Bede's charity

It seems a strange thing for me to tell the history of my life, for I am a person of no consequence at all, a poor farmer's daughter, and an unlearned woman, having only learnt one lesson well, and even that not well enough - that all things do most surely work together for good for any one, however poor and unlearned, who loves God.

The old house at home was fully one hundred and seventy miles from London, hard upon the borders of Wales, and there never was a waft of city smoke in the sweet fresh air. Even to go down to the nearest town, which was three miles away, you had to go through green woods and coppices of dark fir trees before you came in sight and sound of streets. My father, and his father, and his grandfather, had all lived on the same little farm---a farm of about two hundred acres of rather barren land, but with a right to keep sheep on the common, which stretched away to the foot of a solitary hill, rising straight up from the level land; almost a mountain, people said, and so, solitary and alone that it looked higher than it was, maybe. Sometimes when the clouds rested on the brow of the hill of a morning, quite hiding it from our eyes, I used to fancy that perhaps the angels were there behind the white veil of mist; or it made me think of Abraham going up the mount to offer up his son to God; and I wondered if he and his son and the altar were not all hidden from the sight of the young men who were staying down in the plain afar off. When the clouds hung there hour after hour thick and bleak, gathering all the darkness in the sky to themselves, I remembered the darkness covering the Mount Calvary, that the people in Jerusalem could not see the cross standing out against the sky. So the hill, solitary, and sometimes mournful in the gloom, sometimes glad in the sunshine, became one of my dearest friends.

I remember the house so distinctly! It looked old and grey, and seemed as if it were dressed in homemade country clothes, like my father, who always looked so different to the townsfolk when I went with him three or four times a year to market. The windows were small, and had little diamond panes in them, except that here and there, in the dairy and other places, there was lattice-work only, to give light and air within. The roof was pitched high, and thick tufts of yellow stonecrop gave it a curious colour in the sunlight. Strong tendrils of ivy crept in and out about the great timber beams, and climbed up into the gables, where there were scores upon scores of swallows' nests under the eaves, with young birdies twittering, and the old ones chattering and shrieking all the summer day. We seldom used any other door but the kitchen door, which opened straight into the fold, with the cow-sheds opposite, where morning and evening I milked my three cows, while the dairymaid milked her four. They were beautiful, patient, fond creatures, whose sweet breath filled all our rooms with the scent of it as they sauntered slowly along under the windows on their way in and out of the sheds. We had another door, which opened directly into the parlour out of the front garden; but that was seldom unlocked and unbolted, except when Stephen was at home for the holidays.

And the gardens! Even now, though it is thirty years since I saw them, I have only to shut my eyes, and they are there before me, just as they will be for ever in my memory, even when I am in the garden of God! There is the deep, winding lane, with high hedgerows on each side, running down towards Condover, where the church is. And I see the straight, narrow walk, edged with box, coming up from the wicket to the parlour door, with its little trellis porch covered over with honeysuckle, and with rosemary and lavender pushing their sweet flowers through the green laths. At every corner of the square grass-plot stood a dark, sombre, ancient yew. tree, trimmed, and cut, and trained into likenesses of the trees children have in their Noah's Arks. Ugly, some people, called them, but they never seemed ugly to me; and in the autumn, when the coral-red berries grew upon them, strung like beads on the dark green twigs, they looked as beautiful and as solemn as the holly and ivy looked at Christmas in the old church down at Condover.

But that was the front garden; the great house garden was behind, with the dog's kennel close to the gate, and the poultry shed opposite, where my hens and chickens were locked up at nights for fear of the foxes. There was a broad alley of grass running from end to end, with pleached fruit-trees on each side of it, and a narrow border of flower-bed, where grew all the old-fashioned flowers almost forgotten now. There were tall spikes of fraxinella, which I used, to press gently through my fingers to make them yield their sweetness as my cows yielded their milk, and great red roses, scattering their leaves upon the grass, and blue lupins and Jacob's ladders, with bees ascending and descending on them incessantly, and yellow and purple flags, and tall evening primroses, and white lilies, almost losing themselves among the lower branches of the apple trees. In one corner there stood an arbour, once for pleasure only, but now with rows of beehives on the benches, all but one single seat at the entry.

That was my favourite place for resting in the cool of the evening when the day's labour was ended, and the sun was sinking down behind the hill, making all the pointed tops of the pine trees on the brow of it stand out very clear against the golden light. It was so still up there that I could hear the low, quiet, strange tap-tapping which one can always hear going on within a beehive; and the sound of the wind rustling through the fields of bearded barley came across the garden like a sigh. Stephen said it was like the sound of the distant sea heard through deep silence. I used to feel as quiet and solemn there as when I sat in my old corner in the church at Condover, and heard the deep, thundering music of the organ, which made me tremble all through me. Those were happy days; and, as I said before, I feel as if I should remember my own garden even in the blessed paradise of God; and when I am walking there I can fancy that, maybe, the Lord will say to me, because He knows I remember it so well, "Margery, I was with thee there also; but blessed are they who did not see Me, yet believed."

There were no more than two great changes in my life during all the time I dwelt in the old farmhouse; I should have said three, and the third was the sorest. First, there was my father's second marriage, with his cousin, when I was ten years of age, having never known my own mother. The second change was my second mother's death, twelve years after, when she left Stephen to my care, bidding me ever set his interest and welfare above and before my own. I always did so; God is my witness. When I might have married and gone to a house of my own, my father would look grieved and sad at me and Stevie clung to me, begging me to stay at home for his sake.

So I let the chances pass one after another---for I had chance still all the country-side knew that I had resolved to keep single for my father's and Stephen's sake.

I said the third change was the sorest. When I think about the garden at home, it is always as it looked the night before Stephen went away. He was going to Australia. I scarcely knew how it had come about; but he had grown quite into a gentleman, with no turn at all for the poor, homely life we were living. I had persuaded father to send him to a grand boarding-school ten miles away, because he was clever and quick at his books; and now that he was over sixteen he could not come back to us, our common, rough ways, and the hard work on the farm. He was like a restless young bird whose wings were grown; you could not keep him in the narrow nest. And now he was going to spread his wings, and soar away very far out of my sight.

I was thinking it all over sadly enough, in my favourite place at the entry of the bee arbour, with my hands lying idly on my lap, when I saw Stevie strolling up through the long green alley, with the setting sun blinding his eyes, so that he did not see me. How handsome he was, with just the look of a real gentleman's son about him! I could not help being proud of his fine upright bearing, so different to the awkward, slouching walk of our country folk. I called to him very fondly and sadly, "Stevie! Stevie!"

He stood still for a moment to listen where the call came from; but he was forced to shade his eyes with his hand before he saw me. Then he came quickly, and threw himself on the grass at my feet, and laid his head on my lap. He did not often like to be petted, but he was going away so soon!

"Maggie," he said, "what do you want?"

"Stevie," I answered him, my voice sounding very low and sad in my own ears, "you'll be gone to-morrow, and I can't think whatever I shall do without you."

"Oh, you'll get along very well," he said; "there's father and the farm; you'll have enough to see after. Besides, you will have to write to me about everything, and you're not used to writing, so that will take a deal of your time. I want to know everything, you mind; how things go on, and how the farm pays. It ought to pay, Maggie, and I want it to pay. I want to be a rich man. It is of no use whatever to know all I know if I cannot be rich. That is why I am going to Australia. I intend to be rich; and what I intend to do I always succeed in."

"Stevie!" I said, meaning to tell him there were better things than money, but he stopped me.

"There now, Margery, I know exactly what you are going to say, but it won't make any difference. I must be a rich man. And, Maggie, dear, now I am going away I mean to spell my name different. It ought to be Bede, not Beade, with an 'a' in it. I should have done it at school, only the other fellows would have made fun. You'll direct my letters to Stephen Bede, Esq., won't you, dear old Maggie?

"You're talkin' nonsense, Stevie," I said, half laughing at his earnestness.

"No," he answered, coaxingly; "I'm quite in earnest. It is such a little thing to promise; and I'm sure it ought to be Bede. There's a dear, good, kind Maggie, please to promise."

"I'll think about it," I said, smiling no longer.

"Then," he went on, "there's another thing or two I want you to do. You have such a pleasant voice---pleasanter than any voice I ever heard, but you spoil the words so. You never put the g's to the end of them, and you never use any h's at all. Oh, Maggie! I wish you would only learn to speak properly, and not do a lot of little things which no ladies do. You are not like common farm-house people, not at all, my Maggie; but you are not like the ladies I know. And oh! when I come back a rich man, I should want you to be like them, and know how to talk, and walk, and sit down, and stand up like a real lady."

I sat silent for some minutes. Stevie was ashamed of me already! I knew very well I was not a lady, nothing but a homely country-woman; but I knew that I never could be one. Once, while the old rector was alive, his lady came to see us at the farm, and I thought of how she had stepped on tiptoe along the fold, and held her dress close to her, and chirped and chattered with a shrill voice, shriller than the swallows; and I felt sure I could never be like that. Everything seemed spoiled all at once; the light dying away behind the hill, the glimmering of the white lilies in the dusk, and the drowsy twitter of the birds falling asleep in their nests. It was the same as if we had been walking down a street with shop-windows on each side. I felt very grieved and troubled; yet I had something to say to Stephen; and there might be no other chance.

"Stevie," I said at last, stroking the boy's curly hair, "never mind about me not being a lady; but hearken to me. Very early this mornin', before the maids were stirrin', I woke, feelin' very heavy-hearted. I'd been dreamin' of you that you were a little baby again; and as soon as I awoke the thought came over me as you'd soon be gone away from me, almost as much as if you were dead. And I got up, and opened the window, and the sun was just risin' behind the fir coppice, and all the little birds of the air were singin', singin' as if their hearts were as light as mine was heavy. And underneath my window among the ivy leaves there was an empty nest, quite empty, only one little white feather lyin' in it, as if it had been left behind by the last little bird as it flew away. And I thought it would be like the house when Stevie was gone, with here and there a thing or two of his left behind; and, as for me, I'd know no more where you were gone than I knew where the linnets had flown to. So I was turnin' away very sad when I saw my Bible lyin' on the sill, and I opened it by chance to see what verse my eye would light upon. And the verse was this, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right band shall hold me." That verse was for you, Stevie. You are goin' to the uttermost parts of the sea, but His hand shall lead you, and His right hand shall hold you. I was very much comforted; and you will remember it, my boy, promise me you will remember it."

I felt Stephen draw down my hand to his face, and kiss it; but he did not speak; and we sat together in deep silence, till we heard father calling loudly, "Margery! Stephen! come in to supper!"

I called back to father that we were coming, and then we lingered down the grassy walk, loth to leave the garden and go into the house. The colour in the sky over the sunset was a clear pure green, like the rainbow round about the throne; and the tall white lilies shone as if they gave light in the dusk. A belated bee or two flew past our ears with a deep busy hum, as if they must needs make a noise in the darkness; and in the fir coppice a wild wood-pigeon was Cooing to the stillness which was growing every minute. I stood quiet for a little while, pressing my hands upon my aching heart; but Stephen marched on, not seeing that I had fallen behind. He was too busy with the day that was coming when the sun rose again.

I stopped again to pat Nero's head, and see if his supper was all right, and then I went round by the fold, Stephen having gone in through the front door the cattle were being let out for the night, and each of them came lowing past me, as if waiting for me to call them by name. My father stood in the doorway of the barn, and I seemed to see him more distinctly than ever before; an old man with white hair and a ruddy face, dressed in a farmer's coarse homespun suit, with grey stockings of my own knitting, and thick, hobnailed shoes. A good farmer, and a good old man, I said to myself, but not a gentleman, Stevie! He was locking up the doors all round the fold, and when he had finished we went in to supper.

It was a very homely life we led in those days when father was alive, who liked to keep to all the old customs of his father. We never used the parlour but on Sunday afternoons; the rest of the week we all sat together, father and me, and the men-servants and the maids. Father sat in his own chair within the cheek of the chimney-corner; and I sat opposite to him in my mother's rocking-chair, and with a little round table beside me, whereon stood the single candle, which we reckoned to give light enough for all. Below me sat the dairy-maid; and below father sat the waggoner, and so according to their places, till the lowest servants, lad and lass, were together; and often I had to call them quietly to order. But when Stephen was at home he sat on my father's other hand, away from the men, and had a candle to himself that he might go on with his lessons. At nine o'clock I read a psalm and a prayer; and then all the rest went to bed, often leaving Stephen and me stooping over the fire, and talking late on into the night.

That night there was a kind of stir among us all, instead of the usual sleepiness. Stephen was going away in the morning; and there was a strange venturesomeness in such a boy daring to start off alone for so far-off a country as Australia, which nobody knew, and where we had no friends. None of us had ever been much beyond Condover parish, or down to the fair iii the nearest town; and everybody felt roused up and excited. Stephen himself looked the calmest, though his face was flushed a little, and his dark eyes glittered; but he took up a book as usual, and seemed about to forget us all in his reading.

"Put it away, Stephen," said father, laying his hard, brown hand on the open page; "it's the last night thou'lt be at home in the old house, lad; and I want to hear the sound o' thy voice to-night. Thou'rt a good lad, a very good lad; but a trifle too fine to be ground in our mill. Who'd ever have thought such a fine lad 'ud come o' the old stock?"

He spoke as if he was half proud and half regretful. I knew he was just as proud of Stephen, ay, and as uneasy about him as my little white hen was of her one duckling, when it would take to the water, in spite of all her cluck-clucking.

"He's a fine lad, and a grand scholard," said Jerry, the old waggoner, sitting next my father, and his voice sounded very thick and muffled; "he'll beat 'em all out yonder in Australy, he will, mester."

"Ay, ay!" answered father, "I don't fear he'll make his way, with all the learnin' he's got in his head. It's an old head on young shoulders, Jerry. But I'd rather he'd ha' stayed a little nigher home. There's London! If he'd only chose, he might ha' gone to his Uncle Simister, who has a shop there. They tell me London's the finest place in the whole world; and Uncle Simister's had a shop this forty year. He'd ha' been main glad of a fine young lad like Stevie to sell his watches and clocks to the grand folk. He wrote once, offerin' to take one of my children, thinkin' I'd a whole brood of 'em. That were a good openin' for Stephen."

I saw Stevie smiling quietly to himself, as much as to say he would never have been content, selling watches and clocks.

"I mean to do better in Australia, father," he said. "You'll see I shall come back a rich man, rich enough to buy up Uncle Simister. If his business had been as good as you think, he'd have made his fortune, and retired from it before now. A man doesn't go on slaving year after year after his fortune is made."

"He's a fine lad, and a grand scholard," said Jerry, looking with his dull, dim eyes into Stephen's face.

"Maybe thou'rt right, Stephen," said father; "maybe thou'rt right. It's thy own choice, any way; but it's costin' a sight o' money. If it hadn't been for Margery there, who's promised to take to all the dairy-work herself---and it's heavy work for a woman, heavier than thee ever put thy hand to, my boy; what with turnin' the cheese every day, and rubbin' it, and ironin' it, besides the makin' of it, it's heavy work I tell thee---if it hadn't been for Margery, I say, thou'dst never have won me over to say ay, and put down nigh upon a hunderd pound to back it. It's Margery's doin', whether it turn out ill or well."

"Why shouldn't it turn out well, father?" I asked, feeling very low.

"I don't say it won't, my lass," he answered; "thou'rt doin' it for the best, I know. It were thee sent him to boardin'-school, and made a gentleman of him; goin' in plain clothes thyself, all along, with ne'er a bit o' ribbon, or a flower, or a trinket, like other lasses. It's all thy own doin'; he's pretty nigh as much thy lad as mine If he comes back a rich man he must pay thee, for nobody else can."

"I don't look to be paid," I said, for I did not like to sear of payment horn anybody for love, unless it were love back again, and then that brings everything else with it. And sure Stephen would always love me! My heart was aching sore that night, though he was sitting then opposite me in the chimney-nook; but there were not many hours till to-morrow morning.

"I'll pay her!" ; he cried, eagerly; "she shall have silk dresses, and the best watch in Uncle Simister's shop, and servants to wait on her, and a carriage to ride in. Why, I mean to have Margery to live with me in London, if she'll only do two or three things she knows of. Even if I am married I shall have her to live with us, and take care of the house, and see after the children. That is one reason why I am going to Australia: I must be a rich man to pay Margery."

"I shouldn't wonder if thee gets a thousand pound," said Jerry, speaking slowly but loudly; for it was an immense sum to him, who had never had more than ten shillings a week wages, when he lived out of the house with his wife and children, and found himself.

"A thousand pounds!" ; echoed Stephen, with contempt; "why, I shall want a hundred thousand to do all I mean to do. You don't know what you are talking about, Jerry. There are farmers in Australia who went out as poor as me, and now they have as many as five hundred thousand sheep of their own. Try to think of five hundred thousand sheep, Jerry."

Jerry dropped his head upon his breast and shut his eyes. Even I could not think of five hundred thousand sheep. Father had never had more than a hundred and fifty, except one good lambing season, which Jerry had never forgotten, both for the extra labour and the glory of it, when the number of the flock rose to nearly two hundred. All the other servants were listening with open eyes, but they could not think of such a number. Stephen might just as well have said five hundred millions.

"How'll they all get washed and sheared?" asked one of them. The sheep-washing was just over, and his voice was very hoarse from a cold he had caught standing up to his middle in the sheep-pond. The shearing was coming on in a day or two, and no wonder that he thought of how they would ever get through washing and shearing five hundred thousand sheep. Stephen did not seem to hear the question, for he said nothing.

"Well, well," said father, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "washin' here or washin' there, it's all Margery's doin'. So keep that in thy mind, my son. It's little I shall have to leave her or thee. Times are hard and the land barren, and thou has been a heavy drain upon me, Stephen. Thou has never done a day's work for thy bread yet; but I don't grudge it, lad. If thou gets as much money as thou says out yonder, my money 'ill be well laid out on thee. So now, Margery, let's have prayer, for it's gettin' late, and we've a busy day before us to-morrow."

I could hardly bear that word "to-morrow"; but I knelt down, and, as soon as the scraping and shuffling of the chairs and feet upon the floor were ended, I read a psalm and a prayer. Stephen always stood, for he fancied that the quarries were never clean enough to kneel upon, and truly his clothes were always so much better than ours. But that last night he knelt down like all the rest of us. It was hard for me to keep back my tears and make my voice steady; and for a moment or two while I was silent the old clock by the stairs ticked very loudly. When we had prayer again to-morrow, Stephen would be far away from us, and how long would it be before he knelt with us again?

I scarcely knew how the time fled by the next morning. I was very busy up to the last moment, and then I felt Stephen's arms clasping me, and clinging to me, and his wet cheek pressed against mine. I saw him climb up to father's side in the gig, which was never used but on market-days, but now all the servants were gathered round it, and walked down with it, like a funeral train, along the stone causeway of the fold. I wondered that all the dumb creatures about the place should be barking, and lowing, and bleating, and cackling, just the same as if nothing at all was happening. Just a sight of him waving his cap to me I saw, all blurred and dim through my tears; and I heard the men shout good-bye and hurrah as they drove away down the lane. Then I went back into the dark, dark house.

It never seemed the same place to me again. The sun never shone so brightly of a morning, and the evenings , were long and dull. I was as busy as ever, nay, more busy, for, as soon as the dairymaid left, I took all her work upon myself. I had never done it before, and it was my own choice to do it now, that Stephen might have the chance he had set his heart upon. Father was a rough, hard-working man himself; but he had always been very tender of the women belonging to him, and could not bear to see them overburdened or overcome with many cares. Neither my mother, nor Stephen, nor I myself, had been expected to take the heavy work there is in a farm-house. We might make up the pats of butter, or break the curd in the cheese-tub; but we had never had to turn the churn or carry the pails of milk into the dairy. I had had hard work to persuade him to let me undertake these things, and now that Stephen was gone he often spared one of the men to do the heaviest parts; whilst he himself held the plough or drove the waggon, making light of the weariness and stiffness he felt when he came to sit down at night.

Still my hands were very busy, though my heart was heavier than I could tell. Everything seemed gone with Stephen. I could know nothing of him, save the few lines he wrote from Liverpool, for many a long month to come. I knew nothing about his life on board ship; I had never seen a ship, no, nor the sea, and I could not form any satisfying idea of it in my own mind. Sometimes, when my heart ached the sorest, I fancied, if I could only see the sea and the ship, which were carrying him so very far away from me, I could be more content. But I knew no more of it than of the life to come; nay, not so much, for surely I knew some little of that blessed place from my Bible.

