offerings to Himself. But when Annie's lips uttered, 'Lo, I come: I delight to do Thy will, O my God,' she felt that after all, only in another fashion, she had been seeking her own will, instead of delighting in the will of God. She was still pondering the words over in her heart, when Dora stole softly across the floor, and, kneeling down by Annie's side, looked into her face with fast-falling tears.

'Oh, Annie,' she cried, 'tell me how I can become like you. All my life long I have only thought of getting my own way, and having my own pleasure; and I have been selfish, and proud, and envious. Oh, I have been a very sinful girl; and at last I almost hated you -- almost, Annie, never quite; God kept me from being so wicked. But ever since you were lost that night, I have been seeking God's forgiveness of my sins; and now I know that, for Jesus Christ's sake, He has pardoned me. But tell me how I can ever have thoughts like yours, and delight to do God's will as you do. How can I have a loving, humble spirit like yours?'

Dora hid her face upon Annie's thin hand, and pressed it closely to her lips, while she waited for her to answer. Miss Reynolds saw a bright flush glow upon her white face, of such a joy as the angels feel over one sinner that repenteth; and she laid her other hand tenderly upon Dora's bowed head.

'Dora,' she murmured, 'you can have a better spirit than mine. My mother said that, if it were possible, there was nothing she could give to us more precious than herself, her own spirit -- all her love and trust and knowledge -- so that we might be completely like her, -- like Elijah, when a double portion of his spirit fell upon Elisha. But though she could not do this, it is just what our Father in heaven promises to do if we ask Him. He will give us His own Holy Spirit to be in and with our spirits; and we shall think the thoughts of God, and feel the love of God, until we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. That is what my mother said.'

Before Dora raised her head, and while Miss Reynolds was still gazing upon the bright look on Annie's face, there was a quiet footstep heard upon the stairs, and the latch was lifted with the noiseless care with which the door of Annie's room was always opened. It was Stephen who stood upon the door-sill, with such a smile beaming through his brown eyes and playing about his lips as had not been there for many a long month, except when he heard of the birth of his little boy.

'Miss Annie,' he exclaimed joyously, 'God has granted you one of your great wishes. The coal is found at Botfield! We've come right upon a thick seam of good coal, such as never was in the old pit. There'll be work for all my old mates, and more; and there'll be good times again in Botfield. Miss Reynolds, we shall pay back your money fourfold; and my mistress'll be a rich lady too.'

'Stephen,' said Annie, 'carry me to the window, and let me look down towards Botfield.'

Stephen placed his strong arms gently beneath her, and lifted her up to lean against his shoulder, as she looked out across the brow of the hill to the place where the black and barren coal-field lay like a blot upon the fair landscape. The sheltered meadow before the house was green and fresh with the early showers, and the lambs were playing about it in the noonday sun; but in the deep furrows on the slope of the Helmeth there still lingered streaks of snow not yet melted from the mountain-side, though day after day they were dissolving surely and softly before the warmer breath of the spring. All the wide open country which could be seen from the casement, with its numberless fields and budding woods, looked bright in the clear air, even to the long-deserted coal-field, which at last had yielded up its treasures hidden under the soil. Stephen's eyes glanced round the beautiful scene, but they came back, and rested upon the white and smiling face of Annie which lay upon his shoulder.

'I'm thanking God,' she whispered; 'it isn't His will that we should always have trouble to bear. But, Stephen, I wish I could hear the church bells ring, like they did at Netley when a new pit was found.'

'Thee shall, my little lamb,' answered Stephen, the tears standing in his eyes; 'I'll ride off to Church Cloverley and set them on myself. The wind comes down the valley from the south, and it 'll carry the sound right up over the hill; and we'll have the window open for thee to hearken to the peal.'

'And, Stephen,' said Annie, 'as you come back, bring Ben and Gilbert up here, for us all to be together this evening, -- so that we can all hear the bells ringing up to Fern's Hollow, and look down on Botfield there, with the new pit. Be sure they come, Stephen.'

'Does my little lamb feel worse to-day?' asked Stephen anxiously.

'No,' she answered, smiling; 'but we have so looked forward to the coal being found, and I don't want them to feel sorrowful to-day, and as if I didn't care about it any longer. I'm so very glad, Stephen; and it must be like a little feast-day this evening.'

But Stephen was in no haste to carry her back to her cushioned chair by the fire, and to start upon his errand; and Annie was still gazing across the green meadow down towards Botfield, when a weather-beaten man, carrying a leather satchel over his shoulder, came pacing quickly across the narrow track in the meadow, startling the sheep and lambs into a sudden commotion. Annie's colour came and went with her fluttering breath, for many a time she had watched eagerly for his arrival in the early morning when a mail was expected to come in from America.