Then I bethought me that I might study in Stephen's books, and so learn something of what he knew, and maybe get to speak and think and act like a lady, as he wished me. He had left a few books behind him, some in Latin and Greek, which were of no use to me, but others in beautiful English, very different from the common talk of us country folk. I think I learnt a little from them, and they helped to pass the time away; but I remained much the same as I had been before, a homely farmer's daughter, not at all fit company for grand people, like the rector and his lady.

I think father was happier, instead of sadder, after Stephen was gone. He often talked about him, but he never wished him back again. In some things men are so different from women. Perhaps I had not cared for him so much while Stephen was about; it is true that I had not thought of him so much, and now, though everything was very quiet and solemn about the old home, maybe he liked to see me watching for him to come in from his work, as I had never done before. Sometimes I read aloud to him, which I could not do whilst Stephen was learning his lessons; and often I walked with him round the fields of an evening, seeing how the crops were coming on, and how the cattle throve. I may as well say it here, that one of those who had asked me once to be his wife came again, for she whom he had married was dead, and he needed some one to look after his house and his motherless children. My heart yearned towards the little creatures, but it was not for long. I could never leave father, and so the last chance passed by for me ever to have a home of my own.

Yet, under all the solitariness and heartache, there was deep down a constant gladness, and a sense of not being left alone, which I am too ignorant to speak of fully. Many thoughts I had before Stephen went, solemn and glad thoughts, in the pew at church, and in the entry of the bee-arbour; and now they came to me oftener, till at times all my mind was full of them, as the hives were full of bees storing up cells of honey day after day against the winter. I do not know any words to tell of them, no more than I could make you see how the sun shone if you were blind, or hear how the birds sing if your ears were stopped. But those who can hear and see know these things without words.

There was no one to whom I could speak, to whom I should have liked to speak, of God, of our dear Lord Christ, and of heaven. No one seemed to think of such things; yet there were good folks down at Condover, who went to church pretty regularly, just as I did. But if the day was rainy, or father was loth to see me go, or there were cade [Left by its mother and reared by hand] lambs to see after, and only young servants to leave them to, I stayed at home, and read my Bible of a Sunday afternoon in the parlour. Towards the last father used to ask me to read out, and he would sit and listen with his hands upon his knees, and his white head giving a nod now and then when I came to a verse he remembered. Our old rector was dead, and another come in his place, who was set upon farming, and liked nothing so much as talking about crops and cattle; and the curate was a very aged man, too old to come out as far as our farm, but he was a very good and holy man, and maybe I might have talked with him had I ever seen him. But there we were, a long way from our church and clergymen; only those thoughts, which I cannot tell, made me feel as if God was never far away from any one of us.

At length we heard from Stephen---nearly ten months after he had left us, for in those times it took longer to go to Australia than it does now. I have all his letters still, and could copy them word for word, but no one wishes me to do that---though I read them over and over again, and never read anything so good and clever in the best book he left behind him. The last sheet of his letter I will give you.

That was very kind of Stephen; yet he little thought how useless silk gowns would be to me, and how I would rather have one smile or a kiss from him than the finest silk gown ever made. There was what he called a P.S. to his letter.

I kept this letter between the leaves of my Bible, where there was a flower or two which Stephen had pressed between them when he was a child; they had been there ever since; and now and then, as I looked at them in church, the tears would gather under my eyelids, and I did not like to wipe them away, lest the neighbours should wonder whatever Margery Beade could be crying for.

So the years went on, bringing seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, according to the promise of God. The years seemed very much the same, with little change in them, save that father grew older; and I also, I suppose, though I did not know or feel it. I had entered into a quiet and peaceful time. All the house seemed quieter than of old. The old servants remained about us, and my maids did not seem to wish for change, but stayed on year after year, doing their work orderly and well. There were no holidays now, with Stephen coming home and going about the farmstead with the look and the step of a gentleman.

We had letters from him about twice a year; those were our events. He was getting on steadily in the far-off country, dwelling still with Mr. Garnett, the lawyer, who seemingly had adopted him for a son. The country was so very far off that I never thought the letters came too seldom; for it was surely a marvellous thing that they could come at all in safety over so many thousands of miles. The postman, who so rarely turned in at our foldgate---except at Christmas to ask for a Christmas-box---brought these precious letters, and I used to watch for him, when I had written an answer, at the garden-wicket, looking down the lane to Condover, and saw him put it into his pouch, and carry it away. I did not know in what manner, or by what means, it would reach Stephen.

But at length, though the harvest came, it was but scanty. Our land lay high, and the soil was barren; and if the harvest was late, and the winter came on quickly, our corn was sometimes not garnered before the autumn frosts grew keen. I remember one harvest, after there had been much rain, and after that a sharp frost, we had to kindle fires in the corn-fields, both to light us at our work and to do something towards keeping away the sharp cold. I even see father still at the head of his team, leading them from sheaf to sheaf, with the red light of the bonfires shining on his white head and anxious face, and on the scanty load of corn, all glistening with hoar-frost. Three harvests running were bad, and the stock did not prosper. We lost our calves and our lambs; and hard work it was to make up the rent twice a year. Father was an aged man, and his spirit quite broke down under these trials.

"Margery," he said one evening, while the men were foddering the cattle for the night, and we were sitting alone in our chimney-corners, "hast thee ever thought what we'd do if we had to leave the old place? I were born here, and married thy mother here, and nursed thee on my knee in this place. It 'ud break my heart to leave it, and have to sit in any other chimney-nook."

I saw his mouth quivering and his hand shaking as he tried to kindle his pipe at the embers in the grate, and my heart was very sore for him.

"If it be the will of God, it must be good," I said.

"But it canna' be the will o' God," he answered, fretfully, like a little child that wants comforting on his mother's lap; "the Almighty canna' ha' got any grudge agen me, as He wonna' leave me a-be to die in the old place. I say, Margery, the Almighty hasna' any ill-will agen me."

"No, father, no," I said; "God Almighty is love. Whatever He does is very good. He has no grudge against any one of us."

"Then He'll let me a-be to die in my own bed," said father; "I'll take that as a sign as He has no ill-will agen me. But, Margery, did thee write to Stephen, and tell him how bad the harvests were, and the stock barren, and the grass-lands poor for the milch-kine?"

"Yes," I said, reluctantly. "I wrote after last harvest."

"And hasna' there been time for him to write agen?" asked father; "he might send back that hunderd pound I gave him. He's been getting on rarely, he says, and he's hard upon three-and-twenty now, Margery; a young man, not a lad like he were when he went away. If it's as fine a country as he says, he could spare that hunderd pound back again, and that 'ud set us up again. I'd not be fearsome then of dyin' away from the old place. Dost think he'll send it? How soon will we hear, Margery?"

I did not want to answer, for father had set his heart upon Stephen being able to help us, and it seemed cruel to dash down his hope. But he said again, in a fretting voice, "How soon can we hear, Margery?"

"I have heard, father," I said; "Stephen's answer came this morning."

"And what does the lad say?" cried father, his voice trembling; "has he sent us any help?"

I drew the letter from my pocket, and laid it out on the table, under the light of the candle. It was not a very long letter this time, but it was beautifully written, not at all like my poor cramped handwriting, or father's, which nobody could read. I read it aloud slowly and distinctly.

"A fine letter; a very fine letter," said father, as I folded it up again; "he's quite a scholar, is Stephen."

He always liked listening to Stephen's letters, and would hear them over and over again. But I did not want to read that letter any more to-night. There was something in it that made me feel chilly, as if an easterly wind was blowing somewhere through a little chink. I could not say exactly what it was; for it was only reasonable of Stephen to hesitate about sending us the money; and I had not positively asked for it. But it was just that feeling of chilliness creeping through me whenever I read the words that made me not wish to go through it again that night.

"That's a good thought about your Uncle Simister," said father, after thinking it over quietly, "but I hanna' heard a word from him these twenty years. I were never a good hand at letters, like Stevie. But I donna' like what Stevie says about us all bein' old and worn out. The buildin' is old; there's the barn with hole after hole in the roof, and the sheds are fallin' bit by bit. But, bless you, my lass, Jerry and me are as sharp as ever we were; quite sharp and peart. It's nothin' but poor harvest and barren stock as has brought us so low. Stephen's only a young lad yet. But for that about Jerry and me it's a fine letter, Margery; and it's all thy own doin', my lass."

Father sat chuckling over the letter almost like a child. He looked very grey and ashen-coloured in the dim light, and his voice quivered, as well as his laughter, as he went on glorying in Stevie's fine letter; whilst I pondered over it, always with a growing sense of chilliness.

For three weeks longer father went on with his daily work. It was November now, and the fogs were thick of a morning, but out he started at dawn, he and Jerry, tottering about the fields in the damp and cold. I had never noticed before Stephen's letter came how very old they both were; for they had grown grey and bent so gradually that it was like night coming on, it is dark almost before you know that the sun has set. Father had been going down the hill so long that I had not thought how near he must be to the valley; and it seemed to me that he had fallen suddenly into it when, all at once, he gave up his work, and lay down in his old bed, with faded green serge hangings, where his father had died before him. That was three weeks after Stephen's letter reached me, and before I had answered it, telling him how bad things were with us. It was a slack time on the farm and in the dairy, so I could watch beside father, never quitting him day and night.

"Margery," he said to me the last evening that ever he lived in this world, as I sat on the low rocking-chair, which had been carried up from the chimney-corner in the kitchen, with the little round table beside me, and a candle upon it, just as he had seen me sitting opposite to him every night since Stephen's mother died---"Margery, my lass, thee has had a hard life, I'm afeard."

"No, father," I answered, smiling at him, though tears were in my eyes; "it has been a good life, a happy life."

"Eh! but most lasses 'ud call it a hard life," murmured father; "never a bit o' pleasurin', and neither husband nor chick nor child. I'm fearsome as I've done ill by thee, never makin' thee welcome to go to a house o' thy own. Old folks are selfish, Maggie; they'd keep their lads and lasses about them till they die, and then they are like nestlin's without a nest. Stevie was a wise lad for hisself. What's goin' to be done with thee I canna tell."

"Never mind about me, father," I said.

"Margery," he said, after a while, his eyes shining very bright under his grey eyebrows, "the Almighty's gem' to leave me to die in my own bed. He's got no grudge agen me, thee sees?"

"Were you afraid of Him, father?" I asked. "Did you think He was goin' to be hard on you?"

"I thought maybe He's like landlord," answered father; "he'll turn me out when the time comes, however old I am. But He isn't goin' to turn me out. He knows I'd never turn away poor old Jerry; and isn't there somethin' in the Bible about bein' done by as we do to others?"

"He will never turn away them that go to Him," I said---"them that look to Jesus He will in no wise cast out,"

"That's how I come," he said, very solemnly---"through Him as was the Good Shepherd, and went after the poor lost sheep till He found it; and it stands to sense,

Margery, that the Almighty 'ud never drive out the sheep again from the fold after Jesus had all that pain and trouble to bring it back. No, no; He hasna' got any grudge agen us, not any one of us, has He?"

"Not one," I said; and I could say no more.

"If He'd let me be turned out of the old house, and die in a strange place," he went on, "I should ha' taken it as a sign He had ill-will agen me; but dunna thee take it as a sign o' ill-will, my poor lass. Thee'lt have to go, for certain; but thee wunna fret agen the Almighty?"

His voice was very troubled, and he looked, anxiously into my face. I knew that signs were nothing, and that if father had died in the workhouse, among paupers, God would have loved him all the same, and Jesus would have prepared a place for him quite as good and beautiful. He died upon a cross, with two thieves beside Him, and a crowd of people scoffing at Him. What death could be like His?

"I hope I'll never fret against God," I answered, looking him full in the face. "I'm not afraid of any-thin' He gives me to do or bear. Anythin' will be good enough for me; and there's nobody else for you to trouble about except Stephen; and you're not afraid for him, father?"

"No, no; not for Stephen," he said. "He's had his share, and he's a clever lad, God bless him! But thou'rt not clever, Margery, and there's nothin' left for thee, not a stick or a stone. I canna see what'll become of thee; but the Almighty knows."

"Yes; He knows," I answered very peacefully, for it did not disturb me at all, and I wanted to see father also at peace.

"But suppose He means thee to be very poor, and beg thy bread?" he said, uneasily.

"Father," I answered, "I can never be poorer than Him who said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." Sure, I need never be afraid of bein' worse off than Him."

"Ay, but I wouldna' like thee to be as poor as that," he said, groaning.

"No fear of it," I answered, cheerfully. "I'm strong and active; but if it even came to that, father, the servant shouldn't look to be better off than his Master, should he? don't be fearsome for me; there is Uncle Simister and Stephen to care for me. don't fret yourself for me, father."

There were not many more hours for him to fret about anything. Before the sun rose the next morning the grey change had come over his wrinkled face, and he spoke no more, only lay with his hand in mine, till that went cold, and fell out of my fingers. There was no one with us; but never had I felt so closely the presence of One who said before He went away, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you." He had come; and though my eyes could not see Him, I knew He was there, just as one knows in the dark night that home is all about us, and those we love close beside us, and that nothing but the light is needed for us to see it all. Upon father's eyes the morning was now breaking; and he would see Jesus standing on the shore, and he would know that it was Jesus.

Four months longer I had to stay in the old place, for the notice to quit served upon my father did not run out before Lady Day; and the new tenant would not be ready to enter before that time. I suppose I might have gone if I wished; but who then would keep order upon the farmstead, and superintend the usual winter's work both indoors and out? Besides, I was glad to stay, though the place seemed desolate indeed, now father was gone. But there were the old servants---Jerry and the rest of them; as long as I stopped I could find work for them, and I had money enough to pay their wages.

In looking over the old-fashioned desk in father's room I found his will, dated a few weeks after Stephen left us, in which ho made me sole executrix, and bequeathed to me all the goods he should possess at the time of his death. I had never looked into this desk before, for father had always kept it carefully locked; and I felt half afraid all the time lest I was doing something wrong, something to be ashamed of, if he came in, and found me turning over his papers. There I found my own mother's wedding-ring, with a lock of her hair, cut after she was dead; and an old clasped pocket Bible, and on the front leaf were written all the births and deaths in our family. The last entry was the entry of Stephen's departure, as if father had known that the separation would be as complete as death, so far as he was concerned. Some of my tears fell upon the page and stained it; but I left it for Stephen to enter father's death when he came back. It was a very small funeral; for we had no one of kin to us except Uncle Simister, and I never thought of asking him to come all the way from London for a funeral. There were two or three neighbours, who came up from Condover, and Jerry and I. We two walked home alone when all was over, across the fields where father had been thousands and thousands of times, till it seemed as if he must be there now, only the fog hid him from us. Then in the evening I sat quite alone in the parlour, for it was even a more solemn day than a Sunday; and I wrote to Stephen, telling him all that conversation I had with father the night before he died, and putting in a few words at the end, to say I had found father's will, and everything was left to me. I thought there was no need to trouble him now about the bad harvest, and the rent not being paid. There would be enough to pay all our debts when everything was sold at Lady Day.

There were very few letters in my father's desk; and among them I found the one Uncle Simister had written years ago, while my second mother was alive, and when I had no share in anything that was being done. I had heard it talked of many and many a time, but I had never read it before; for my father had never cared to see anybody open his desk. This was what was written within.

"Why," I thought to myself, "is this all the letter father thought and spoke so much of?" The date was many years back, and I knew it had never been answered. Uncle Simister might be dead; and, after all, it was only a man-child, as he called it, that he wished for. It seemed scarcely worth while for me to write him a letter, though perhaps I might by-and-by when there was a convenient season.

That convenient season never came; for writing was a great difficulty to me. You must not suppose that I am writing all this history of mine with my own hand. No; I am sitting in a pleasant chair in the sunshine, with my hands folded at rest upon my lap: and I have but to speak the words with my lips, and they are written down in a fair clear hand, such as I could never write. If Phoebe had been with me at the farm, a long letter would have gone to Uncle Simister; but, besides the difficulty, there seemed really no time for letter-writing. Though the farm was going into other hands, that did not keep the lambing season from coming on as usual. I was just as anxious and tender as ever over the young things brought in out of the piercing east wind. And I watched the slow sprouting of the green corn in the brown furrows, just as if I should see it ripen and be gathered into sheaves. I knew I should have to go away when Lady Day came; but if God brought the leaf-buds, and the snowdrops, and the building of nests, and the birth of young creatures before me, just as in other spring-times, why should I shut my eyes and heart sullenly against them?

But Lady Day came, with the sale of the stock, of my favourite cows and my hens, that all knew me so well they seemed to look for me to notice their calves and chickens; and every piece of the house-furniture, except an old sampler of mother's in a black frame, and a portrait of my father, cut out in black paper and pasted upon white. These the auctioneer put on one side, as not worth offering to the buyers. It was a stranger day than the day of father's funeral. There were the neighbours feeling at the feather-beds, and holding up the linen sheets against the light, and ringing the earthenware to see if it was cracked, and going in and out just as they pleased. I felt like being in a dream, which came to an end only when the sale was over, and every one gone, leaving me in the empty, empty house. I was to sleep there alone, on a bed on the floor of my old room, soiled with the tread of strange feet, and spoiled of everything which made it look like home to me. Oh! if Stevie could but have been nearer to me at that time!

I awoke with the first grey of the dawn; for the curtains had been sold from the window, and the light shone full upon my face, so that I looked up to it at once, and saw it like the light in a mother's eyes. I rose up in a moment, as if I had been called, and opened the lattice-window overlooking the grassy orchard, where I had played when I was a child. I leaned out there for a long time, watching the light strengthen, till it touched the leaf-buds on the trees below me. The dainty freshness of the morning air, so different even in the country to the weary air of noon, played about my face and my smarting eyelids; for I had been weeping bitterly before I fell asleep. Soon the birds began---at first with a little twitter, as if waking up reluctantly from their rest---and then singing as if all their happy songs had been frozen up during the frosts of winter, and were now bubbling out like a little brook ~thawing in the sunshine. My own white hen---mine yesterday---was astir among the roots of the trees seeking food, and cluck- clucking to her yellow nestlings. "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings!" said my Lord Christ; and again, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten before God." So the sun rose, moment by moment, very quietly, and I thought how vainly would any one try to stay its rising, and how we must give ourselves up to have the light shining all about us, whether we be glad or grieved. Then I heard the waggoners calling to their horses, and the creaking of the fold-gate as it swung on the hinges; but there was no lowing of cattle, and, except my little white hen, which the farmer who was coming after us had bought, there was no busy cackling of poultry. All the old familiar voices were gone, never to come back to my ears: Stevie's clear young voice, and father's call, and all the other sounds which had wakened me morning after morning. I sank down on my knees, and hid my face on the sill, saying nothing, but listening rather to the still small voice speaking to my heart.

Then, kneeling there, I saw that whether I took this trial rebelliously or submissively, it would remain the same: I could no more stay it than I could stay the rising of the sun. I was like a tree rooted up, and the soil about to be filled in and smoothed over where I had been growing. I might become a tree of the Lord's planting, in some other corner of His garden, or I might lie there where I was, to crumble into decay. I had my choice to make; and I made it there before I rose up from my knees.

The sun was glistening upon every dewy leaf on the orchard-trees before I raised my head, and I went down stairs, and through the kitchen---a bare and desolate place---and passed on into the garden, where everything was unchanged. There was a venturesome bee or two, tempted out of the hive by the fitful warmth of the spring day, wandering disconsolately about in search of honey-flowers. The east wind was tarrying somewhere, and the south wind was blowing softly amongst the trees. Against the faint blue of the sky stood our mountain, still with streaks of white snow lying here and there on its slopes, and looking more solitary than ever in its chilly paleness. I looked at it long this morning; for was it not like me, alone, and pale, and cold? Yet the sun was rising on us both, warm, and strong, and full of comforting life.

I sat down in the entry of the bee-arbour, close to the hives, about which they had wrapped some bands of crape when father died, which were now brown, and worn into shreds. Before long I heard the garden-wicket click, and I saw old Jerry come shambling up the path, with his white smock-frock on, and his worn-out felt cap slouching over his face.

"I wanted to speak to you, Miss Margery," he said. "What may you be thinkin' of doin', if I may be so bold?"

"I hardly know yet, Jerry," I said.

"You'd never be thinkin' of goin' into service, miss?" he asked.

"Not about home," I answered, feeling all at once a shrinking from becoming a servant; though even He took upon Him the form of a servant.