'Mr. Fern,' he said, in a voice loud enough to be heard through the open door, 'I missed a foreign letter in my bag this morning down at Helmeth Lodge. I can't tell how it was, but I brought it straight up here as soon as I found it. It's for Miss Annie Bakewell, and I knew she was up here with you.'

Before he could say any more, Dora had flown downstairs, and came back again with the American letter in her hand. It was very light and thin, as if it did not contain much writing, -- though Captain Bakewell's letters to his children were always long and closely written, with many sheets of paper in them; and when Annie opened the envelope it contained only one little, thin page written on one side of the paper. But the words were found to be full of meaning.

'MY DEAR LITTLE DAUGHTER, -- Thank God the war is ended, and the North has won the victory. In a few days I shall be on my way to England. In your aunt's letter you wrote that little word "Good-bye" with your own feeble hand, but I trust the heavenly Father will let me see my daughter once more. God be with you, my darling. Very soon after you receive this you will see your loving father,

'BEN. BAKEWELL'

For a minute or two Annie's head lay motionless against Stephen's shoulder, as if her Feeble life was indeed gone; and Miss Reynolds and Dora looked on in silent dread without moving, as Stephen held up his hand to prevent them speaking. Then her eyes opened, brighter and deeper in their clear light than they had ever been before, and she spoke eagerly to Stephen.

'He has given me my two great wishes,' she said 'How He loves me! We shall be very, very glad altogether this evening. Make haste and set the bells to ring, and I will sleep a little till they come up from home. This evening we shall be very glad.'

So, before the day was done, or the sun had set behind the hills, they were all gathered together in Annie's chamber, and when everything was still they could hear that a joyous peal was ringing down in the church belfry at Cloverley, and echoing cheerily up and down the valley, as if calling upon every one to rejoice that the coal was found at Botfield, and the terrible war in America was ended. Up at Fern's Hollow the sound came so faintly and fitfully, only reaching their ears when the evening breeze bore it up from the hidden belfry in the valley, that it seemed to Stephen like the tinkling of sheep-bells upon the uplands, as if lost lambs were wandering away from their safe folds. But it was a happy evening, and every one was very glad, as Annie had said they should be, -- it was her feast, she said; and the smile never died from her eyes and lips, for every moment one or other was looking at her or speaking to her. Stephen had brought up from Botfield the very first lumps of coal that had been dug out of the new pit, and they were laid upon the fire in Annie's room. As the night stole over the hills, and crept about the house at Fern's Hollow, no other light was kindled; and the bright flames flickered and blazed, and grew stronger and stronger, until they lit up every corner of the chamber, and cast a rosy glow upon every face. And when they were silent -- for every now and then a peaceful silence fell upon them all -- there was a crackling and chattering in the fire, as if it were talking to itself of the good times God had laid up for the people of Botfield, and, far away over the vast Atlantic Ocean, for the great nation that was at peace again after their terrible war in America.

It was not many days before Captain Bakewell arrived in England, for he had left New York as soon as he could obtain permission. It was strange and sad to Ben to see how white his father was become, and how old-looking he had grown during the one short year since he and they had parted; but Annie scarcely marked the difference, for her father's voice spoke as fondly, and his eyes gazed as tenderly upon her, as in the old times. After he came he would seldom leave her, except to march with a slow and measured tread up and down the meadow under her window, where she could follow him with her eyes, and where at every turn he could look up to his little daughter's casement. Sometimes Stephen would join him, and Annie's face brightened whenever she saw him and her father walking to and fro in earnest conversation. Day after day troops of people came up from the valley of Cloverley, and from Botfield, to ask news of the dying child, and to bring little tokens of their love for her. But still the snow lay upon the slopes of Helmeth -- one tiny speck of white amidst the fresh greenness of the spring, which looked almost like a lamb lying at rest in the lap of the mountain; and still Annie's life lingered peacefully, full of happiness and joy, in her quiet resting-place at Fern's Hollow.

At last the Easter Sunday dawned in the middle of the pleasant month of April; and, according to the old tradition of the people in the valley, the sun would rise with dancing and rejoicing over the peak of Helmeth to greet the day on which the Lord had risen from the dead; as it had done, they said, every Eastertide since the resurrection. All the night through Captain Bakewell and Mrs. Ludlow had watched sleeplessly beside Annie, while she slumbered softly, but with so faint a breathing that it seemed as if it might cease at any moment. In the grey of the morning Miss Reynolds stole silently into the room; but Annie moved upon her pillow, and her blue eyes opened upon her father's face.