"If it 'ud been about here," said Jerry, "I'd ha' asked 'em to take me for nothin' save my keep, and I'd ha' done scores o' things to save you, miss, beside makin' it more home-like for you. But if you're goin' to leave this place, I reckon you'll be goin' to your Uncle Simister, as lives in Lonnon, and is so well-to-do, as old master used to say. He'd be mighty pleased to see you, I'll go bail. You're no lass for folks to turn up their noses at, Miss Margery. Maybe some o' the grand folk in Lonnon 'll be for weddin' wi' ye. They couldna' do better, and they might do worse, as old Jerry could tell 'em."

It was the longest speech I ever heard Jerry make. But I could not give him an answer all at once. My mind was almost made up to go to London; but I wanted to see all I could both for and against it.

"I think I'd be best away from here," I said, after a while. "There's Uncle Simister, and he's the only relation I have, except Stephen in Australia. But it would take a deal of money to go to London, and I don't rightly know how to get there."

"Parson 'ud tell ye the road," said Jerry; "and me and the other men ha' clubbed together, and here's over twenty shillin' to help ye on it. God bless ye, Miss Margery! Take it kind, for it's offered kind. Ye've been mighty good to we; and we'd like to be a bit good back again."

I felt a sob rising in my throat; for the men were but poor labourers, and likely to be thrown out of work now. Jerry was putting into my hand a bit of paper tightly screwed up; but I pushed it back again very gently.

"No, no, Jerry," I said; "I'm not so hard pressed as that. I've enough money to take me to London, if I make up my mind to go."

"Take it kind, for it's offered kind," repeated Jerry. "Me and the other men won't take it back, Miss Margery. Ye'll want a mint o' brass to take you all the way to Lonnon."

He pressed the money into my hand, and started off in an awkward run down the garden to escape from me. But he did not know how he had lightened the heaviness of my heart. With new courage and new strength I put on my black bonnet and shawl, and went down to Condover to ask the rector how I could get to London.

He too was kind---kinder than I could ever have thought. I had scarcely spoken to him before, for our farm lay quite at the far end of the parish; but he seemed right pleased to tell me all I wanted to know; and when I curtsied to him, saying, "Good-bye, sir," he shook my hand heartily, and said, "Good-bye, and God bless you, Margery Beade!"

I stayed for a day or two to help to settle the newcomers in our old place; for the wife was sickly, and there was a brood of little children. But the last night came at length---the last night and the last morning.

So in the chill of a spring dawn, whilst the grass and the moss on the roof were still white and glistening with a light hoar-frost, I left home---the only home I had ever known. The men had gathered together at the fold-gate, just as when Stephen had gone, to bid me good-bye; but there was no shouting of "Hurrah!" ; One of them had taken my box down to the inn the night before, and I had only my basket to carry; but Jerry was bent upon going with me through the woods to the highway, where the coach was to take me up; for there were no railways at that time in our part of England, and I had thirty miles to go by stage-coach before I could get into a train for London.

For near upon two miles our road lay through woods of fir-trees, and oaks, and beeches, already budding with soft, bright little buds. The narrow footpath, winding in and out among the trees, and almost losing itself where they were thickest, was green with new moss and grass; and down about the brown roots of the trees young primroses were beginning to uncurl their crisp leaves, and set free their pale new blossoms. Up on the topmost branches of the larch-trees where the earliest and the latest rays of the sun shone, there was here and there a crimson flower, like a ruby set among the fresh green of the new needles. A thousand yellow tassels hung upon the willows and the nut-bushes, waiting for the sun to dry up the tiny drops of frost still clinging to them. Every sound and sight was as dear to me as ever the garden of Eden was to Eve; and I was leaving them, perhaps, like her, never to come back again, though no cherubim nor flaming sword would be placed before them to keep me away. The world lay before me, as before Adam and Eve; but it was only out of the garden they were driven. They dwelt still in the land of Eden, whilst I was going whither I knew not.

We reached the highway at last; and heard the ringing of a horn from the coach which was coming to carry me away. I had only time to take Jerry's hand between both of mine, and press my lips to his withered cheek, which I had kissed so often when I was a child. We did not expect to see one another again in this life; but all was like a dream. I lived as in a dream at that time; nothing surprised me, nothing overcame me. I was like a child being led blindfolded over a rough road, but guided by a strong hand which I knew would never fail me. So we said good-bye to one another, Jerry and me; and I saw him looking after us bareheaded, till the coach passed out of his sight.

It was late at night before I reached London, having journeyed all day at a marvellous speed: for I had never travelled either by stage-coach or train before. I was told that it was London, and I stepped down on to a smooth platform where there seemed hundreds of people hurrying to and fro. I went to the van where I had seen my box put in, and watched trunk after trunk tumbled out carelessly before my own came to sight. Then I stood beside it, not knowing what to do. The bright spring morning had turned into a day of drizzling rain, and I could see it falling in thick slanting lines against the gas-lights, whilst I shivered in the keen draught of the easterly wind. At length every one else had gone, and I stood almost as lonely and solitary as in the garden at home, when a stranger came up and spoke to me.

"Are you waiting for anything or anybody, ma'am?" he asked, civilly enough.

"Sir," I said, "I wish to know of some quiet place where I can stay till mornin'. I'm a stranger here, and I'd thank you kindly to tell me of any such place."

"There's heaps of places," he answered: "you've only got to take your choice. I'll call a cab for you. Hollo, cabby! here's a fare for you."

Then there drove up a carriage, such as the young rector and his wife might have rode in; and the man opened the door for me to step in before I could speak a word. It was so different from the old gig at home, that I stopped with one foot on the step.

"I'm no lady," I said, looking earnestly at the two men. "I'm nobody but a farmer's daughter; with not over much money."

"Never mind, ma'am," said the driver. "I'll do it as cheap as e'er a man on the station. P'raps it's nothink but a shilling fare. Where do you want to go, ma'am?"

"I don't know," I answered. "I want a quiet decent inn, not too dear."

"Ay, ay, ma'am!" he said, slamming the door so sharply that it made me start. Then he mounted to his seat and drove away, carrying me with him.

It was past eleven o'clock. Father, and the men-servants, and the maids had been in bed and asleep these two hours, and all the house at home was shut up and quiet. But what was I thinking of? Father was dead, and Stephen was far away, and the old house at home was ours no longer. I was a stranger and alone in the streets of London. Many a shop was open still, and there were large windows glittering with the light within them at every street corner. A great number of people were out, though the rain was falling fast; and I saw young children pattering along the wet pavement barefooted! Not one or two, but several little children, barefooted on such a night as this! My heart ached at the very sight of them. I did not think to see barefooted children in London.

The cab stopped after a while at the door of an inn, where two men, thin and very sallow-faced, came out instantly into the rain, with no hats upon their heads, to help me to get out, and to take charge of my basket and my cloak, which I would rather have kept on my own arm. How far away I was from my own country, where everybody knew me to be only Margery Beade!

I followed one of the men, without speaking, up a long, narrow flight of stairs, till I found myself upon a landing at the door of a very large room, all in a blaze of light, with a number of small tables in it set out for dinner. Though it was so late at night, almost midnight, there sat groups of people, eating, drinking, talking, and laughing, as if it were still early in the evening. My head was aching already, but it went giddy at the sight of it. Nobody seemed to see me; nobody stopped in their rapid talk to look once at me. I might have been quite invisible, save for a smartly dressed, but weary-looking young woman, who stood at my elbow, and asked me again and again what I would like to have.

"I couldn't eat a morsel here," I said. "Please to show me to a quiet, clean room: only it must not cost much."

My limbs felt stiff and aching, for I had been sitting still all day cramped up in the railway train. I found how stiff they were as we went up one flight of stairs after another, till the young woman showed me into a dark little room, very scantily furnished. There was no window belonging to it, except the three lowest panes of the window which lighted the room above; and it had a very close, musty smell, which made me almost gasp for breath. I sank down on a chair set beside the bare wooden dressing-table, where I could see my face in the small looking-glass---such a face! Pale, travel-stained, weary, with the white cap in my bonnet already soiled. How different I used to look at home! Stephen would not know me again. The girl, who was turning down the bed, and shaking up the pillows, glanced at me from time to time pityingly.

"You're up from the country, ma'am?" she said.

"Yes," I answered.

"First time you've been in London, I suppose?" she continued.

"Yes," I answered again, with a somewhat sorrowful voice.

"I used to live in the country myself," said the girl, sighing; "but you'll get used to it, ma'am. You'll feel better in the morning; so if you won't take anything, I'll bid you good-night."

"Stay!" I said, yet feeling almost ashamed of it. "I wish you'd kiss me, and say good-night." I felt all at once a great hunger for some outward sign of love, My heart rested upon an unseen perfect love; but just then I yearned for something that made me seem less friendless in this great city. The girl looked astonished, and hesitated as she gazed into my face. Then her lips parted into a smile, though the tears came into her eyes, and she put her arm round my neck and kissed me.

It was a comfort to me, though maybe it was a weakness. I suppose few people at my age go suddenly from such a still, quiet place as our old farmstead---which was even far away from any village---into the very crush and throng of London. I took out my night-dress, which had been bleached upon the orchard grass, and scented with rosemary and lavender; and the sweet smell brought it all like lightning, as clear and vivid, to my mind. There was the close, suffocating room, with its dingy bed, and dirty flooring; and my memory brought to me the fresh, sweet breeze, and the flowers, and the fields, which seemed so very far off in the past, though I had only left them that morning.

There were noises about the house long after I was in bed, which kept me alert and wakeful. Somewhere not far off there was the clatter of an endless washing-up of dishes, and the clicking of knives and forks dropping one by one into a box, till there seemed to be thousands upon thousands of them. Towards morning a dead stillness followed, anti I slept a little; but as soon as a glimmer of daylight shone upon the three panes of glass I got up and looked out. They opened upon the roof, and I could see, as far as my sight reached, nothing but roofs and chimneys, begrimed with smoke and dust. It was a vast city, a wilderness of dwelling-places, through which I might have to wander in a solitary way, finding no place to dwell in.

Well, well! I was faint-hearted that morning. I went down early into the large room I had seen the night before, and found that I was again invisible, except to the tired-looking men who were waiting upon the people. I had reckoned upon seeing a pleasant, friendly-spoken landlady; like the landlady at the Sun, where father put up on market-days, who used to ask me into the bar, when I went down two or three times a year to do my shopping, and take ever so much interest in what I had bought. I had thought how I would speak to her about my plans, and ask her if she knew anybody who wanted a country housekeeper; provided my Uncle Simister did not wish me to live with him. But there was no such person to be seen. I sat down at the table nearest to the door, for I had not courage to walk far into the room; and a young man brought me the breakfast I asked for.

Till then I had not quite resolved upon going first to Uncle Simister; but as there was no landlady for me to talk to, I could not see what else I could do. I made a few inquiries from the girl I had spoken to the night before, and started off to find out his house amongst the twisting and winding streets, all crossing one another, and turning first to the right hand and then to the left. The din and uproar stunned me; thousands upon thousands of wheels were rattling over the large paving-stones; and the yelling of street cries was utterly distracting. I had never thought that the world itself could hold so many people. I felt myself out of keeping with the eager, bustling crowd, all moving so much quicker than I was; for I was not used to hurry, and, maybe, the carrying of milk-pails and baskets of butter and eggs upon my head had given me a slow and measured walk, unlike that of the London people. In what I was different I could hardly tell, but I felt different; and many a person I met looked steadily at me, as if they could see what a stranger I was to those busy streets.

I must have gone far out of my way before I found Ludgate Hill, and walked slowly up it, with the great church of St. Paul's before me; its roof high above all other roofs, and its dome standing out clearly against the sky. But I did not look up much at that, for my heart was beating fast with anxiety, and my eyes were searching everywhere for Pilgrim Street. I could not find it on either hand; and though many persons were passing to and fro, they all appeared too busy for me to venture upon asking any one of them. At last I saw three little children dawdling down the hard stone flags, thin-looking and ragged, but staring in at the grand shop windows without any shyness, such as I felt. The eldest was a boy, about nine years old, with nothing on but a torn shirt, and a pair of trousers so large for him that he had turned up the legs, and tied them round with a bit of string. I thought it looked very strange to see such children gazing in at the grand jewellery, and at the costly silks and satins in the shop windows. The boy saw my eyes fixed earnestly upon them, and he pulled one of the others by the arm.

"See! There's a lady smiling at us," he said.

"My boy," I said, taking a penny from my purse, "do you know a street called Pilgrim Street about here?"

"Do I?" he said; "I should think I do! Any chap with his eyes in his head 'ud. know Pilgrim Street."

"Show me where it is," I answered, "and I'll give you this penny."

He darted away in an instant across the street, through all the throng of carriages, twisting in and out among them, and then stood on the other side, beckoning me to follow him.

But it was like a rolling river between us, and we stood on opposite sides.

I can see him now, his bright, eager face, dirty and grimed, but with a very pleasant smile upon it. He would have been a handsome boy if he had been a gentleman's son. My heart warmed towards him at once; for it was the first face that had smiled at me since I set my foot in London. Presently he came back, and stood at my side till the course was a little clear, when we ran across, his hand in mine.

"Here's Pilgrim Street," he said, turning down a narrow archway between two shops, just large enough for one carriage to pass. At the back of the archway was a very winding street, turning here and there; with houses whose tops almost touched one another, or at least seemed to shut out the sky. It was quieter than in the larger streets, and I could hear my own voice again.

"Here's your penny, my boy," I said. "Tell me what your name is."

"What do you want to know for?" he asked, sharply.

I scarcely knew what to say. If any of the children from Condover ever came up to the farm, I always asked their name; but then I knew something about them all. There was no good in asking this London lad.

"I ain't afeard of telling you," he said, looking long into my face. "My name's Corporal, and my mother's name's Bell. I'm Corporal Bell for long, and Cor for short."

"But Corporal isn't your crissen-name," I said; "you must have some other name."

"I ain't got no other," he answered, steadily. "Corporal Bell for long, and Cor for short."

"I went on slowly along the stone pavement, which had made my feet ache again, and the boy followed me.

"Are you looking for anythink?" he asked.

"I'm looking for a watchmaker of the name of Simister," I answered.

"And why couldn't you ha" said so afore?" said Cor; "he's a friend o' mine.

Leastways, I'm the wery lad as cleans his boots and his front for him. I should think I know him; I do. It's close by here."

It was my turn to follow now, for the lad pattered on with his bare feet before me, for a very short distance, and then pointed to the window of a watchmaker's shop. It was a little place, with small dusty panes in the window, across each of which hung a row of watches, mostly of silver, and very old-fashioned, as I found out afterwards---for I was too anxious to notice them then, and I knew little enough about watches. I could see a small, spare man bending over his work till he showed the bald patch at the top of his head; he had a magnifying glass, and was holding a watch close under a jet of gas. But as I stood before the window looking in, he lifted up his head, and a curious, wrinkled face, like the carved oak faces in the church at Condover, peered out at me.

"He's a wery good watchmaker," said Corporal Bell, eagerly. "If I'd a watch I'd allays let him mend it."

I opened the closed door very hesitatingly, and went up to the little counter, leaning with both hands upon it; for I was all trembling, and could not speak a word. Uncle Simister stood on the other side looking up at me, for he was a head lower than me; but he had keen eyes, and kept his glass up to one of them in some strange way, till he suddenly let it fall by a movement of his eyelid, which startled me.

"What is it you want, madam?" he asked, in a sharp, rasping tone.

"Uncle Simister," I said, in a faltering voice, "I'm Margery Beade, and my father is dead, and I'm come up to London to you."

He was startled in his turn, and fixed his eyeglass again into his eye, looking at me as he had been looking at the watch when I saw him first through the window. The ragged boy at my side also gazed with wide-open eyes into my face.

"Margery Beade!" ; he repeated, slowly: "but it was a man-child I wrote to your father for; and that's many a long year ago. I hate women; they are always chattering and gadding about, and going into hysterics. They are dirty, too; making a dust wherever they go. There hasn't been a woman up my stairs these twenty years. I daresay you wear those long, draggle-tailed petticoats the women love so much."

He tilted himself up on tiptoe to look over the counter; but my skirts were country-made, and only came down to my ankles.

"Uncle Simister," I said, "I did not come to be any burden or trouble to you. I am strong, and can earn my own livin'; but you're my only relation, save Stephen; and he's far away. I came to you because you're mother's brother; but if you hate women, I'll go away."

I was turning away, very cast-down and heavyhearted; but Cor caught my dress in both his hands, holding it very tight, so that I could not move.

"Stay!" cried Uncle Simister, "stay, Niece Margery. I'm a philosopher, and hate women; all philosophers do. But you did not choose to be a woman, poor thing! and you're the very image of my poor sister, and you're of my own blood: so you must not go away like that. Bless you, Margery! I haven't seen any one of my own blood these thirty years or more."

He had come briskly round the counter, and stood before me, bent and withered with old age. I felt my love go out towards him, and I stooped down and kissed him, as I would have kissed father. A deep red flushed over his face, but he did not seem angry. He opened a door at the back of the shop, which was at The foot of a flight of stairs, leading to the floor above; and telling Cor to put the chain across the door, and shout if any customer came, he took me up into his home, which was to be mine for many years to come.

There were no more than three rooms; a kitchen, scrupulously clean; a small bedroom, and a very small closet, where stood a low, narrow bedstead, leaving scarcely space to move about in it. Uncle Simister pointed this out particularly to me.

"I bought it for the man-child I wrote to your father about," he said; "but if it's good enough for you, and you can put up with an old philosopher that isn't used to women and their ways, you may stay instead. And I don't say that I shan't be glad to have you, if you're only quiet and clean; for I'm growing old, and want somebody to take care of me. I've thought sometimes of taking Corporal in: but it's venturesome, and he's too young. Not that a woman can take care of anything properly. Look at a woman with a watch! She's sure to spoil it. Women's watches are always stopping, and breaking their springs, and going too fast or too slow. I hate selling my watches to a woman."

I was as glad to find a little place for myself in the great wilderness of London as the swallows were to find their old nests under our eaves at home. I was glad, too, to be dwelling with one who was of kin to me. I knew Uncle Simister would be grieved if I left him alone in his old age, though his words were rough. Cor went back with me to show me the nearest way to the inn, and to find a cab to bring my box away; and then he rode outside by the driver, making triumphant gestures to other ragged boys along the streets.

That night I wrote to Stephen, telling him that Uncle Simister had offered me a home, and that I should remain with him, unless he had need of me himself in Australia. I felt settled after that, and fell quickly into Uncle Simister's ways, keeping his small house as clean as ever it had been before, and striving my utmost to take care of him. We lived very silently together; for, at times, days and weeks would pass by and we scarcely exchanged a sentence with one another. I believe he thought that he must keep up his character as a philosopher.

Any stranger looking on would have said my life was gloomy; but how can there be gloom when the whole heart is full of light? There seemed to be always a secret with me; a secret which I half knew, though the other half was hidden, only so slightly hidden that I could almost guess it. Very humble, and quiet, and poor was my life; but so was His, the carpenter's Son. If the Bible did not tell us He was poor, I should have known it from His own words. Who would have talked about putting new pieces upon old garments, or about sweeping the house diligently, if He had not seen His mother doing it? So whilst I was busy over these things, and a hundred household works like them, I knew that He knew exactly all about them, and that made them sweet to me.

But there was not enough work for me in Uncle Simister's little dwelling; and I could not sit still doing useless things, which some women take a pleasure in. Besides, my eyes grew weary with the nearness of the walls, and my limbs ached for want of exercise. So when all was done for the day, I used to put on my bonnet and shawl, and go wandering out, up and down, up and down the streets. Not the fine streets where the shops were full of rich things to stare at; but the dark, narrow, noisome streets, lying back behind the grandeur and the wealth. I think these drew me to them. Now and then there was a chance of doing something; there were children crying whom I could comfort; or a poor woman heavily burdened, part of whose load I could carry. I had no money to give; and I could not find fault even when drunken women reeled past me and would have fallen heavily to the ground if I had not caught them. I was heart-sore for them---heart-sore. But how could I blame them for flying from the misery and the dirt in which they lived, if they could forget it only for an hour? Now and then I spoke a word to them, gently and sorrowfully, and they listened. But I do not know that I did any good among them. Only those streets, foul and noisome, and swarming with miserable fellow-creatures, drew me to them, rather than the grand and handsome streets, where carriages rolled by constantly.

But there is no, doubt I did good to Cor. I cut down some of Uncle Simister's cast-off clothes, and made him a decent suit for Sundays, and stitched a couple of shirts for him, and knitted , two pairs of socks. He was a steady, brave little lad, never missing to come for his morning's work of cleaning uncle's boots, and brushing down the front of the shop. Very soon he had told me all about himself; of the shifts he and his mother were put to for food and lodging; and of the strange sad things he saw in the wretched lodging-houses where they slept. I began to teach him to read, for he was very quick, almost as quick as Stephen; and then we went on to writing, and so on, through many months, till he knew all I could teach him.

But all this while there came no tidings of Stephen. I did not grow anxious before I had been with Uncle Simister nearly twelve months; for Australia was so very far away, letters could not come and go quickly. Yet when month after month passed by and I had written many letters and received no answer, I began to be troubled, and to grieve for him as for one who is dead; carrying about with me at all times a secret sorrow, which, like the secret joy I had, was but half known to me, yet the other half could easily be guessed. Stephen was lost and gone to me; he could not be still alive, or he would have written to me from that far-off country.

How often I carried this burden with me into the great church of St. Paul's, which was close at hand, and which became to me a quiet resting-place, like the garden at home! There, under the high roof and in the dim light, with the hum of the city all around me, like, yet altogether unlike, the hum of the bees in their hives, I would pace slowly to and fro, up and down along the aisles, as if they were the pleached alley with its grassy path, instead of the hard marble under my feet. But always I stayed my steps before a monument of black folding doors with angels guarding them, yet waiting as if to throw them open as soon as the sound of the archangel's trumpet rang through the sky. Upon the one door were these words, "Until the day break and the shadows flee away" and I bore them ever in my heart, for were we not all dwelling in the, shadows, and waiting for the breaking of the morning? Not in darkness, yet in shadows; for the light that shines about us is but as moonlight fit for feeble eyes like ours, which are often bedimmed with tears; very soft, very full of peace, very tranquil; but not like the glorious morning sunlight when it comes like a flood over the pale sky and the shadowy earth. Upon the other door of the tomb was written, "They that dwell under His shadow shall return." Yes, even the grave, with its black darkness, which no sight can pierce through but a little way, even that is but His shadow, and the dead dwell there as those who are weary with the heat of the day rest under the shadow of a great rock. And they will return when every shadow, even that of the grave, has fled away; they will return with joy and singing, and with everlasting joy upon their heads.

I did not take all that trouble for Cor without growing very fond of him. That is in the nature of things, I think, for I never troubled for any one or any creature yet without feeling my heart yearn over it. So one morning when I saw him look downcast, that is, as downcast as a boy of his age can look, I could not help noticing it.

"Is there anythin' the matter, Cor?" I asked.

"It's mother," he said; "she takes on so, and ses she ain't going to live much longer. She's wery thin, Miss Margery, and her bones stick out as sharp as sharp can be; but, bless us, there's folks going about as are only skin and bone. Folks oughtn't to die o' thinness, ought they?"

I did not know what to say, for I had never seen Cor's mother. That was when I had been only a few months at Uncle Simister's, and I'd not seen much of the poor people; save wandering about their alleys, and passages, and courts, and longing to pick up all the young children and carry them away to the fresh green fields in the country. But I offered to go and see Cor's mother; and went with him that afternoon, down street after street, all narrow and smothering and ill-smelling, till we reached a house in a courtyard, and he went on padding with his bare feet up a stair-case, where I had to keep my clothes well away from the wall, lest I should never be able to wear them again. I wondered where the boy was going to when he began climbing a ladder, the top of which went, through a square hole in the ceiling of the house; but I followed him, and came into a low bit of a garret, with nothing but the tiles for a roof, and no part of it high enough for me to stand upright in. There was no window, but a board at one end kept out the cold wind as well as the light, which came through a little opening in the gable end of the roof. Cor took it down, and I looked about me. There, under the tiles and upon a heap of rags, lay a woman wasted to the bone, with burning eyes, which met mine like some wild creature caught in a trap and writhing to get away. I'd seen that look often when the servants had caught any poor thing, and I could not bear to see it, even when the creature was but some mischievous vermin.

"Here's Miss Margery come to see yer," said Cor, pulling me forward, the woman's eyes flaming all the while, as if she would spring upon me was she strong enough.

"Is there anythin' I can do to help you?" I asked, looking pityingly down upon the poor miserable creature; and, seeing that she shivered with the cold, I took off my woollen shawl and laid it over her, tucking it in at the feet and sides to keep the draught out. She never took her eyes off me all the while.

"Cor," I said, "run home again and bring me my cloak."

He was off in an instant, and I sat down beside the woman on the floor, and took her hand into mine. Like a skeleton's it was; and though she was shivering with cold, it was as hot as fire.

"I'm going to die," she said, in a hoarse whisper; and still that hunted look was in her eyes.

"Are you afraid of dying?" I asked.

"Afeard!" she said, almost shouting the words; "I'm scared to death. That's what I'm a dying of---being afeard to die."

So I sat there talking to her, talking quietly, as sometimes a mother talks to her frightened child when there is a terrible thunderstorm in the night; and Cor's mother listened like a child, holding my hand in her burning fingers. After a while she said, in a softer voice:

"I'm not scared now; tell me more about Him."

So I told her the story of that poor woman in the city, who was a sinner, and did not dare to come before His face, but stood behind Him weeping, and washing His feet with her tears; though He did not seem to take any notice of her at first. But when she did not grow vexed and go away, but still washed and kissed His feet, He turned Himself towards her, and said, "Her sins, which are many, are all forgiven, for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."

Cor's mother lay listening---listening as if she was afraid of losing a single word; and I knew that Christ was listening too. She drew my hand up to her feverish lips, and then spoke in a low, solemn tone.

"Would He ever let me wash His feet?" she asked.

Then I knew that the tears which were rolling down her cheek slowly fell, as it were, drop by drop upon His feet. He had come to her, and was waiting to feel the tears and kisses of her repentance and love; and there was an unspeakable joy, such as no words could tell, filling all my heart.

But presently was heard Cor's step upon the ladder, and he came in with my cloak, telling me that Uncle Simister wanted me at home. I gave them a few pence which I had in my pocket, and told Cor what to buy; and then I left them, promising to go again in the morning.

Morning came, and Cor came as usual, but his eyes were very red, and his mouth quivered like a baby's. I called him up-stairs, where I put a basin of coffee on one side for him; but I knew at the first glance of him what was the matter.

"Mother's dead," he said, trying not to sob aloud; "she told me to tell you she wasn't scared. P'raps she'd find Him where she was going, and He'd let her stand behind Him, and wash His feet. I don't know what she meant, but she kept on saying that."

There was not much to be done in the matter of Cor's mother's funeral. The parish buried her; and the boy was left alone in the world. After that he seemed to belong to us altogether---not that we could provide everything for him; but Uncle Simister gave him a shelter at nights, in a little place under the stairs, and I made most of his clothes, and now and then gave him a good meal. He got work as an errandboy, too, for he was a clever lad; and at last, upon our recommendation, a doctor whom we knew took him into his service. So Cor was provided for.

How fast the years run by as one grows older! It is as if we were in a chariot drawn by swift horses, that know they are nearer home, and quicken their pace to reach it earlier. I began to see many white hairs among my brown ones, and a number of fine wrinkles all about the corners of my eyes. There was even a greater change in Uncle Simister, for his sight had failed him, and his hands were too trembling to do their work. A young journeyman, of the name of Moss, had taken charge of the shop for some time; and Dr. Clarke came every other day to see uncle.

"I shan't have a farthing to leave you, Margery," he said, one day, almost under his breath, as if he scarcely wished me to hear.

"Never mind, dear uncle," I answered, cheerfully. "I'm not afraid of setting down my foot on any step of the road that God orders for me."

"I'll speak to the doctor," he murmured, with a look of disquiet.

Dr. Clarke generally came in the evening, and he often tarried a long while as if he liked to talk with Uncle Simister. He settled himself by the kitchen fire that night as if he meant to stay some time.

"I'm in trouble about Margery," uncle began. "A woman's like a watch, and needs a man to carry her, and wind her up, and regulate her speed, and see to her main-spring. I've had so much to do with watches that I didn't want anything to do with women. They're all alike; but Margery's like those great church clocks, that can be wound up once a year, and then left to themselves; and they go on as steady as the year itself. Still, doctor, she'll want winding-up now and then, when I'm gone; and who's to do it?"

"Have you made your will?" asked the doctor.

"Yes," he answered; "but there's nothing but the furniture to leave her; that will help to furnish a room for her, and bring in two or three pounds. But she's getting on in years, and isn't over strong."

"How old are you, Margery?" asked Dr. Clarke.

"Forty-five," I answered, quickly; for only that morning I had been looking at the dates in father's pocket Bible.

"I'm afraid your arm will never be of much use to you again," he said; "you'll not be able to do much for a living. Have you no other relations?"

It was my arm that had first brought us to know Dr. Clarke. I had hurt it---I did not know how---and Cor persuaded me to go to a doctor. I went out, and wandered about the streets, till I saw his name on a door-plate. He came to see me pretty often, but he could not do much for me. I had torn the ligaments of my right arm, between the shoulder and the elbow, and they never knit together again; so it grew weaker and weaker every year.

"She had a half-brother in Australia," said Uncle Simister; "but she hasn't heard a word of him these ten years and more; we think he must be dead. He's as good as dead to her, anyhow."

Even after all this time it cut me to my heart to hear Stephen mentioned. It was a hundred times worse than if we had known how and where he died. The doctor sat looking into the fire very thoughtfully.

"Why!" he exclaimed at last, striking the arm of the chair with his open hand, "there's Bede's Charity; it's the very thing. I know one of the trustees well, and you are a freeman of the company."

"Ay! and little good it's been to me," said Uncle Simister.

"But it may be of good to her," said the doctor, taking his pocket-book out to write my name and age down. "Let me see; her name is Margery Bede. Why! it's the same as the charity. That's very curious. You must be related to the founder."

"No," I answered, "we spell it B-e-a-d-e; and my people always lived in the country, far enough away from London."

"I thought the charity was only for widows and daughters of freemen," said uncle.

"That's of no consequence," replied the doctor; "leave that to me. I owe you a good turn, Simister, for finding me that boy, Cor Bell. I've taken him into my surgery, and he's studying away like half a dozen of the young blockheads at Bartholomew's. If he goes on well, I'll see him through the hospital."

"He's not my boy," said uncle; "he's Margery's. I thought I was doing very well by him, letting him clean my boots and the front. But Margery took him in hand, and taught him to read and write, and knit stockings for him, and made him some decent clothes, and pushed him on in every way. Cor is Margery's boy."

"Oh! we must get her on the Charity," said Dr. Clarke.

"Well! if any woman ever did deserve any charity she does," continued uncle. "I begin to think as the Almighty didn't deal unkindly by us men, when He made women like Margery. I wish sometimes as Solomon could have known her, and heard what he had to say; not but what she has her faults. I've had my notions at times as heaven wouldn't be such a superior place to go to, if all the angels are women, as you see them in pictures, with big curls down their backs, and long gowns trailing about them. But then the Bible always speaks of angels as men, young men that never grow old. Which do you think they will be, doctor?"

"I've never thought of it," said the doctor, smiling.

"I shouldn't mind just a sprinkling of women like Margery," said uncle, in a feeble voice, and leaning his head weariedly, with shut eyes, against the back of his chair. The doctor looked at him earnestly, felt his pulse, and turned away with a grave face.

I felt a strange heart-sinking, and I could not ask him a word, though he spoke to me, as if to answer a question.

"Yes," he said, "he'd better go to bed. And I'll send Cor in to sit beside him all night. But recollect you must not sit up as well; one is enough, and you will have the nursing by day."

Cor came in about half an hour; a tall, well-made young stripling, with blue eyes, and a bright, energetic look about his face. He was wearing a quiet livery; and under his arm he carried three huge books, which had come out of the doctor's library. He lifted his forefinger to his forehead first, as a sort of bow to me, and then he came and took my hand between both of his, and stooped down almost as if he was going to kiss it.

"Miss Margery," he said, "the doctor tells me I'm to come every night, and sit up with the old master, while you get your rest. He's lent me some books to keep me awake; such stunning hard ones, with such awful long words in. He says I shall be a doctor myself some day. Wouldn't that be a lark, Miss Margery?"

He had not quite left off his street slang, but he could talk better than that when he chose. Now he caught himself up, and coloured; then laughed at himself quietly, and prepared to follow me into Uncle Simister's room. I saw him sit down to his studies, with the curtain drawn, to shade my uncle's eyes from the candle which lighted him. There was a fresh, eager, young face on one side, and the withered, sunken drowsy face on the other side of the curtain. From the old man hope was gone, and the relish for life was gone; but presently they would be given to him again, and grow for ever. Somewhere I have read, "The oldest angels before the throne are the youngest."

Hard at work sat Cor all night long, and for several nights, beside Uncle Simister's death-bed. But the end came at last. We could hear the clocks ticking in the shop below, and a solemn smile stole over his face as he listened, hushing me if I tried to speak or move. Then he whispered, "God bless you, Margery!"; and I was once more alone.

Everybody was every good to me, but Cor was my greatest comfort. He and the doctor between them saved me all care and trouble; and both of them followed Uncle Simister to the grave. After that I remained a few weeks quite alone in the quiet house. Mr. Moss, who had been our journeyman for some months past, had taken to the business, such as it was, in the hope of improving it; but he was not ready to come and dwell in the house. He had been living with, and helping to maintain, a widowed aunt, Mrs. Moss, with a young child, her niece, Phoebe; but he hung back from bringing them to live in the small rooms, which had been scarcely big enough for uncle and me. But not long after Mrs. Moss was appointed to an almhouse in Westminster, and was very glad to remove to it, and leave her nephew free.

It was just then, so nicely do God's works fit in, that Dr. Clarke came in one evening to bring me some good news.

"Margery," he said, "one of the almswomen on Bede's Charity is dead---died a day or two ago; and I have pushed forward your claim. You are going to be put on to the charity in her place; and so have a sure provision as long as you live. It is only a small one, I'm sorry to say."

"Sir," I said, "I'm right thankful to you and to God. It will be enough if it is what He sends. I must have gone back to my parish but for that."

I thought of the workhouse in one of the streets of the market-town where father had always gone once a week; and I felt as if I could not bear to go back to my native place as a pauper. The Beades had been decent farmers for many a generation back, and I was the only one left of them. For surely Stephen must have perished in that far-off land. No! anything would be better than going home to enter the work-house there! It may be that God saw a pride in my heart that needed rooting up.

"Well!" ; said Dr. Olarke, "it is only six shillings a week, Margery, and nothing more. How ever you can live upon that I cannot see."

"There are thousands of people in London that live upon less," I answered. "Never fear for me, sir; I shall live well upon six shillings a week. I've furniture enough to furnish a room, and Mr. Moss 'll give me somethin' for the business. You know uncle's left everythin' to me?"

The doctor smiled to himself. I daresay he thought everything was but little. Yet it was a good deal to me; for I found a pleasant room down in Westminster, to be near Mrs. Moss and the little girl, Phoebe, who had taken wonderfully to me; and I had plenty of things to furnish it comfortably, without laying out a penny of the money Mr. Moss gave me for the stock and business. It was not much---about five-and-twenty pounds, after uncle's few debts were paid; but that was a nest-egg, as poor Stephen used to say, and it was laid by for a time when I needed it more. Yet He, the Lord Christ, never had money laid by; for Judas had the bag, and bare what was put therein---Judas, the traitor and the thief.

My home in Westminster was in as quiet a street as any to be found there. It was the back attic room, in a house where the other floors were used for offices. Mrs. Brown, the woman who had the care of the offices, had the upper floor for her own use, and lived in the front attic herself, while I paid her a rent of one and sixpence a week for the back room unfurnished. The furniture I had kept of that which was Uncle Simister's was all I needed. The little bedstead he had bought for Stephen years before I saw him; a small oak table, the very pattern of one that had belonged to my mother; a three-cornered leather arm-chair, and a few other things, partly necessary, and partly kept for memory's sake, made my room look very snug and pleasant. Cor coloured the walls, and stencilled a pretty pattern of leaves and flowers round the top of them just under the ceiling. He made, too, a box for plants that just fitted the window-sill outside, where the flowers caught all the early and the late shining of the sun. It was far more cheerful and open than our close little house in Pilgrim Street. From my high casement I could see the Abbey and the Parliament House, with a glistening of the river in places; and I had a great open field of sky to look at, always changing, blue sometimes, and sometimes with a glory of clouds about it, and sometimes grey and gloomy; yet not the sky---that never changes, but is always pure, and clear, and bright, only our earth-born clouds, whether thick and murky, or all flecked like rainbows, make it dim to our eyes at times.

Down below, not many streets away, was the row of almshouses where Mrs. Moss and Phoebe lived. That, too, was a comfortable dwelling-place, though I did not like it so much as my own, with its wide look-out. But here were we two helpless and almost friendless women, getting on in years, with no strength for work, who would have been a burthen to our friends, or be driven into the workhouse in our old age, if it had not been for the provision made by those who were now dwelling in the golden streets of the city of our Father's house. I used to hope sometimes that they knew, those unknown friends of ours, whose charity was feeding, and clothing, and sheltering us, how different our lot was to what it would have been but for their ancient kindness and thought towards the poor. Some day, I thought, I shall see them, maybe; and how glad I should be to tell the founder of Bede's Charity what he had done for me. I hoped, I say, that they were allowed to know how their charity was passed on from hand to hand; so that one generation tells the next of God's goodness and mercy by the way.

Very tranquilly, and in peace with God and man, I lived there many years, watching Cor and Phoebe grow up, just as I used to watch the young things in the spring---the lambs, and calves, and colts growing up at home on the farm, only those two grew so much more slowly and deeply. They were both set upon reading and learning, something like Stephen; for neither of them had money to spend on pleasure-seeking, or fine clothes, or any of the things which fill up the minds of many young creatures. So they, cut off from all such pleasures, felt for something else to satisfy them; and so found and caught at those many free gifts of God, lying all about us if we had only time to stoop and gather them up, like the small, round things, as small as hoar frost upon the ground, which the Israelites called manna.

Every day seemed to make Cor more and more of a man. Dr. Clarke took him into his surgery, and he left off his livery, and began to study harder than ever; having his master's promise that he would see him through all that was necessary to make him a doctor. There were many expenses attending it, and Cor had no friends in the world but Dr. Clarke and me; and I used to marvel sometimes at the change in him, recollecting how I had found him at first, ragged and barefoot, lost, and, as it were, swept away with the rubbish of the streets, but now fairly on the path to become a clever man; perhaps even one of the great and rich men in the great and rich city where he was born. But just as Cor was ready, as Dr. Clarke said, to walk the hospitals---though what that means I do not altogether know---a great blow fell upon him, and through him upon me. Dr. Clarke died suddenly, so suddenly that he had not time to sign a will, which had been lying ready for months past, in which he had left 500l. to Cor to provide for his studies. But all was of no use now; Cor was thrown back again in life, with no friend in the world but me. Truly God's ways are not like our ways, Poor, poor Cor! My heart aches still at the thought of his deep disappointment, and his great grief for his master, who had always been so kind to him, and who had meant so kindly by him after his death. There were two things Cor could do. He was a handsome, tall, well-made young man, and many a grand family would have taken him as footman, to stand behind their carriages when they drove in state in the parks, and to wait upon them in their splended houses. But Cor shrank from work like, that, which would be doing no good to any person in the world; it seemed to him an unmanly life---a life made up of trifles. One other thing he could do; he had learned to make up medicines, and a druggist in the east end of London offered to take him into his shop, but at a very low salary. The customers were mostly poor people, nay, the very poorest of the people, who came there when they could not afford to go to a doctor. There was much work and little pay, but nearly everything he did would be for the good and benefit of his fellow creatures. That was the life Cor chose when God put those two before him to choose from.

After that I did not see him so often as before; but every time he came to visit me I marked a growing change in Cor. It was the change from a somewhat thoughtless, self-sufficient youth into a grave and earnest-minded man; walking as near as he could to the Lord Christ, who was indeed holding fellowship with him, and keeping him back by a gentle, unseen, but never an unfelt touch, from going far astray. He had taken up his cross as soon as he found it lying in his path, and had gone forth to follow Christ, thinking that He was a long way, even hundreds of years, before him; but the Lord had turned back for him, and was walking side by side with him to bear the heaviest part of his cross. That was a happy change for poor Cor!