'Father,' she said (for though Captain Bakewell had been with her many days, he had never spoken to her of the separation that was drawing near), --' father, do you know that I am never going to get well again?'

'Yes, my darling,' he answered in a low voice.

'Father,' continued Annie, with a look of heavenly peace, 'the Lord Jesus is coming to take His little sister home.'

'Even so, come, Lord Jesus!' said Captain Bakewell, in a voice clear and steady; and Annie's face shone with a brighter glow.

'Oh, father,' she cried, 'you know how to make me feel happy. I was afraid you could not let me go. You will give me up to God!'

'Yes,' he answered; 'my little daughter has learned the last and hardest lesson; and there is no need for her to stay longer in this school. She has learned to love the will of God as the angels do, and I will not keep her back from her Father and her home in heaven.'

'Have you learned that lesson, father?' asked Annie.

'Almost!' he said, laying his grey head down upon her pillow with a groan; and the child stroked his furrowed face with her wasted hand.

'When I am gone,' she whispered, 'it will not be almost, but altogether, father.'

They were so still for a time that every sound of the waking farmstead could be heard in the chamber: the bleating of the lambs, and the lowing of the oxen, and the neighing of the hill ponies as they looked over the hedge into the rich pasturage of the meadow. It seemed almost as if they were back again in their own little log-house on the shores of Lake Huron, where Elinor Bakewell had died; and their thoughts flew like lightning across the wide ocean to the home Annie would never see again.

'Ben will go back with you some time,' murmured Annie, 'and you will read our motto over the fireplace. Father, some day, perhaps, there'll be a school there, and a church, as my mother used to wish there were. Then it will be the best place in all the world; and you'll be happier there than anywhere else. I should like there to be a school in Botfield, and another just like it at home; and for Gilbert to teach here, and Ben there; so every Sunday it would seem as if they were close together, instead of a long, long way apart.'

Annie stopped to rest a little while, and her shining eyes fell upon the listening faces of her auntie and Miss Reynolds.

'I must make my will,' she said, smiling softly, 'like grown-up people do. Ben must have my Bible, and the writing-desk my father bought me in New York; and Gilbert all my other books, and Dora my work-box, arid Daisy the tiny silver thimble I had when I was a very little girl. And do you think Stephen would like a little curl of my hair? for I have nothing else to give him!And, oh, auntie, there are three poor girls in my school about as big as I am, and the clothes I brought from home are not fine enough for Dora or Daisy, and I think my mother would like them to be given to those poor girls. I've a good deal of money, for my father gave me five dollars before I came to England, and Miss Reynolds gave me a gold half-sovereign one day, and I saved them up towards building a school here and in America -- a little school that would not cost much: they are in the top of my writing-desk.'

'The schools shall be built, Annie,' said Miss Reynolds.

'You must give my love to everybody,' she continued, after a long rest. 'The men will come back to Botfield soon, and you must tell them that it is God's will that everybody should believe in Jesus Christ our Saviour, and try to be like Him in this world. He wants us all to be His sons and daughters. I wish everybody knew that. I should like them all to know that I love them, just as the Lord Jesus loves them; and I shall be glad -- oh, so glad! -- to meet them in heaven. Stephen will know better than I do what to say; but you must let every one of them hear it.'

All the time the grey light had been growing brighter, with a solemn, searching brightness, from which nothing could escape; and now the kingly sun appeared above the peak of Helmeth, up whose slopes a thin mist was rolling, like the smoke of the morning incense, and fading slowly away into the cloudless sky. Very soon all the furrows on the mountain-side were clear, and the one little dimple where the last white speck of snow had lingered lay in the sunshine green and mossy, as though the winter had never laid its cold finger upon it. Annie turned her feeble head upon the pillow, and looked across the valley to the hills; and the smile deepened upon her face as she saw that the last snow was gone.

'Father,' she whispered, 'let them all come -- Ben and Gilbert and Dora. And tell Stephen I want him to be with me.'

They came in softly, with faces that were sorrowful but calm; for they had watched beside Annie and seen her happiness so long that they had ceased to tremble and lament at the thought that she must die. Annie looked round from face to face with an eager, searching glance, and clasped her faded hands together as if in earnest prayer.

'You may all be brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus,' she said, in a low but clear tone, which seemed to sink into their hearts as if they would hear its echo there for ever. 'I don't know anything else I want to say, except "Good-bye." Stephen, I think I see the angel again who walked beside me in the snow: you told me not to look at him.'

'Ay, but look at him now, my little lamb!' cried Stephen; 'he'll lead thee safe through the dark valley; he'll carry the lambs in his bosom.'