Yes; I know I am looking back, and it may be I speak of those far-off years more happily and thankfully than I should have done at the time. It is like climbing up the slopes of that old, solitary hill at home, and looking down from the height of it upon the windings of the country lane which brought me to the foot. It looks a quiet lane, with green hedgerows on each side, and shady trees arching overhead, and I remember the violets, and anemones, and blue-bells growing on the banks, and the tall shoots of the wild rose-briars waving and bending in the wind, and the gay, blithe songs of the thrushes and linnets; but I forget the muddy and stony places in the road, and the stinging gnats, and the brambles catching at my clothes. Perhaps it is so; perhaps the poor little cares of the day fretted my heart now and then, and my ill-temper sulked at times against my gracious Father; but He was ever as patient with me as the mother who lifts her little child's feet over the stony and muddy places, and kisses the pricks of the brambles on its little hands. I think both the child and the mother have a closer sense of love between them, than if they had been carried easily along the road in a carriage.

By the time Oor was four-and-twenty Phoebe was rather more than seventeen, as pretty a girl as any one in London, with a colour on her cheeks something like the paler roses in the old garden at home. The very sight of Phoebe made me glad. And she came often to my pleasant attic, and went long walks with me, till she became almost as much my child as if I had been her own mother. She had picked up a good deal of learning here and there. Cor had taught her what he knew of Latin; and the schoolmaster of the school belonging to the almshouses had given her lessons in music arid French; and the girl was very eager to learn. But now that she was seventeen she grew anxious to maintain herself, and be no longer a burden upon her aunt and cousin, the Mosses. So she was very happy when she met with an engagement as daily governess, to teach five children, mend their clothes, walk out with them, and be with them from nine in the morning till six at night, for which she was to receive ten shillings a week, paid weekly, so that the holidays did not count as anything. Was it good pay? We did not ask that; we were only too glad for Phoebe to earn her own living now she and her aunt were rich. They had sixteen shillings a week to live upon, and a house rent free.

Scarcely had I finished watching the studies of Cor, and Phoebe's lessons, which were like the budding and blossoming of young trees, than I began to see the dawn of a quiet, deep love for Phoebe in Cor's heart, growing as the morning grows, which no force can stay for a moment. He was as dear to me as she was. But what hope could there be for two penniless and friendless young creatures like them? Besides, there was Mrs. Moss to consider, and she was not a person you could set on one side. She prided herself on being of a genteel family, and Cor was only a waif of the streets.

It was a very long time before Cor gave me a hint of what he felt; but I knew his secret perhaps before he did. I saw his grave face light up with a shining brightness at the sound of Phoebe's voice or step; and I watched how his eyes followed all her movements, and his ears were deaf to everything else while she spoke or sang. For Phoebe sang like a linnet, with merry little trills, and a plaintive note here and there, all wild and natural, and at times so gladsome as to be almost sad; like the evensong of birds when they perch on the highest twig of their home tree, and sing goodnight to the setting sun. Poor Cor would sit and listen to her without stirring, as if the least movement would startle her away; and then she would finish with a laugh, and turn to pick off the withered leaves from my trees in the window, her pretty head showing clear against the sky, and Cor's eyes fastened upon her, as if he dare not look away, lest he should lose sight altogether of her sweet face. That was how things went on for a year or two before Cor spoke; and I could not find out what Phoebe felt. She had a gay, playful manner, which many a person would have called flirting. But Phoebe was no flirt, though the assistant-schoolmaster would walk home with her from church on a Sunday; and every one in the choir where she sang paid her a great deal of attention, and was ready to do anything to win a smile from her. I did not think there was much chance for Cor. He could not meet her very often, and she never mentioned his name, let him stay away as long as he would. Besides, whenever she spoke of him she called him "poor Cor"; and I did not like to hear that word from her lips, though I had fallen into the habit of saying "poor Cor" myself. Yet why should I call him poor, who, going about his daily work, was closely following the Lord Christ?

"Miss Margery," said Cor, one evening, when he had been listening and listening for Phoebe's step upon the stairs, and it did not come, "I've been thinking a great deal about my poor mother lately."

I had never talked much to Cor about his mother; for her memory was but a shame and a sorrow, now he was getting free of the streets and their training. His face flushed a deep dark crimson, very different from a girl's blush; this was full of pain and grief, and there came a dimness into his young bright eyes.

"What makes you think of her, Cor?" I asked.

"Many things," he said, mournfully. "The women that come for drugs, and those I see about the streets. I feel as if I'd give half my lifetime to have had a woman like you for my own mother! It seems so strange that such women should have children given to them!"

"Cor," I said, "wait till you see her in heaven; you would not change her for me then."

He shook his head; and just then there was a little rustling of the wind that made him hold his breath, and listen again for a minute. But it was not Phoebe coming.

"Miss Margery," he went on, "being her son, I have no right to hope to win anybody's love, have I?---at least anybody that is worth winning. I cannot forget what I was born to. It is you who have made me what I am. It is all your doing."

His voice was sorrowful; and all at once there came across me that night at home before Stephen went away, when father said almost the same words about him. Poor Stevie has been lifted up above what he was born to, and gone away and been lost! But for me, he might have stayed at home, and toiled, and lived as his forefathers had done before him. This was the only sorrow and doubt of my life. Had I done a wrong to Stephen? Had I done the same wrong to Cor?

"Ought I to have left you where I found you? Are you less happy and less useful as you are?" I asked.

He fell down on his knees before me, and laid his face on my lap. I pressed both my hands on his bowed head, praying God to bless him. I could not speak aloud, for my heart was full of Stephen---full to overflowing---my boy, who had since gone away across the sea, and been lost to me ever since!

"Miss Margery," said Cor at last, "I love Phoebe."

"I knew it, my poor Cor," I answered; and he raised his head to look into my face. His was kindling with eagerness, and anxiety, and expectation. He thought I had more to tell him; but I had not. But my face said more than my mouth would have done; for he forgot himself, and was filled with care for me.

"You are ill, Miss Margery," he said; "and here I've been troubling you with my folly. What can I do you? Sit still here while I make you some tea."

"No, no, Cor," I said: "I was only thinking of my poor Stephen, who was lost in Australia. You were telling me you love Phoebe. Why, I knew that months ago."

"And does she know it?" he asked, eagerly; "and will she ever love me? Does she know who I am? Does she know that I have not even a name to offer her? Did she ever hear you call me Corp'ral?"

"Have I ever called you that, Cor?" I asked.

"No," he said; "but look here, Miss Margery. I say I am what you have made me. I owe myself to you, and I am glad of it. If I never know what a good woman's love is except yours, I shalt thank God every day of my life that I ever saw your face. No, you ought not to have left me where you found me. I am both a happy and useful man; not happy just now perhaps: but I shall be when I've got over it, supposing Phoebe does not care a straw for me. You'll always be the same for me; you'll never change towards poor Cor Bell."

"Never!" I said. But just then we heard a merry little laugh, and through the nick of the door, which had been pushed a little way open, noiselessly, we saw Phoebe's face sparkling in upon us, with the dimple in her cheek as deep again as usual. Cor's face flushed all over, and his eyes brightened like the surface of a pool when the sunbeams fall upon it, and he sprang to his feet; but he was too shy to venture to open the door wider.

"You were talking secrets," said Phoebe, pouting a little, and staying where she was. "I shall give you my message, and run away again."

"No, no!" ; cried Cor, in a half-frightened tone. "I am just going away, and then you'll have Miss Margery to yourself. Do come in."

"I cannot come in," she said, petulantly. "Mr. Russell is waiting in the street for me, and I must make haste. Margery, Cousin Moss hopes you will go and have tea with aunt and me to-morrow at your uncle's old house. I promised you should, for I knew I could make you go; and it's the first day of my Easter holidays. So good-night and good-bye, dear Margery. Good-night, Mr. Bell."

She was gone before either of us could answer, and we heard her light footstep running down the two flights of stairs into the street, Mr. Russell was the assistant-schoolmaster, a clever young man, and one who could marry any day he chose. Cor's face grew pale and grave; but he did not mention Phoebe's name again. Neither was he in a hurry to go, as he had said to her. We sat talking together long after it was quite dusk in my little room; but I did not draw the curtain across the window, for through it the almost full moon, and an evening star above it, were shining with as friendly a light as ever they had shone through my window at home. To-morrow, as Phoebe had said, would be the first of the Easter holidays---the day before Good Friday. Phoebe's holidays lasted a whole week, during which her employers saved the amount of her salary. I sometimes thought how much more she would have enjoyed them if she were not losing her week's income. Ten shillings were so little to them, and so much to her.

It was partly with a thought of Phoebe that Cor proposed to come on Good Friday morning, and go to the Abbey Service with me. However, he left me at last, giving my hand a hearty clasp, which my fingers could not return, though my heart went out towards him. I called after him down the stairs to ask him to look in at Uncle Simister's old house to-morrow evening, and walk home with Phoebe and me, if he could spare the time; and his voice had a cheery ring in it as he called back, "Ay, ay, Miss Margery!"

Then I stood looking out through my closed window; for I was too old now to fling it open as I used to do when I was young, though I liked to watch the clear, bright moon, with its little faithful star shining beside it in the sky, as much as in those old times. Though my body had grown worn out enough to have aches and pains such as I had never thought of then, my heart was fuller than ever of love for all the beautiful works God has to show to his children. Besides, I was thinking of how the same moon had looked down hundreds of years ago, through the thick branches of the olive-trees in Gethsemane, upon Him, my Lord and Master, who was forsaken, denied, betrayed, and crucified! What was any loneliness or poverty of mine compared to his? Had He not found a home for me, though He had no shelter for Himself? Had He not given me friends, though His own disciples forsook Him and fled? Who had forsaken or denied me? Where was my cross? Christ read the answers to these questions in my heart of love and thankfulness to Him which was all open to his sight. After that I went on thinking how the soft light of the moon was falling upon the roofs all around me, just as it had shone upon the roofs in Jerusalem, under which Caiaphas was sleeping, and Pontius Pilate, and the chief priests; God giving them sleep, though before they slept again they would have lifted up their hands to take away the life of His beloved Son. The women, too, the mother of our Lord, and Mary and Martha at Bethany, under the same roof as their dear Lord Christ, how were they sleeping, knowing nothing of what was going to happen the next day! I wondered if Judas, the traitor, slept and acted over in his dreams the shameful part he was to take in earnest when night fell again upon the earth. Did he picture himself, with the lighted lantern in his hand, threading in and out amongst the trees till he found the Master, and so drawing near to Him to kiss Him with his faithless lips, with the red glare falling on his own traitor's face? Did Judas dream of it beforehand, and see that blessed face all wan from the agony, and those reproaching eyes, dim and sunken with watching and weeping? It was his last sleep; for Judas would never sleep again.

Then I remembered it was the last sleep of my Lord also, the last night that He would lay His weary head down upon a pillow, and close His eyes heavy with fatigue and care. A day of sorrow and a night of wakeful anguish, and then the crucifixion lay before Him, and He knew it, saw it clearly and distinctly, but surely He slept that night; for "God giveth His beloved sleep."

All this while upon the roofs of London, just as upon the roofs of Jerusalem, there was brooding the soft, silent moonlight, like God's silent love brooding over the evil and the good.

As I turned away from the window to the fire, which had burned down into a small, gleedy handful of glowing embers, the remembrance of Stephen rushed across me, as it had done once before that evening, whilst I was talking to Cor. What was it that made me yearn so after Stephen that night?

The next day was Phoebe's holiday, and in the afternoon we walked together along the busy, noisy streets between Westminster and Ludgate Hill, which always make me wonder if there really can be any quiet and lonely lanes anywhere in country places. Mrs. Moss, who was a native of London, and not used to much walking, went before us in an omnibus. It was a yearly treat we had had ever since my uncle's death; and naturally a greater treat to me than the others, because I enjoyed seeing my old home again, and rubbing up all the memories of uncle Simister, which might otherwise have grown dull, or faded away altogether out of my mind.

I shall never forget that day. It was so bright, that even the narrow streets seemed running over with sunshine, and one's heart danced to see it after the long and dreary winter. Mrs. Moss had reached the house some time before us, and was ready to receive us as the mistress; for she liked to have everything done in style, as she called it. She had put on her best widow's cap which she always wore a little on one side, as if she was too afflicted to be careful about it being quite straight, though she had to pin it down to the skullcap underneath. Her hands were half covered with black silk mittens, for she was of a genteel family, her mother's father having been a clergyman, and her own husband a clerk in a London bank; which made it harder and more humbling for her to be an almswoman than for me, as she very often said, shedding tears over her lost position in society. That was one reason why I was afraid for Cor. Even if Phoebe cared for him, Mrs. Moss would be very hard to win over, for she was always telling Phoebe she must recollect she did not belong to the common herd below her, and that she must not consort with common people. How then would she ever consent to her marrying my poor Cor?

There was not a prettier sight in London than to see Phoebe getting the tea ready; not allowing me to put a hand to anything, no, not so much as to toast a crumpet. She turned up her new dress, and pinned it behind, showing her scarlet petticoat, and her pretty little feet stepping so daintily and quickly about the kitchen, as she searched for the tea things, the tray, and the cups, and the spoons, and the knives: now and then standing and gazing earnestly at the table, with knitted eyebrows and the gravest of faces, as if getting tea for four persons was more difficult than playing a piece of music on the piano. It was quite pleasant to watch her put the old black kettle to sit on the topmost bar of the grate, as carefully as if it had been the brightest copper, and gather the gleediest coals below it, to make it sing a long time before it boiled, because she liked to hear a kettle sing, she said. She counted us twice upon her fingers, though there were only four of us, with Mr. Moss in the shop below, before scooping spoonsful of tea out of the caddy into the old earthenware tea-pot; and she made a great fuss about the water boiling, though the steam had been coming out of the spout and from under the lid of the kettle like a little steam-engine for some minutes. After that with a very serious attention, she set about cutting bread and butter, and trying to place the slices in a pattern on the plates.

She was doing this when we heard a step coming up the stairs, slowly and uncertainly, like the tread of a stranger groping his way in the dark. I thought of Cor, but he could not come at this hour of the day, and besides he knew the staircase almost as well as me or Mr. Moss, who could have gone up and down it in our sleep, and never stumbled. It was a dark, winding staircase, no step of it being straight, and more than one cracked, so that they gave way under one's feet; and there was no light save one small pane of glass let into the kitchen door. We turned our eyes, every one of us, towards this pane, and saw, when the foot reached the highest step, the dull, dim outline of a man's face gazing in upon us; nothing more than a dull, dim outline, and that the face of a stranger.

Yet, why I could not tell, my heart fluttered, as a bird flutters in your hand just as your fingers are about to loose it, and let it fly out into the bright sunshine and free air. My breath grew hurried, and my eyes were dazed; but I felt chained to my seat, as if I could neither stir nor speak. Mrs. Moss half rose from her chair, but sank down again with an air of stateliness, crossing her hands on her lap; whilst Phoebe, with her dressed tucked up, and her hair tossed back from her heated face, stood motionless for a moment or two, staring at the dim, strange face. But just as she recovered herself enough to take a step forward the door opened, and the full figure of the stranger stood in the doorway.

Yes, it was a stranger, tall and large, a man of middle age, with a long beard, and with hair that half concealed his face. But his eyes had a light in them that made me think of the sunshine as it used to be when I was a girl---brighter, and stronger, and clearer than it ever is now. After I had once looked into his eyes I saw nothing else; for all at once there came flashing into my brain the fields at home aiid the flowers in the garden, and the light in the sky behind the hill. I stood up trembling, trembling. The stranger turned from one to the other of us three; and then, in a voice of doubt, a voice almost of disappointment, I think, he said, "Mr. Moss told me my sister Margery was here!"

That was enough. I could not stir, but I stretched out my arms towards him, crying, "Stevie! Stevie!"; and the next moment I felt his arms about me, and his breath upon my cheek. It was a rapture very full of pain, for the place seemed to whirl round me, and I cried aloud as I clung to Stephen; yet when Phoebe came near me, I pushed her away I did not want to touch, or hear, or see any one else just then except Stephen, my boy Stevie! It was such a strange thing you see. To think that all the day had been passing by just the same as a common day, whilst he was coming nearer and nearer to me, like one come back from the grave almost, and I had never felt or thought that he was coming! I could not be quite sure that he was there, though I held his hand, and, as well as my dimmed eyes could see, looked into his face. It was such a changed face, too; changed, yet the same, as we shall be when we stand in the presence of God. It was the boy Stevie that had gone away, it was the man Stephen that had come back; and just at first that made his coming back at all still stranger to me.

But it was the voice of Mrs. Moss that brought me back to my common senses, and made the day feel more like other days again. She had a mild, wailing voice, which often made us remember how much she had had to suffer in losing her rank in life.

"I wonder at you, Phoebe, my dear," she said, "to stand in that way, and not have a word to say, when Miss Margery's brother is come, that we've heard her talk of so often, and nobody says he's welcome now he is come. don't you see Miss Margery's too overcome to introduce us to him, and you stand staring as if you'd never been taught any manners. This is Miss Moss, my niece, sir, and I'm Mrs. Moss, not much known in society now, but used to be in better days, and much sought after."

Mrs. Moss half rose from her chair again, making a little bow; but Phoebe came up to Stephen, and put her hand in his, whilst her face flushed and smiled, though tears stood in her eyes. All that roused me, and I looked more closely at Stephen.

No, I should not have known him again. He was quite a gentleman now, and I might have passed him a hundred times in the streets, and though perhaps a waft of memory might have crossed my mind like a little flying breeze, bringing the scent of blossoms with it, I should never have thought that this grand-looking stranger was my lost brother. I could not help sighing for this, yet as I looked at him I grew prouder, ay, and fonder of him, even than I had been when he was a boy; though that is saying a great deal. I tried to remember how old he was, but I could not; I could only think that he was here beside me.

"Stevie," I said, sighing again for very gladness; "you're not a boy now!"

"No, Margery," he answered, smiling his old smile. "I'm an old married man, with a daughter as old as this young lady here."

"A daughter!" I repeated. "Married, Stephen!"

It seemed to make such a difference in the world. Stephen come back, but not alone, as he went out!

"Yes," he said, "I have a wife and four children; but they are not in London yet. I came overland, and they are following me by sea."

I did not understand how he had come home by land, for I always thought you must go a long voyage to reach Australia; But there would be plenty of time to ask Stephen about that at another time.

"Have you been successful?" I asked. "Are you content with going?"

"Pretty well," he said. "I've prospered pretty well; but a wife and family are not kept upon nothing, Margery."

He glanced across at Mrs. Moss and Phoebe, as if he did not wish to enter into any particulars before them. The tea was quite ready, and Phoebe was hovering about the table, looking perplexed and embarrassed. Mr. Moss had just come up from the shop, and now he came forward and shook Stephen very heartily by the hand.

"To think this meeting should come off here of all places in London!" he exclaimed; "in your Uncle Simister's old house! Welcome back to old England, sir, and welcome to London, and welcome to my poor table! You'll stay and take tea with us, sir, I hope?"

"Do stay, Stevie!" I said, bending my face down to his dear hand and kissing it.

"I can stay till eight o'clock," he answered, looking at his watch; "and I shall be very glad of a cup of tea."

So he sat down at the table beside me. Every movement and every word of his brought back to my memory some manner of his, some trick of the eye, or mouth, or hand, that made me see in him the boy Stevie again.

"So your Uncle Simister is dead?" said Stephen.

"Yes," answered Mr. Moss; "going on for ten or eleven years ago now. He left all he had to Miss Margery, sir; everything, business and all; she was quite an heiress, you know."

That was a worn-out joke of Mr. Moss, which he repeated to every stranger. He said it sounded so well, and would make them think more of me; but no one who saw my rusty black gown would think me an heiress.

"How was it you never wrote to me?" I asked, for now my joy was quiet enough for me to remember the dark sorrow that had dwelt with me all these weary years.

"How was it you never wrote to me?" he repeated. "The last letter I had told me you were come here to live with your Uncle Simister; and I never heard again. That was why I came to this house to inquire after you. Ah, Margery! time has changed us, both of us."

"I wish I'd known," I said; "I should have been happier if I'd known you were alive and well."

"But you have been happy all these years?" he said.

"Surely," I answered. "Happier than I ever thought to be when I left home! I've found friends in London, good friends, and I have a peaceful home, and good health, and blessings without stint. I only wanted to hear of you to be happier than I could tell."

"Margery is always happy," said Phoebe; "she is the happiest woman I know; and she is always trying to make somebody else happy."

"Like the old Margery at home!" ; said Stephen, looking at me with his pleasant eyes till my heart leaped within me for very gladness.

"I never knew any one like her," Phoebe went on, "for giving things away. She might have been quite a rich woman by now, only she cannot bear to keep anything to herself."

I knew what Phoebe was thinking of and I could not help smiling. Those few pounds that I had laid by in the Savings Bank, after Uncle Simister's death, had come in famously to pay some of Cor's expenses. For Cor had been studying and saving, and starving himself, to get through his examinations before he could become a doctor, and now he was on the very point of success. Would any woman, knowing Cor, keep that money lying by uselessly, when it was worth so much to him?

"I wonder at you, Phoebe, my dear," said Mrs. Moss, "to hear you talk such nonsense about rich women indeed! As if you knew anything about riches or ladies, poor child! as your poor aunt does, taking tea with them very different to this, with servants in livery, and silver trays, and the best china going round. Rich ladies they were, quite so, but you know nothing about them, more's the pity, and you surprise me talking so before Miss Margery's brother from Australia."

Phoebe coloured up to the very roots of her hair; and Mrs. Moss shook her head slowly and looked mournfully into the fire.

"So Uncle Simister left you all he had, as well as father?" said Stephen, in a half whisper.

"Yes," I answered.

We did not say any more, either about his affairs or mine, for Stephen seemed fettered by the presence of strangers. But he told us many strange things of life in Australia; and the time flew by like a dream, till he looked at his watch, and said that he must go.

I clung to him for a minute, holding him fast in my arms. I could scarcely bear to let him go. Once more he seemed like my little brother Stevie again, whom I had been proud to nurse when he was a baby, and to wait on as a boy. Oh! those happy days! Those early, golden days! The days we had gone picking cowslips together in the meadows, or tossing about the scented hay, or gleaning after the harvest waggon, or breaking off the icicles under the eaves! They seemed to be going away with him again. Happiness has its pangs as well as sorrow.

Stephen was gone. The great solemn-sounding clock of St. Paul's was striking some hour, but what I did not know, for time was nothing to me that night. Phoebe took Stephen's seat, and put her arms round me, and laid her head upon my shoulder. We could not talk much, for I was too happy for speech, and she did not wish to break through my silence. That mute caress of hers, the childish resting of her dear head against my neck, was enough to show me her sympathy. It was a silence of deep gladness, and I do not know how long it might have lasted, if Mrs. Moss had not interrupted it in a mournful voice.

"Mr. Bede has taken all the spirit of the evening away with him," she said, "when nobody has a word to say, either good or bad; and good it ought to be with such good luck come, and people should be thankful to Providence for it, when it doesn't come to me, though I'm a widow, and the Bible making so many promises to widows, and none to old maids."

"But I am thankful---very," I said, "only I don't know how I shall thank God for this. I can find no words strong enough to thank Him. It seems almost as if He was giving me too much. But I think He takes my gladness for thanks."

I thought so then in my inmost heart, and I think so still; for how can a mother be better satisfied than with the delight of her little child over the gift she puts into his hands, even if he has no words to thank her, but can only kiss her before running away to play with his new toy? I was so full of joy that I could not speak of it even to Him who had brought Stephen home to me; but I was not afraid that He would misunderstand me.

Just as I finished speaking we heard the cracked step at the foot of the stairs creaking under a man's tread; but the step came bounding up the staircase quite differently from Stephen's. Phoebe lifted up her head from my shoulder, and sat upright on her chair, for we both knew who was coming. Cor's face was framed for half a minute in the pane of glass in the door, looking in eagerly---almost hungrily, like the time when he used to stare through the windows at the loaves in the bakers' shops. It is not bread alone that one hungers and famishes for; and love is as needful for the soul as food for the body.

"Oh, Cor!" ; cried Phoebe, as he opened the door, "Margery's brother Stephen is come home again!"

You should have seen Cor's face. It always seemed to me to say more than other people's tongues. It was never a heavy, fixed, set, stone-like face, like many others; but it always showed something of what was going on in his mind, like one of those half-transparent windows that show how much light or darkness there is within. First there was bewilderment, then surprise, and then a burst of strong, sunny pleasure beaming all over his face; and he came up straight to me, almost as if he did not see Phoebe.

"I never was so glad before," he cried, in his true hearty voice; "it's the best news I ever heard! Tell me all about it, Miss Margery."

But my voice trembled so I could not tell him anything, and Phoebe was obliged to do it. It was so pleasant to hear the whole strange story of the evening told by Phoebe, whilst Cor listened with his beaming face!

"And where is he staying?" asked Cor.

That question puzzled us all. Stephen had never said where he was staying. We had been so busy talking of other things, and he had gone away at last in so much haste, that I had not thought of asking, and he had forgotten to say. Neither had I told him of my little attic in Westminster. For the first minute I felt troubled; but what need was there to be troubled? He knew where he could find me out; and Mr. Moss promised to stay at home the next day, though it was Good Friday, until Stephen had been to inquire where I lived.

It was a pleasant walk home that night, with Cor on one side of me and Phoebe on the other. I wished that everybody we met could be made partakers of my joy, as Cor was, for his face was brighter than I had ever seen it. All the city seemed different; there was not so much sorrow, or pain, or poverty in it. The buildings looked grander in the dimmed light, and the darkness hid the foulness of the streets. Overhead the sky was very clear and cloudless, and the full moon shone down upon us as if it knew how happy I was.

The next morning I was up as soon as the sun rose, to put my room in perfect order, lest Stephen should come before everything looked its best. I knew how to make the most of every nook and corner in my little nest. It had grown like me, I think; and surely, if the Lord Christ thinks it worth His while to prepare a place for us in His Father's house, it ought to be worth our while to make our own place here fit for us as long as He leaves us in it. Our dwelling-places are but little worlds wherein we should work, even as God did, till He saw everything He had made, and behold it was very good. In my sight, also, my little room was very good, when at length it was ready for Stephen to come in.

There was so much I wanted to ask him; but chief and first I wanted to hear all about his wife and those four children, my nieces and nephews, whom I loved already with a great love. I knew he could not be with me very early, for he would have to call upon Mr. Moss to find out where I was living. But after the bells began to ring from one church tower after another, and the deep-toned chimes of the abbey swung their solemn tones out into the quiet air, then I listened and waited, with my door open a little way, that the instant his foot trod the lowest step, I might hurry out to meet him. I heard a step after a while, but it was Phoebe's coming up very softly, and her sweet face, only second to Stephen's, peeped in upon me smiling.

"Come in, Phoebe," I said; "there is no one else here yet."

"Margery," she said, throwing her arms round my neck, "dear old Margery! I'm nearly beside myself with joy."

She had brought a bunch of blue violets with her, almost as sweet as wild white violets in the hedge-rows about Condover. I liked to see her putting them, one by one, very tenderly, into a wine-glass filled with water. I could scarcely believe Stephen was a man of middle age, and I an old woman with white hair; so young did the scent of the violets make me feel---young enough to be the companion of Phoebe, with her pretty face.

"You're not coming to the abbey?" she said, after she had put the flowers on the mantel-shelf.

"I dare not," I answered; "perhaps he might come whilst I was away. And I'm almost too happy to go anywhere, even to the abbey. If Stephen did not come, I'd rather be alone with God."

Then the thought crossed me, did my Lord Christ ever feel so much joy whilst He was upon earth? And I remembered how He said that the shepherd, when he has found his lost sheep, cometh home rejoicing, and calleth his friends and neighbours to rejoice with him; over one sinner, not many only, over one there is rejoicing in heaven. That was the joy of our Lord; and He left his joy amongst us. My joy also was over my lost one come home, my dead one alive again; though he had not come back a prodigal, in rags and want, seeking help from me. Yet I should not have been much less happy if he had.

All this while Phoebe's dainty fingers were busy about me, putting my cap straight, and pinning my collar round my neck, and smoothing my hair. Then she kissed me again.

"You're the nicest old woman in London, Margery, she said; "and your brother will be as proud of you as I am."

It pleased me to hear the child say such things, though I did not believe them any more than a mother believes all the foolish, fond words her children say to her as true. After she was gone, hour after hour passed by slowly but sweetly. I was alone with God; even Stephen did not come; but he was in the same city as myself, and the very thought of that was gladness. It was as if we were both gathered under the shelter of one wing, and any moment might bring him close beside me. "How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings." Yes; but had not Stephen been under the covert of the other wing? and now he was here, near me, and before long I should hear his voice and see his face again.

All the day passed by, and I waited, watched, listened for Stephen. Phoebe came in two or three times, restless and impatient, as young creatures are, for our suspense to end. Towards evening, Cor also came, stealing up the stairs and standing outside the door for a minute, to make sure I was alone before he knocked. When at last it grew too late for me to hope for that night, I locked the door and lay down upon my bed, with the moonlight filling my room, and making me so wakeful I could not fall asleep; but with the same peaceful feeling all within me and without, that Stephen and I were under the shadow and refuge of God's wing.

Still, the next day Stephen never came. Phoebe went up to Pilgrim Street to inquire if he had been there; but though Mr. Moss had stayed in all day he had seen nothing of him. On the Sunday again I remained at home, not too happy now to join the public congregation, but with a dread upon me that some news might come of Stephen, and the house would be closed; for Mrs. Brown was gone down into the country to spend Easter with her daughter, leaving all the office keys with me. It was a long and anxious day, though it was the day when the Lord had risen from the grave, and his first words had been, "Woman, why weepest thou?" Well, the Lord knew that there was much, very much, for women to weep for; and if my tears came that day, He said to me very tenderly, not reproachfully, "Woman, why weepest thou?" and I answered, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest!"

I could never tell you of the long suspense, with hope flickering about me like the will-o'-the wisp on the swampy lands at home, till its dancing, unsteady light faded into a dull, fixed fear. I will tell you what that fear was. Sometimes strangers have been lost for ever in the streets of London. Cor knew, and I knew that there were snares and dens into which a stranger like Stephen might be beguiled, and never be heard of again. He was well-dressed, and Mr. Moss said his watch and the jewellery about him, which I had not noticed, were of great value. We had no clue whatever as to where he had come from, or where he had vanished to. It was a horrible thing to dread, but I saw it in Cor's face long before he put it into words. Not that even then I felt as if either Stephen or I had been driven out of the shelter of God's wing, but it is dark sometimes there; and therefore it is called the shadow of His wing. All is shadow here, even the love and care of our Father; all but a shadow, and at times it is very dark. But I had a great help and comfort in Cor. He knew the worst haunts of the terrible city, and he began to search them cautiously and closely, not often asking the aid of the police; for he could go where they dared not, and could gain information withheld from them. For you remember the city was Cor's native ground, his birth-place; and here and there, as he told me, he met with old crones, and miserable aged men, sunk deep in the mire of wretchedness and drunkenness, who remembered his mother, and called him by his old name of Corp'ral Bell. Poor Cor! he suffered almost as much as I did.

Yet think of what had befallen me. Stephen had come back after many years, for a few minutes only; and then he had been swallowed up into the same awful silence and darkness again, which seemed a hundred times darker and more silent than before. And now Cor, to seek after him, was going down, down into the horrible pit of sin, and foulness, and misery, so deep in London; from which he had been rescued himself, but where his mother had perished. I saw his face bearing the cloud of a growing sadness every time he came to tell me what he had seen. Even his love for Phoebe seemed almost to fade away before his bewildered sympathy and horror, for he had almost forgotten the misery and crime of his birth-place. Cor's face, as he talked to me, was sad and pain-stricken. What was my sorrow to the wretchedness down there? Mine was but a shadow; but theirs was a thick darkness, a darkness that was spreading like a heavy thunder-cloud over Cor's soul.

I said Cor did not make many inquiries from the police; but still he found out what men were on beat about that part of the city the night Stephen disappeared; but they knew nothing of him, and had seen no one like the description we gave of him. I was afraid that Cor might pass him without knowing him, for be had not seen Stephen; and when Mrs. Moss and Phoebe said what they thought he was like, I should not have known who they were trying to describe. The spring days were growing longer, and as soon as my brief task of house-work was over I used to wander out till dusk, going along one street after another; sometimes catching a distant glimpse of a figure that looked like Stephen, and following it as swiftly as I could, until I lost sight of it in the crowd, or overtaking it, discovered that it was a mistake. I was strong still for my age, and used to walking, and my heart kept up my power. So I wandered about like one lost in a maze thronged with people, all seeking something, and never finding it.

Most of my walks had been east of Temple Bar; for I had never expected to meet with Stephen anywhere except in the city. But one evening after tea, as I turned out of my quiet street, my eye was caught by the figure of a man tall and large, with a thick beard, who was walking quickly in the direction of the Queen's palace. I followed him as fast as I could; but about half way across the Green Park I lost sight of him. It was a pleasant evening in May, warm and soft, with bright rays from the sun low in the west, which lit up the fresh green leaves, that even in London were bursting from their satiny sheaths. There were not many persons about, for all the grand people had gone home to dinner; and it was too late for children to be out, excepting those children of the poor who are always free to stay away from their miserable homes as long as they will. There was a stillness and a coolness about the half-deserted place, after the stir and closeness of the streets, that seemed to soothe me; like a soft hand laid upon me, instead of the heavy load I had borne about with me since Easter.

So I strolled on along the green paths, a poor, solitary, grey-headed woman. I loitered under the leafy trees, from which the sunshine was dying away, until it was quite gone; and then, finding myself near a gate opening on to that pleasant end of Piccadilly where there are fine mansions overlooking the park, I passed through it, intending to go home along the streets, looking everywhere, but now almost without hope, for Stephen.

I had not gone very far along under the houses, before I came to one bright with flowers; for they were planted out on every window-sill, from the basement to the attics, and they were now glimmering in the twilight, as the flowers used to glimmer in my own garden at home. I could not help but stand for a minute against the railings opposite to it, and look at the rich colours, the scarlet, and amber, and purple of the hothouse blossoms, so different from my own hardy flowers, but not more beautiful. It was the dinner-hour for the great folks who lived there, and the shutters were not yet closed. I had never seen any table laid so grandly, with fine white linen, and shining silver, and sparkling glass. A man-servant was lighting the gas in the chandelier that hung glittering over the centre of it; and a young lady, dressed in white, was putting some last touches to a great nosegay of flowers on the table. She was as pretty and sweet-looking as Phoebe herself, and my heart yearned towards her. The fair, delicate young creature! as fair as the lilies she was touching. There are lilies in God's garden that toil not and spin not, and this was one of them.

But at this moment, just as the servant was stepping forward to shut out the pretty picture from me, the door at the back of the room was opened, and there stood in the doorway---was it possible? Could it be possible? or did my eyes and heart deceive me?

There seemed to stand Stephen, my brother, who had disappeared so strangely on the eve before Good Friday! He was smiling, and his face was as pleasant to me as in the days when he was a boy, and used to come home every week from school. I had to catch at the railings, for my limbs trembled, and I stretched my head forward, as if to see him more clearly; but just then the blinds were drawn down in my face, and everything was hidden from my eyes.

I wonder if any one would have stayed to think, and reason, and decide? I was as hungry for his voice and touch as ever a mother was when she knew her son was safe at home again, after being far away for many years. There was no time to think. Stephen was there in that room, with nothing between us but a thin, transparent pane of glass---he for whom I had been grieving---grieving through long sleepless nights and weary waking days. I did not ask how it was that Stephen was there alive and well. Do you think that Martha and Mary waited to ask any questions when Lazarus came back from the grave, before they clasped him in their arms, and begged of him to speak, that they might drink in the sound of a voice they never thought to hear again? I could not wait. How I reached the door, trembling with gladness as I was, I scarcely knew; but I did reach it, and I knocked and rang till the house echoed with the noise.

A servant must have been in waiting, for the door was flung wide open in an instant, and I saw into a hall brilliantly lit up, and I caught the flutter of a white dress flying up the staircase. The man who stood in the doorway started when he saw me; but as I was pressing into the house, he put out his arm to stop me.

Hallo!" he said, "I thought you was Sir Francis and Lady Pembridge a-coming."

"Stephen Bede is here!" ; I cried, scarcely knowing what I said.

"This is Mr. Stephen Bede's residence," answered the servant; but you can't see him unless you are one of the invited guests. I thought you was one of 'em; but I suppose I'm mistaken. I took you for nobody less than my Lady Pembridge."

He spoke with mingled contempt and anger; but I did not care for either.

"I must see him!" I said, urgently. "I believed be was lost or dead. Tell him that I must see him."

"And pray who may you be, I'd like to know?" said the man; but before I could speak again I heard Stephen's voice calling from the dining-room in the clear, loud tones of a master.

"Take that lady into the breakfast-room, Coombes," he said. "I will see her for a moment."

My feet faltered as I crossed the hail, and my head felt giddy. The dining-room door was closed as we passed it to reach a door beyond. It was a smaller room, and duller, with only one light burning. But at the square table in the centre there sat a little girl, with her elbows on the table, and her head resting on her hands, reading a book before her; just as I had often seen Stephen sit of a winter evening at my little round table, in the chimney-corner at home. Her short hair fell over her forehead just as his had done; and when she glanced up at me there was the same far-away look in her eyes as his, when father or I had spoken suddenly to him. But I had not time to say a word to this child, for the door opened again hurriedly; and as I turned I saw Stephen, no longer smiling and pleasant, but with a thunder-cloud upon his handsome face. He cried, as he came in, in a voice of passion, though very low, "Margery, whatever brings you here?" and the little girl sprang to her feet, and stood gazing at him in alarm and wonder. As his eye fell upon her, he spoke more gently.

"Run away, Maggie," he said. "I want to speak to this person alone."

She lingered, looking inquisitively at me; but Stephen took her by the shoulder and put her out of the room, taking care to shut and lock the door after her.

"Now," he said, between his teeth, his face pale with passion, as he came close up to me, yet without touching me, "what on earth has brought you here?"

"Stephen!" I cried.

"Ay," he went on, "what evil luck helped you to find me out, here and now, just at this moment? I would not have you seen and known here for thousands of pounds!"

"Have you been hiding from me, Stevie?" I asked, with a strange pain at my heart, as if life itself was being torn away from me.

"Hiding from you?" he said. "Well, I was not exactly anxious for you to find me out. Do you think you are any credit to a household like this, or to me? I was a fool to make myself known to you at all; but I felt kindly towards you. I'll give you any money you like to keep away. I don't want to be unkind to you, Margery, but you force me to it."

"Me?" I said.

"Yes," he went on; "what did you follow me here for? I intended to come and see you as soon as I had time and if you wanted anything I'd give it you. I wonder what my wife and children would think of you if they saw you, and heard you call me brother---my wife, the cousin of Lady Pembridge! No, it will not do. You are no more than my half-sister, and I cannot and will not have you fasten yourself upon me."

Think what cruel words those were for Stephen to say to me! I stood before him bewildered and stupefied, looking into his dear face, every word falling upon me like a blow, as if he meant to break my heart. Once I tried to stretch out my hand, as if that would ward them off; but it was my lame hand, and it fell feebly to my side.

"Stephen!" I cried, hearing my own wailing voice as if it belonged to somebody else, who was nigh unto death, "Stevie! my boy Stevie!"

"Hush!" he said, putting his hand over my mouth,---hush! Tell me quickly if you want money from me, and go! There is the dinner-bell ringing. Margery, you must go at once, and never think of coming here again."

"Never come again, Stephen?" I said.

"No, I tell you!" ; he answered, roughly. "If I want to see you, I'll come to you. You must go now."

I tried to move towards the door, for he had put his hand on my shoulder as he had done to the child when he turned her out of the room; but everything grew suddenly dark around me, as black as the deepest night, and Stephen's voice sounded miles and miles away, and I could not understand what he was saying. It was very chilly and cold, as if icy waters were closing over my head, and one thought was in my mind---that I had come to the dark river of death, and was going down into it. But, if so, where was the light on the other shore? There was nothing but thick darkness and icy waters. Where, then, was "the brother born for adversity," the Lord Christ? Had He forsaken me as well as Stephen?

I think that must have been the sting there used to be in death. But I was not dying, though I knew nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, until my eyelids, which seemed very sore and heavy, lifted themselves a little, and I saw that I was in the same room; but Stephen was gone. A middle-aged woman stood beside me bathing my lips and forehead; and the child I had seen before was opposite me, looking eagerly into my face. I felt that I was shivering, and I heard myself moaning, and listened as if it were somebody else in trouble. At last my voice came back, and I whispered, "Where am I?"

"You are in our house," said the child, with tears running down her cheeks. "don't be frightened, poor woman. We will be very kind to you."

It was such a fresh, young, pitiful voice, so childish and clear, that it quite roused me, and I looked closely into the little anxious face.