'I shall see his face soon,' she said, speaking very slowly; 'the cloud is melting away like the snow. I'm only falling to sleep, father.'

She lay motionless for a few minutes, her face growing brighter and brighter like the glow upon the hills just before the sun goes down; and none of them sobbed or wept, but they stood gazing fondly at her, as if they were standing to watch her start upon some happy journey.

'The little sister of the Lord Jesus!' she murmured at last, every word falling distinctly, but separately, from her smiling lips. There was not a stir or whisper in the room; but from without came all the homely, familiar sounds of the awakened world. Presently the voice of Stephen, steady but very mournful, broke the silence as he said these words:

'This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.'

It was late in the autumn of the same year, after the corn harvest was over, and the trees were wearing their brown and crimson tints just before the leaves fell, that there was a great gathering in Botfield of all the people belonging to the works, with the many families scattered far and wide upon the hills. It had been an abundant harvest, and the bilberry season had been a good one; and the fresh seam of coal gave certain promise of supplying the men and boys with plenty of work for many years to come. The men were wearing their Sunday clothes, with large nosegays of autumn flowers in their button-boles, and the women had on new-looking gowns and bonnets which had been bought and made only a short time ago; while the children, rosy and plump, were dressed from head to foot in good and comfortable clothing. All the village had a festive look, and in two or three places an arch of evergreens and flowers was erected across the road, the largest of which was at the end of Botfield nearest to All Cloverley; and at that point the greatest number of people were gathered together, and from time to time were looking up the road as if in expectation of some arrival.

At length there was a shout raised by the crowd which was heard throughout all Botfield, and everybody rushed out of their cottages into the road to swell the throng. There were Ben and Gilbert and Dora on their ponies, riding before an open carriage which contained Captain Bakewell and Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow and Miss Reynolds. All of them were still dressed in deep mourning for the child whom they had lost; but though their faces were grave at times they were not sorrowful, and even Captain Bakewell smiled as the men crowded round the carriage to shake hands with him, for he had learned to know all Annie's friends during the summer months. It was of no use trying to keep order, or to form themselves into a regular procession, as some of them had talked of doing before the party from All Cloverley arrived. The people of Botfield were too much excited; they were too glad and too sorry to stand upon much ceremony. Many of the women cried heartily and sobbed, 'Poor little dear! how glad she'll be up in heaven to see this day!' The men who had been used to go to Annie's school in the old machine-house wiped their tears away with the cuffs of their Sunday coats. But in a few minutes all were smiling again, and bidding Mr. Ludlow welcome home; for he was only just returned from the Holy Land with his beautiful paintings, and part of this demonstration was for him. So all in a crowd, with slow and disordered progress, they passed along through the decorated village to the door of the old machine-house, where the carriage was stopped, and Mr. Ludlow stood upon the seat to speak to his assembled workpeople.

'My men,' he said, 'it is not my place to say many words to you; for you know I have been away from home, and all the events of this last year have only been made known to me by letter. But we meet together to-day to open a schoolhouse in Botfield which your kind friend Miss Reynolds has built at her own cost for you and your children. It is to be called "Annie Bakewell's School," in memory of that beloved child whom God sent to live amongst us for a little while; and Miss Reynolds has endowed it so that for ever there shall be a salary for a good teacher, and also a certain sum of money to clothe and educate six girls, who shall be known as "Annie Bakewell's Scholars." But this is not all that our neighbour is going to do for the love of our lost child. When Captain Bakewell returns to America, he is to take with him sufficient funds to build a school similar to the one at Botfield upon the shores of Lake Huron, near to Annie's home. Your good friend does not wish for our praises; but nothing will please her better than for me to tell you that the example of that little child has been the means of bringing both her and me to the knowledge of what is meant by doing God's will on earth; and by the help of His Spirit we intend to do it for the rest of our lives here. And now Stephen Fern has a message to give you from Annie herself.'

Stephen Fern stood in the doorway of the old machine-house, holding his little boy in his arms, and gazing upon the scene before him with an expression of unmixed satisfaction; but when Mr. Ludlow beckoned to him to speak, his brown face darkened with a flush of red, and at the first moment he shook his head, as if it could not be in his power to deliver Annie's message to the people of Botfield. But they were all looking eagerly and intently upon him, and Stephen took off his hat and stood before them bareheaded, while an earnest solemnity deepened upon his face which hushed them into complete silence.

'Mates,' he said, 'I thank God I see you all home again in Botfield, and likely to prosper in your work. We've had a time of sore trial, but the Lord in heaven has brought us safe through it; but I'm not going to speak to you of myself or yourselves, save as we're all concerned in Miss Annie's message. I shall never, never see the snow again without thinking of my little lamb wandering alone upon the hillside.'