"Who are you, dear child?" I whispered again.

"Maggie Bede," she answered; "and you're in my papa's house. We are all come from Australia, and this is our house while we're in London."

My eyelids closed again, in spite of myself, and my head fell back wearily. All Stephen had said, the cruel, bitter words, came back slowly but distinctly, one by one; and at my heart there was a strange pain, an aching pain, sharp and piercing, yet aching as well, which did not pass away. But there was some relief to me when the tears forced their way under my closed eyelids, and slid slowly down my face.

"Don't cry, poor woman," said the child, with a faltering voice; "we are going to be very kind to you. Here is nurse with some wine for you. Oh; don't cry!"

"You'll feel better when you've drunk some of this," said the woman, holding a glass of wine to my lips; but I could not swallow it, though my tongue was parched and my throat dry. It seemed too great a mockery for them to give me Stephen's wine to drink, when it was he who had forsaken me. I remembered the words in the psalm, "In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink," and I pushed away the woman's hand.

"It will choke me," I said. "I want nothing, save to rest till I am strong enough to go."

I was fighting hard against the sharpness and the bitterness of my grief; but I could not rise up again all at once from the stroke that had laid me low. Stephen had purposely forsaken me, not once but twice. In his prosperity in Australia he had wilfully kept silent, and left me a prey to many fears for his life and safety. Now he had cast me off with reproaches that broke my heart. I could hear the gay voices and laughter of him and his companions in the next room, whilst he knew that I was poor, and lonely, and desolate. It was a very hard moment in my life.

"I'm quite ready to go away now," I said, after a while; "it is time for me to go."

"Will you leave your name and address for Mr. Bede?" said the nurse, looking very curiously at me.

"He knows both," I answered; "but I'll leave a message for him. Tell him I shall never forget what he said, and I'll obey him. Yes, I'll do what he wishes."

"Will you come and see him again?" asked the child, whose eyes were full of tears, and her mouth quivering.

"No, never again!" ; I cried. "Be sure you tell him that. I'll never trouble him any more; but I'll pray God to bless him and his children. don't forget to tell him that."

"You're scarcely fit to go yet," said the nurse.

"Oh, yes, I am," I answered. "I shall feel better in the fresh air. This place stifles me. I should like to go away now."

I tried to tie my bonnet, but could not, and the woman did it for me, the child looking on with wondering but loving eyes. Then she ran to the table, and fetched the book she was reading when I came in, and put it into my hand.

"I haven't finished reading it all through," she said; "but it's a beautiful fairy-tale book, and I'm sure you'll like to read it when you get home. Papa says we ought to be very kind and good to all poor people."

She lifted her pretty face up to me, as if she expected me to kiss her in return; but the nurse drew her back sharply, and glanced angrily at her. Yet Stephen's child belonged to me by blood, and I felt how near akin she was to me, spite of all my anger against him. For I was angry even to great wrath, such as I had never felt before in all my life. I crept feebly through the hall, catching a glimpse of him and his party in the dining-room; and then the front door was opened and closed after me, and I stood alone in the streets.

I could not move on at first, and I stayed in the portico, leaning against one of the pillars. How many, many years older I was than when I crossed the door-sill less than an hour ago! I had not been a very old, infirm woman then; but the shock and the swoon---the only swoon I had ever had---seem to have smitten to the very roots of my life and strength. I was very old now, very feeble, and very aged.

With this strange feeling of being stricken all, at once into old age, there came a strong yearning after my home near Condover. The trees in the park opposite made me think with longing of the woods lying all around it, and of the fresh country air that used to fan me, and of the lowing of oxen and the songs of birds during the day, and of the deep lulling stillness of the night-time. When the Lord Christ was passing along the streets of Jerusalem, thronged by a noisy crowd, and bearing His cross, I wonder whether He thought with longing for a moment of the quiet hills round Nazareth, and of his mother's simple home?

"Come, you must move on," said a policeman, as he saw me in the portico of Stephen's house; and I gathered up all my remaining strength, and wandered painfully towards my attic. No need now to look everywhere for Stephen! No need to be troubled for him! It was a very long, very toilsome way I had to walk. All the whirl and din of London seemed to come beating against me. How hard the flagstones were to my feet! and how the street lamps flickered in my eyes! I felt a pity for myself. What a lonely, helpless old woman! forlorn and forsaken in this great city! very infirm and poor, and her only brother had deserted her, and cast her off roughly in her old age! I wished I could crawl home, not to Westminster, but to the dear old home where Stephen had been my boy. Once there, I could die.

"Is he your only brother?" said a low, quiet voice to me, whether in my ear or in my heart I could scarcely tell. "Is Stephen your only brother?" A horror of a thick darkness was coming over my soul, like the awful thunder-clouds I had sometimes seen rising behind the hill at home, making all its green and sunny slopes look very grey and wan, as if it too had been suddenly stricken with age. No. There was another Brother, the Son of God, who had been made like unto us in all things, and had suffered like us, being tempted. "The disciple is not above his master; but every one that is perfect shall be as his master." Was I lonely? The Master had said, "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall leave me alone." Was I forsaken? "All the disciples forsook Him and fled." Had my brother failed me? "Neither did His brethren believe on Him." Was I in very sore distress and sorrow? "He was oppressed, and He was afflicted; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Was I a poor solitary woman? "The Son of Man had not where to lay His head."

"Rejoice," says the Bible, "inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." That is a hard saying. I had said to myself that I was willing to live His life, as far as a poor, ignorant, sinful woman could live it, following as closely as I could, step by step, the path that His blessed feet had trod. But I had never thought of such a grief as this. In my measure I had loved Stephen as He had loved His brethren; and now I had gone to my own, and he had not received me; nay, he had cast me out, denied me, been ashamed of owning me, would see me no more. In my measure, I say again, I was learning and sharing some of Christ's sufferings; and looking from my own grief, and sorrow, and pain to His, I seemed to see deep down into an abyss of love, deep down into His pierced heart, and read there, "All this I bore for thy sake, Margery."

I was almost worn out when I reached home, and I had no heart to kindle any light in my darkened room; but the lamp in the street below just filled it with a flickering gleam. I sat down at the foot of my bed, thinking, thinking. Oh, the cruelty, the ingratitude of Stephen! Oh, the deep love, the unspeakable tenderness of the Lord Christ! Was it possible for me to bear to be despised and rejected, and to have Stephen to hide his face from me? I remembered all I had done for him, and all the grief and love I had wasted upon him. How could I forgive him? Yet there hung the Lord, my Lord, upon the cross, forsaken, and betrayed. Only His one disciple, John, and a few women, of all those whom He had loved near to him ; and a great crowd of people staring at urn, and letting Him be mocked, though they knew there was no fault to be found in Him. And what had my Lord and Master said when his dying eyes were closing upon such a sight as that? "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,"

The next afternoon was the day I always took tea with Mrs. Moss and Phoebe in their little house, it had been our custom for several years for me to go and see them twice a fortnight, and they came to visit me once during the third week; for, with our small means, we had to keep a sort of balance of visiting lest one of us should be put to more expense than the others. I did not like to surprise and alarm them by staying away, though I was scarcely fit to go out; for I was greatly shaken, and I felt a nervous tremor in my head, which I could not keep still; a touch of palsy, I suppose, though it was very slight as yet. But I knew I should never hold up my head again steady and firm, as I had been used to do. It was true that I was an aged woman now.

They saw the change the instant I entered the almshouse. Whichever it was, my ashy face, or tremulous head, Phoebe's voice failed her as she was about to welcome me gladly and merrily as usual. She ran to me, and put her hands up to my cheeks, looking all the while closely into my face, and then she clasped me in her arms, and sobbed aloud. Cor was there too. It was an unusual thing for Cor to be there, but so it was; and he jumped up hastily from his seat by the fire, and came to my side, supporting us both; for Phoebe was leaning against me, and I was too weak to bear her weight.

"Oh, Margery!" she sobbed. "Margery, whatever is the matter?"

"Nothing, Phoebe," I said; "nothing, Cor---nothing that I can tell. I've been ill all night, and I'm not quite myself to-day. There's nothing the matter with me now."

"There's enough the matter," said Cor, anxiously. "I know what it is. You're fretting yourself to death about your brother; and I can hear nothing of him."

He had placed me in a chair, and I hid my face in my hands without answering a word. None of them spoke for a minute or two; for it was so rare a thing for me to give way, that at first they could do nothing but look at me and one another.

"Phoebe, my dear," said Mrs. Moss, "you really surprise me, when there are always salts on the mantel-shelf, kept handy, and very strong, for they fetched the tears into my eyes on Sunday; and. I knew the clergyman would think it was the sermon, which is not usually my custom, of course; but strong enough to bring Miss Margery to, if you hadn't taken leave of your wits, my dear."

"I'm better now, Mrs. Moss," I said. "Leave me to myself, children, and I shall be all right by tea-time. It's the spring, you know, Cor."

He shook his head, but said nothing, only sat down beside me, with his fingers upon my pulse. I seemed to see the little room quite freshly, as if it was a new place to me. It was crowded with relics of Mrs. Moss's better days. The walls were hung with portraits of her friends, cut in black paper, and pasted on white board. There was one large likeness of herself, painted in oils, which filled up all one side of the window, over the little dresser, where Phoebe was cutting bread and butter. There was a small work-table, with a card-basket on it, and a china cup or two, without handles. There was no doubt at all that they came of a genteel family, though Mrs. Moss was living in an almshouse; and I wondered what she would think of my poor Cor, if Phoebe was willing to become his wife.

Cor had forgotten my pulse in watching Phoebe, just as I had watched her that happy day when Stephen came in so unexpectedly. Why had he come at all, if he did not wish to own me? He might have lived years upon years in London without his path crossing mine; for I should not have known him to be Stephen if I had seen him only for that single moment through the window of his dining-room.

"It's so seldom we have a gentleman with us," said Mrs. Moss, with her best smile, when tea was ready, "that we must make the most of him, Phoebe, my dear, and not quarrel for him, though, of course, he ought to sit next to me, as lady of the house; but, then, you are going to make tea, and he might be expected to sit next to you and assist. So we will leave him to choose for himself."

Without a word Cor placed his chair next to Phoebe's, who was blushing deeply, as she busied herself in dipping the bottom rims of the cups in some water in the basin. I heard Cor ask why she did it, and she said it was very hot. Even Phoebe seemed nervous this evening, and I could not keep my poor hand steady as I lifted my cup to my lips.

"Why, Phoebe, my dear," cried Mrs. Moss, "whatever makes your face so red to-day? Are you well? I hope you haven't caught any fever or measles, or anything, like your poor dear uncle dying of softness of the brain, with figuring and ciphering before the bank broke for hundreds and thousands of pounds. I must ask Mr. Bell what he thinks of you, I'm sure."

The child's colour only deepened all the time Mrs. Moss was speaking; but Cor did not glance at her. I almost wished he would; for I never saw her look prettier.

"I have some news to tell you, Miss Margery," he said, turning to me as soon as Mrs. Moss ceased speaking.

"Good news, Cor?" I asked.

"I scarcely know yet," he answered. "My last examination is over, and I can practise as a doctor now; only I've got no practice, and not the smallest chance of one. I can go back to the old shop in White-chapel any day I choose, and it's a living---only a bare living; and when a man is over eight-and-twenty, and cannot see any chance of a home of his own, it's hard lines. Not that I'm grumbling; I'm better off than I had any hope of being; but I've stepped out of my own station into one much higher, and there's always some penalty to pay."

His face was very earnest and grave, but there was a brightness about it I had not seen for many a day.

Well," he went on, "this morning I received a letter from young Williams, a friend of mine, who is first mate on board a steamer plying between New York and Liverpool. He says he could get me the berth of doctor on board his ship, with a pay of six shillings and sixpence per day, and no expenses except on shore, besides presents from passengers, which are sometimes five pounds in a voyage. You see I should soon save enough money to begin a little home of my own; but I could not decide without asking you, Miss Margery."

"Why! that's grand news, Mr. Bell," said Mrs. Moss, before I could speak, "for a boy as was picked up out of the streets; and it's a great credit to you, and Miss Margery, of course, to see you a real doctor, and no quack, with pills that'll cure everything; only Phoebe sets her face against them, and never lets a box come inside our doors."

"So you're thinking of running away from us, Cor?" I said, sadly enough, I know; for my thoughts were full of Stephen.

"I begin to think I cannot leave you, Miss Margery," he answered, his keen eyes fixed upon me. "If anything happened to you whilst I was away, it would make me miserable."

"Don't think of that, Cor," I said, "don't think of that. I would not stand in your way for anything; and I long for you to have a home of your own."

"If I only had one!" he exclaimed, sighing deeply, "you would come and live in it, Miss Margery, just as if you were the dear good mother you've always been to me."

Phoebe's face was turned to him now with a beaming look of pleasure upon it, and Cor smiled one of his old bright, happy smiles.

"I can see it is as plain as can be," he said; "a snug little home, all pleasant and sunny throughout, and full of flowers such as you love, and the children playing about you, and calling you auntie. You'd like them to call you auntie, Miss Margery?"

I could not answer him a word for the thought of the children who would never call me aunt---Stephen's children. My head and my hand trembled more than ever.

"Why! how is this?" he said, very tenderly. "I did not mean to trouble you. I will not leave you, if you are so ill as this. Half my reason for wishing for a home of my own was that you might live in it, and I could take care of you. It would be a poor home for me if you were not in it---you who have made me what I am. If I go away, it will be half for your sake, and one other's."

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Moss, "I never did hear anybody speak so prettily out of a book; and it's a thousand pities Miss Margery isn't a few years younger, or Mr. Bell a few years older."

"Oh, aunt!" broke in Phoebe, in a vexed voice, "how can you talk so?"

"Phoebe, my dear," she answered, "it's very strange indeed, if your poor aunt, that has been like a mother to you, though she is a widow, cannot open her lips, but you stop me in that rude way of yours, and before Mr. Bell, too, who is a real doctor."

She began to sob, and hid her face in her handkerchief, whilst we tried to talk of something else. But she could not recover her spirits; and by-and-by I said it was time for me to go home, and, as none of them gainsaid me, I put on my bonnet and cloak, and said good-bye. Cor also rose to go away with me.

"Would you like me to walk home with you, Margery?" asked Phoebe, with downcast eyes. "I've had no walk to-day, except to my work, and I should be glad to come with you."

I knew she did not want to be left alone with Mrs. Moss, who was given to harp upon one string, and who would be weeping and fretting, and bewailing herself from now till bed-time.

"Come, then," I said, "and Cor will see you safe home again."

For Cor would be glad enough to do that.

Phoebe ran on upstairs before us when we reached the house, and lit the candle, holding it over the banisters to light us as we climbed slowly up the long flight. How pretty she looked with the light shining full on her sweet face, with the red lips just parted and showing her white teeth, and the dark eyes peering down into the shadow for us! Cor's arm trembled, and he stumbled at the next step; but I understood it very well, and said nothing. My room was dreary-looking: for I had not had the heart to set it in order that day, and the fire had gone spark out in the grate, leaving only a handful of cinders. But Phoebe flew round, setting her deft fingers to everything that was out of its place, while Cor kindled the fire again. I think both of them enjoyed it, now and then giving one another a helping hand, and seeming almost like children playing at keeping house. It was a pretty, pleasant sight, and, as I sat by looking on at them, I almost forgot Stephen and my grievous trouble.

Cor has always said since that he had no thought of what was going to happen after that; that he did not mean to do it, and would rather have done it in another way. When all their work was finished, Phoebe brought her little hassock to the side of my chair, sitting down by me, and laying her head on my lap; as she had been used to do when she was a child, after she had learned her lessons. Cor stood for a minute or two looking at her and at me, and then ho knelt down on the other side of me, with his hand very near her bright curls. Her face I could not see, but his was all of a glow, and his eyes shone with hope and anxiety.

"Miss Margery," he cried, the words bursting from his lips as if no power could keep them back, "tell her that our home would be nothing to either of us if she is not there."

I felt Phoebe's fingers tighten over mine, but she did not raise her head, or speak, or stir; and after a moment or two Cor went on more quietly.

"I know I'm not good enough for her," he said. "I haven't a farthing to offer her; and she knows what I am, without friends or relations; alone and poor, with nobody to help me on in life; even without a name---poor Corp'ral Bell, whom you picked up in the streets, when he was graduating for a London rough. I should have been a thief by this time, most likely. No; it's no use thinking any more about her. I must give it up."

How quiet and still the room was when Cor was silent! I was listening for Phoebe to speak or make some sign; but she did neither. She might not have heard what Cor had said. Neither was it for me to say anything; though I was longing for it to come right, as Cor wished it. They must settle it between themselves, these two, whom I loved most in the world; yes, most now, since Stephen had forsaken me.

"I don't say I shall never be happy," said Cor, in a rather dreary voice, as if he felt it was all over, and there was no chance for him. "As soon as I can keep even a poor home, you will come and live with me, Miss Margery; and we shall be very peaceful and happy together after a while. It must be near Liverpool; for I shall come home every few weeks, until I can find a footing on shore somewhere. We shall find work to do there; and we cannot be altogether unhappy while we love God and each other. Sometimes, too, Phoebe will come to see us, because she loves you very dearly, I know; and how welcome she will be in our little home! Promise me, Phoebe, that you will always be friends with Miss Margery and me !"

He touched her bead lightly with the tips of his fingers, and Phoebe gave my hand a great squeeze; but she did not answer his question.

"There are many men who can offer her so much more than I can," continued Cor, his voice growing calmer and stronger, "and I wouldn't have her lose one comfort or pleasure for my sake; but there is not one who can love her more than I do."

Then he stopped once more, as if hoping Phoebe would make some sign. The glow had faded away from his face, and it was looking careworn again, as it had done the last few weeks whilst he had been searching for Stephen. My heart ached for him, and I felt a little angry with Phoebe.

"Aren't you going to speak to Cor?" I asked at last.

"He hasn't said anything to me," she answered. "He's been talking to you, Margery."

That was so like Phoebe's little contradictions ways, I could not help smiling.

"He asked you if you'd promise to be friends always," I said, "and you never spoke."

"Oh yes! I am friends, of course," answered the girl; "and I'm sure I shall never want to quarrel---never, never with you, dear old mother Margery."

That was said so heartily and tenderly, that I could not keep my anger, though I was sorry for Cor. He laid his hand again upon her head; but she may have thought it was mine, for she did not stir.

"Phoebe," he said, "will you answer if I speak to you?"

"I'd rather you'd go on talking to Margery," she said.

Another of Phoebe's childish ways, which always melted away like hoar-frost in the sunshine, if you only looked at her with a smile. She could not see Cor's face, for she would not lift up her own; but she could hear how pleading his voice was.

"Phoebe," he said, "you know everything about my life---who I am, and what Miss Margery has done for me---don't you?"

"Yes, everything," murmured Phoebe.

"Does it make you fear that I am not worthy of you?" asked Cor; "that it is enough to prevent you loving me? If you are my friend, tell me the simple truth, Phoebe."

"No," she whispered.

Then Cor's face grew white, like a man who is about to try his last chance.

"Do you love me, Phoebe---yes or no?" he asked.

I think I listened for her answer with almost as much anxiety as he did. There was something painful in his agitation; but Phoebe sat quite still, only giving a little petulant shrug to her shoulders, as she had done at times as a child, when she was in a naughty, rebellious mood. But she could not see how Cor's face was white and worn; and she did not say no.

"Can you love me?" asked Cor again, altering his question, and pressing his hand more strongly upon her head. Still the girl did not speak; but very softly and gently she drew his hand down to her face, and held it there against her lips.

I never felt so strange a throb of passion and tenderness as then. I knew for the first time what love really was. No one like Cor had loved me when I was a girl. True, I had had my chances; but the young men who came after me in the old farmhouse at home had never been in any way like Cor. If I did not say yes to them, there were plenty of girls that would, who would suit them quite as well as I did; and so it had always seemed to me as if I gave them no pain, and did them no harm when I said no. But you could see it in Cor's face, and hear it in his voice, that if Phoebe said no to him it would take all the sunshine out of his life, and leave it as bleak and bare as a winter's day. A film seemed to come clouding over my eyes again, and I leaned my head back iii my chair, and their voices sounded low and muffled. I felt as if I must watch over myself, or I might faint away as I did yesterday. It was only yesterday that Stephen had cast me out from him and his house!

I listened to them talking to one another about Cor's plans for the future. Phoebe was ready enough to chatter now, and they made no more of me being present than if I could not hear a word; for both of them had been used to speak to me out of the abundance of their hearts. I knew that the little home Cor had been building as a castle in the air was likely to be real in some years to come, after he had worked and saved with all his might. It was a very pleasant thing to think of and to plan for.