Stephen's voice faltered, and he bent his face for a moment upon his child's curly head, while all through the crowd there ran a heavy sob, which was subdued and checked as he looked up again with a bright light glistening in his tearful eye.

'Yet she wasn't alone,' he said; 'the Lord was with her, bearing her up in His hands. It's not an ill thing to go anywhere with the Lord of heaven for our company. Every one of us may have His presence with us, ay, down in the pit as well as in the fields. But when Miss Annie was dying, on Easter Sunday, at Fern's Hollow, she sent this message to every one of you; every man, and woman, and child among you: "You must give my love to them," she said, "and tell them that I love them just as the Lord .Jesus loves them; and I shall be glad -- oh, so glad ! -- to meet them all in heaven!"'

'The Lord Almighty bring us to that blessed place!' cried a voice in the crowd; and Stephen looked round, and saw Tim Cole's face amongst them, with the tears rolling down his cheeks.

'Tim,' he said, 'thee and me started on that journey many years ago; but, mates, we were growing idle by the way, and it seemed enough to us to cry, "Lord, Lord!" without striving and persevering to do the will of God; and so He sent this little child to be a pattern to us.

But I've not told you all the message yet. "Tell them," said Miss Annie, "that it is God's will that every one of them should believe in Jesus Christ our Saviour, and try to be like Him in this world; and God's will can never be done on earth as it is done in heaven until they all believe in Jesus. He wants us all to be His sons and daughters," said Miss Annie; and oh! what a good thing that would be for Botfield! If, as I went through the village, every face I saw was the face of God's child, and every work done in every home was done according to His will! And it might be. The heavenly Father will teach you, and bear with all your mistakes, and love you in spite of them all, just as I shall do with this little lad of mine; only His love will be the love of God, and mine is nought but the love of a simple and weak man. Oh, my mates! it seems at times as if heaven itself would be lonesome if I do not see your faces there. Let every one of us say this prayer in our very hearts: "Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God: Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness."'

Stephen's words were ended; but every one was silent for a minute, as they are after the benediction is spoken at the close of a prayer. Then there was a movement through all the crowd, and they thronged about him, the men shaking his hand in their rough, hearty grasp, and the women kissing the baby, who was laughing and crowing in his arms. It was the moving on of the carriage that at last drew them away from Stephen's side, to follow it in a glad but straggling procession. A little farther along the lane they entered a croft, in the middle of which stood the new schoolhouse, a pretty high-roofed building, with large casements of small lattice panes, looking out towards the beautiful hills of Cloverley. There was an open and spacious porch at the entrance, with seats on each side, where, in the summer evening, the cottagers could sit in comfort after their day's toil was over, while their children worked at the little plots of gardens which were laid out all round the schoolhouse; and under the gable of the porch there had been built into the wall a tablet of pure white marble, like driven snow, and upon it there were engraved, in deep, plain letters, which the least learned man and woman amongst them could read, these words:

ANNIE BAKEWELL'S SCHOOL.
LO, I COME;
I DELIGHT TO DO THY WILL
O MY GOD!

There was a pause at the school gates, while a hundred voices were heard to repeat, in low and broken tones, the inscription upon the tablet. Miss Reynolds, with Dora at her side, walked first along the path to the entrance within the porch; and, having turned the key in the lock, she threw open the door, and stood back for Dora and Gilbert and Ben to be the first to enter Annie's school. In a few minutes all the villagers, holding their children by the hand, had crowded inside, and gazed in almost speechless admiration at the pretty schoolroom, with its pointed roof of dark oak, and painted walls, and pavement of coloured tiles. The seats were low and comfortable for the little people who were to sit upon them, and through the windows could be seen the peak of Helmeth, with the lower hills surrounding it; and on the other side of the valley the pleasant homestead of Fern's Hollow, high up on the mountain-side, with its coppice of fir thee standing thick and close behind it. Upon the walls were hung several pictures which Dora had been busily painting, not for sale, nor to gain fame and praise, but for the memory of Annie, and to beautify her schoolhouse, There was a copy of Annie's favourite picture of the faces of angel-children, which had been used to hang in the little parlour of the loghouse on the shores of Lake Huron; and everybody whispered one to another that the lovely face looking upward was that of Annie herself; and all along the end of the room, opposite to the porch door by which the scholars would enter, so that they could not fail to see it every time they came into Annie Bakewell's School, Dora had painted this verse, in letters of scarlet, and purple, and blue: 'WHOSOEVER SHALL DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN, THE SAME IS MY BROTHER, AND SISTER, AND MOTHER.'