"I don't know however I shall tell Aunt Moss," said Phoebe, with a little laugh.

"You are not ashamed of me?" asked Cor; for it was the weak point with him that he could not think of himself as he was. But then, just of late, he had been back in all the misery and degradation of the alleys and slums, and he could not get it out of his head.

"Ashamed of you!" cried Phoebe. "No, I'm proud of you, and so is Margery. We have always been proud of Cor, haven't we? Dr. Cornelius Bell! That's better than Corp'ral Bell!

"I'm not Dr. Bell yet," he said; "but if I once get my foot on the ladder, never fear but I'll climb for your sake, Phoebe."

They did not leave me till I reminded them that it was high time to go. The big old silver watch over the mantelshelf, which Uncle Simister used to call Margery, because it was so steady and regular, showed us it was after ten, though none of us had heard the Abbey clock strike the hour. It was my turn now to stand at the top of the stairs, shading the candle from the wind, as I watched them go down hand in hand, like children. I thought of Phoebe's bright young face---and my own, grey, and wan, and sunken, with white hair about it. Was it possible that the girl's face would ever be changed like mine? The same thought seemed to strike Cor as he looked up at me; for he turned quickly to glance at Phoebe, who was smiling and kissing her hand to me. But as she grew old he would grow old at her side; it would not be an old age altogether like mine.

"God bless them both!" I said, going back to my solitary room. But how much more cheery it was again, as if the love and gladness of those two had driven away some of the pain of last night! I was not so cast down. The great sorrow was over, and at once new hopes and new joys were springing up in my path. Cor's simple little home lay before us somewhere in the future, please God. And even if it should please God that I should never cross its door-sill, it would be a home full of faithful and loving memories of me; for if I never entered into it, it would only be because my feet had already passed over the golden threshold of my Father's house.

Yet still the agony had been there in my life, and had become a part of it. Even so Calvary was in the mind of the Lord Christ in the midst of the gladness of His return to his disciples after his resurrection. "Reach hither thy finger," he said, "and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side!" Ah! the marks of the nails and the spear remained there; and the memory of Gethsemane and Calvary is in His heart still, though now He is upon the throne of God. What would His joy have been if He had come unto His own, and His own had received Him!

It was soon all settled that Cor was to leave us, and become a ship's doctor, crossing the stormy sea to and fro in all kinds of weather; whilst Phoebe and I at home watched the clouds and the winds, and often trembled for his safety. There was a good deal for us to do to get him ready to start; for he was going to be with rich people as well as poor, and he must look like a gentleman. But it was a poor outfit, after all our pains; though I pawned the old watch Margery, without telling Cor, and bought some linen with the money, that he might be something like the grand folk who might be crossing the sea to America. Phoebe made some collars, and hemmed and marked some pocket-handkerchiefs, sometimes singing over them and sometimes sighing; for the child's heart was divided between joy and sorrow.

June was half over before Cor left London, and the last evening he came to see me alone. He had been giving me some medicine, and been looking after me as my doctor. That night his face was anxious again, and his manner full of care for me.

"Miss Margery," he said, "you cannot get over that trouble."

No; my head was palsied a little, and never would be quite still again; and my hands, especially my lame hand, were nerveless and feeble. The strength I had lost in Stephen's house would never be mine again, until I became young once more, after drinking of the river of life where it flows out of the throne of God and the Lamb.

"You keep fretting about your brother," continued Cor, hesitatingly; "you cannot shake off your dread of some evil having befallen him?"

For I had kept my secret, and never said a word about Stephen since that day. How could I tell any one but God what had passed between us?

"I scarcely know whether I ought to tell you," said Cor, taking my shaking hand between both of his. "It will give you pain---great pain; but it will set your mind at ease upon that point."

"Tell me, Cor," I said, eager to hear all he had to say.

"Why, your brother Stephen is alive and well," he answered; "but he's unworthy of the name of brother. I've seen him and spoken to him. There, keep yourself calm, Miss Margery, or I'll tell you no more."

"Tell me everything," I said.

"I was going along Whitechapel," he went on, "and I saw a bill posted up by the Emigration Society, announcing a lecture upon the Australian colonies by Stephen Bede, Esq., of Talbot Downs, Melbourne. The chair to be taken by Sir Francis Pembridge, M.P. Stephen Bede! I thought, that's Miss Margery's brother, though the name was spelt Bede, not Beade.

It was very near the time of the lecture, and I went straight on to the place. He was like you, Miss Margery, tall, and very upright, with hair like yours used to be, and he brought you back to my mind as I saw you first in Pilgrim Street. His voice sounded like yours too. The lecture was a very good one. He said once that he had been very prosperous, though he had gone out with few means, or else I might have thought he was perhaps getting his living by lecturing; though he did not look like it. He looked as if he had come there as a favour, and they thanked him for his lecture, as if he was not paid for it."

Cor paused, and sat still, pondering it over in his mind, as if he did not know in what words to tell me the rest.

"Go on," I said; "tell me everything."

"I think that's best," he answered, "though I hardly know how to do it. When the lecture was finished, I went up to the platform sharply. Mr. Bede was shaking hands, and talking with some gentlemen, Sir Francis Pembridge amongst them. I stepped on boldly, though they stared bard at me, and I said, "Are you Stephen Bede, who went out to Australia when you were a boy of sixteen?" "Yes, I was about that age," he said. "Have you a sister Margery?" I asked. "I've no sister at all," he answered; but he looked taken by surprise and confused. "Bede is not a common name," I said; "and I know a Miss Margery Beade, who had a brother Stephen, and he went out to Australia when he was sixteen..." "I know nothing of such a person, my good fellow," he said impatiently. "Australia is a large place, pretty nearly as large as Europe; and I may have a namesake there for all I can tell; but I know nothing about him, or his sister Margery." Yet I am certain it was your brother Stephen."

"Yes, Cor, it was Stephen," I said.

"He did not stay to say any more," continued Cor, "but just turned on his heel and walked, off with Sir Francis Pembridge. There was a handsome carriage and pair waiting in the street, and they got in, and he called out, "Home!" to the coachman. He must have come back a rich man, Miss Margery."

I did not say anything, for I had resolved to keep my secret about Stephen. Cor watched me steadily, and was relieved to see how calm I was. For I was calm; it seemed to have happened so long ago, and such a profound peace had come to my soul since I had forgiven Stephen and prayed for him. Cor's story did not disturb me. I almost wished at times that that much of my trial, the palsy in my head, might be taken away; yet it was but a thorn in the flesh, not a messenger of Satan to buffet me; and if my Lord could keep the marks of the nails in His blessed hands, why should I not bear this slight thing, till my head lay at rest on its last pillow?

"Miss Margery," said Cor, in a persuading tone, "promise me only one thing."

"Anything, Cor," I answered.

"Now it is summer," he said, "the streets will be too hot and sultry for you. You are much feebler than last year, and you want fresher air; promise me you will spend most of every day out of doors in the park, instead of going about the close alleys and courts. We want you to live many years yet, and you must not throw away your health; promise me this."

After some hesitation I did promise it, for just then I felt as if I could not bear any longer to see the great mass of sickness, and pain, and poverty that lies hidden in the back streets of London; especially now that I could not lend a helping hand to any one. So after Cor was gone---Phoebe, and Mrs. Moss, and me going with him to the station, and watching the train that was carrying him away, whilst he leaned through the carriage window to see the last of us, until a curve in the line took him out of our sight---after he was gone, I fell into the way of spending the most part of the hot summer days under the trees in the parks.

It was like going into a foreign country, and seeing foreign ways; sometimes I could hardly believe I was still in London, where I had lived about twenty years by this time; only I had been chiefly among poor people, and I had seen but little of those who were very rich, and grand, and fashionable. Now that I was set aside from the hard, real work of life, simply looking on, I used to wonder if it was true all that was going on in the narrow, dirty, crowded alleys I knew so well. The rich and grand folks, gorgeously dressed, would pass by in a long procession, which had no creak in it, till my brain whirled with the mere sight of it. There they were, in all the pomp and splendour of great wealth, hundreds after hundreds, and thousands after thousands, with dresses whose cost would have fed and clothed many a poor child for years. The horses, beautiful creatures with skins as shiny and smooth as satin, were cared for after a fashion that would have saved the lives of hundreds of our fellow men and women. Yes; it was another country altogether, and a foreign people; with a sea deeper than the ocean rolling between them and the unknown regions of London. What could they know of the noisome fever, and grinding poverty, and brute ignorance worse than either, always skulking about the streets within a few minutes walk of their grand mansions? I was as sad at heart here as ever I had been in the worst alley in London. The bravery of their ornaments made me mourn the more for the grinding of the faces of the poor. When the Lord saw the city, He wept over it; not over the publicans, and the harlots, and the sinners only, but over all! "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace!" Thou! To each one of us separately, as well as to all the great city in itself. And how many of these, any more than the drunkards and thieves of the streets, knew the things which belonged to their peace?

Yet some knew peace, no doubt. The Lord had disciples even in the city He wept over, I tried to find them out by their faces; for the servants of God are sealed in the forehead, though the mark is plain only to the eyes of the angels. Now and then I fancied I saw a face shine with it; and the mere sight of such a face, in a gay and splendid crowd like that, filled me with gladness.

One day I saw a fair, noble, simple-looking girl ride past me, on a beautiful horse, and her face had something familiar about it, which made me look at her the more earnestly. But I did not know who she was until a gentleman rode up to her side. That was Stephen!

I looked out for Stephen and his daughter many times after that, and saw them often. Generally there was a young man riding with them, with a frank, open face, that pleased me well. But how far away they were from me! They belonged to this foreign people and this other country, and could know nothing of my country and my people. I saw how almost impossible it must be for Stephen to stoop clown to take my hand, in the face of all his world, and say, "This is my sister." Yet there is One higher than the highest, who is not ashamed to call the lowest His brother.

I saw Stephen's other children also, for my heart hungered for the sight of them, and I began to seek those places in the parks where I was most likely to see them. There was the young girl Maggie, and two little children just learning to walk and play about by themselves. How my heart leapt at the thought of them playing about my knees, and talking their pleasant prattle in my cars! But that could never he. I might watch them, and follow them at a distance, wondering at the hard, careless ways of their hired nurses; but I could not take them in my arms, as my Lord was wont to take little children. A great gulf separated me from them all; me a poor shabby alms-woman, with a black dress brown and rusty with long wear, and these rich, gay young children, my nephew's and nieces.

One evening, when Phoebe was sitting beside me in the park, we saw Stephen's eldest daughter coming towards us, with the same young gentlernan I had noticed with her before. She was tall, and held her head well up, anti trod with a stately, quiet grace. Phoebe's eyes were fastened upon her, and they passed us so closely that her rustling silk dress swept against mine.

"I like that girl!" said Phoebe.

So did I; I loved her, and longed to speak to her only once, and hear her voice.

"She made me think," said Phoebe, in a quiet voice, "of the young ruler who came to Christ."

"Why?" I asked.

"You remember the words?" she answered. "'Then Jesus beholding him, loved him.' I don't think there are many people here whom He would love when He saw them. He would not like the faces of most of these people about us, would He, Margery? But I think He would like hers."

I was pleased with those words of Phoebe's and treasured them up in my mind, But as the summer passed on Stephen and his eldest daughter disappeared only the younger ones and their nurses were left in town, and I saw them almost every day in the park.

Every quarter - day it was necessary for me to go into the City to claim my pension from Bede's Charity, or else send some one with authority in my name to receive it. It was a terribly hot day, that Michaelmas, though it was already autumn. In the north the sky was thick with a heavy, leaden cloud, with a line of livid light running along the edge of it. But the sun shone hotly in the south, beating down upon the flag-stones and against the walls of the houses. There was not a breath of wind stirring, and every person I met seemed to gasp for air. Yet all along the Strand, and up Ludgate Hill, and through Cheapside the din, and hurry, and turmoil were as great as though no one was suffering from the sultry heat; and it was a pleasant relief to me when I reached the Company's offices, to sit down in an ante-room till my turn came to receive my sure little income.

Bede's Charity was not a large one; there were only five other almswomen beside myself, all of them widows, with very large clean widows' caps on. Whether the founder of it was related to my forefathers, I never knew; though it might be so, if our name, as Stephen said, had been changed to B-e-a-d-e. Whether or no, a certain John Bede had left a sum of money, the interest of which was to be divided among six poor widows and daughters of freemen of the Company. How Dr. Clarke had managed to get my name on the list, being only the niece of a freeman, I had never known; but he had told me it was all right, and it was a long time since I had ceased to think of it I had received my pension now for many years, and no question about my right to it had arisen.

I was very glad to sit still, and get cool, before going into the inner room. Sometimes a clerk had paid me, and sometimes a trustee of the Charity; but generally it was a clerk, and the money was always ready in a little heap---three pounds eighteen shillings; and now and then, when it happened that the trustee was there who had known Dr. Clarke, there would be four sovereigns for me. But this gentleman had died since I was there last---as one grows old friends die away so quickly!---and a new trustee had been appointed in his place. I went in as soon as my name was called, and saw a harsh, stern-looking gentleman sitting at a table, with an open book before him.

"Your name is Margaret Beade?" he said in a loud, sharp voice.

"No, sir," I answered, "not exactly; my real name is Margery Reade."

"Then how is it your real name is not in the book?" he asked, looking up with a face as dark as the thundercloud in the north.

"It was put down right at first, sir," I answered; "but I suppose it got altered in copying it out of the old book. They began to call me Margaret Reade then, and I told them two or three times, but they always forgot it so I left off putting them right."

"Who do you mean by they and them?" he asked impatiently.

"Whoever happened to be here, sir," I said; "sometimes Mr. Thwaites, and sometimes the clerk."

"But how did you give your receipt?" he asked.

"They wrote it," I answered, "and I set a mark against it with my left hand. I cannot hold a pen in my right hand."

"This is a very extraordinary statement," he said, looking at me as if he was a magistrate, and the police had taken me before him for some great crime; "this is a question of identity. How can I tell that you are the person recommended to the Charity?"

"The clerk knows me, and Mr. Thwaites knew me, sir," I answered; "and you will find the name all right in the old book. I could bring many people to tell you I am Margery Beade."

He rang a bell, and ordered the person who answered it to bring him the last list of the almswomen of Bedes's Charity. I was standing, and I felt my poor head tremble more than usual, and I shook all over, whilst the strange gentleman eyed me, as if he was trying to find out something wrong in me. I was very glad when the old book was brought, and he began to turn over its pages.

"I find here," he said, after what seemed a long time, "the name "Margery Beade, widow; daughter of Jacob Simister, freeman of the Company." Is that a correct description?"

I could scarcely believe I had heard him rightly. Dr. Clarke had never told me how he had described my claims upon the Charity; and all I knew was that my name was put on the list, and I had received the pension regularly. He had done it in the kindness of his heart, no doubt; but it was not true, and no untruth is good in the long run. I was strangely perplexed and troubled.

"No; it is not right," I said, my voice trembling as much as my limbs.

"I should very much like to know what your correct description is," said the gentleman, angrily; come, speak up and tell me the truth, and nothing but the truth. You cannot deceive me."

"I am not a widow," I answered, in a firmer tone; "and Jacob Simister was my uncle, not my father."

"Not a widow, and not the daughter of a freeman!" he exclaimed; "how did you manage, then, to impose yourself on Bede's Charity?"

"I don't know how it was done," I said. "I never knew till now that I was put down wrong. It was all managed by Dr. Clarke, and I thought it was all right."

"Where is Dr. Clarke?" he inquired.

"He is dead, sir," I answered; "he died six years ago. I've been on the Charity over ten years."

"Then you've been defrauding the Charity for ten years," he said. "But there was the form for you to fill up. How was that done without your knowledge, I wish to know?"

"Dr. Clarke filled it up," I said, sadly; "my right hand was almost useless then, sir, and I did nothing but sign it. He believed he was doing me a kindness, I know; I could not say a word against him, but you'll find it all in his writing. I never meant to defraud the Charity, God knows ---"

"There stop!" he interrupted, in an angry, impatient tone; "don't begin canting about God. I know all you poor people can do that well. What I find out is that you have been taking six shillings a week out of the mouth of some desolate widow or orphan, when you have no more claim upon Bede's Charity than this table. I could prosecute you for the fraud, and I'm not sure we shall not do so. I shall lay the case before the Board."

I stood silent, looking only at the passionate and unjust man. His eyes dropped before mine; but he was the more angry because I did not quail before him.

"Come," he said, "let me have no insolence, or I will give you in charge. Have you any one to speak to your character?"

I was very much bewildered and hurried, and I never thought of Mr. Moss, who had taken to Uncle Simister's business. I could only think of Stephen: a word from him would set me free from this cruel charge of fraud. He was a rich man, with great friends; but then he was afraid I should do him harm if I called him my brother. And if I did not say he was my brother, yet to link his name, Stephen Bede, with mine, would make people think he was akin to me, the poor alms-woman. I could not do that. I would not work him any harm in that other world of London, where he was living so splendidly with his wife and children. No; not if I suffered loss and suspicion through my silence. My heart was softer towards Stephen than it was in May, just after he had cast me off.

"No, sir," I said; "I cannot call anybody to speak for me that you would listen to; and nobody could tell you more than I know myself about that mistake. But I'm telling you the truth; indeed I am. I never knew that Dr. Clarke put me down a widow, and Uncle Simister's daughter. He did it out of kindness, I'm sure; but if I could pay back every shilling to the Charity, I would do it gladly. It's very hard upon me."

How hard it looked just then, at the first sight of it, I cannot tell. I had no money in the world, except one shilling in my purse; and all my sure income was gone in a moment. For I knew no words of mine would soften this hard, stern man, whose eye regarded me so suspiciously. I curtsied again to him, and left the place in silence.

It was a long, sultry walk home to Westminster, so long that I thought I should never reach it. I could not help feeling how light and empty my poor purse was. What was I to do? I had no debts, for I had made my money suffice for my few wants; but there had been no chance of saving anything out of six shillings a week. I knew Cor would not let me starve; but how hard it would be to become a burden upon him, just as he was beginning to put by towards having a home of his own!

I do not think God is angry with us when we feel how rugged the road is, and even stumble a little over the larger stones that lie in the way of our feet. We are but children, all of us; and our feet are not grown enough for us to march along the stony path with our heads upright, and our eyes always lifted up to the sky above us. Even when a child is clasping his father's strong hand, he cannot help but feel that his footsteps are among sharp and loose pebbles, which roll from under him as he treads; and the father is not angry when the small feet slip, and the little fingers close with a tighter grasp about his hand. How much more the Heavenly Father

I had felt the heat smiting upon me all along the choking streets; but my mind had been too full for me to notice how the leaden cloud in the north had been slowly creeping over the sky, until there was only one spot in the south where we could see the blue, and that was being swallowed up by the blackness. I had just reached my own Street, when great rain-drops began to splash down, few and far between, upon the pavement. I was glad to be so near home, for I could not walk as quickly as I used to do; but as I made my way along, I saw a child turn out of a side street, and come towards me. She was walking quickly, with a frightened look upon her face, and large tears in her eyes, which she did not let fall. It was Maggie, Stephen's child, alone and in this poor street! She knew me again the instant she saw me, and she ran eagerly up to me, with outstretched hands.

"You are the poor woman I gave my fairy-tale book to," she said. "I've seen you in the park, but nurse never let me speak to you. I've lost my way, and I don't know wherever nurse can be. Will you take care of me, please?"

Oh! how suddenly joy comes sometimes upon sorrow ! The child's hands clasped mine, and her eyes looked up to my face, half in fear and half in trust, as many and many a time I have looked up to God. I stooped down and kissed her tenderly. "Yes," I said, "I will take care of you;" and I thought God was saying those very words to me, His poor lost child. "My home is close by, and there's a storm coming. Come with me, and shelter till it is past."

Maggie put her hand through my arm in perfect confidence, and walked on beside me to the door of my house. The rain was just beginning to fall heavily, as if it had only stayed till we were under a roof. We went on upstairs to my little attic, and Maggie stood in the middle of it looking round her; whilst I sank down on a seat, too wearied and too happy and too sorrowful to know what to do.

"This is a nice place," said Maggie; "but it is funny to have everything in the same room---your bed, and your chairs, and your tea things, and your kettle. You're quite a poor woman, as nurse says."

Yes; I was quite a poor woman, poorer than I had ever been in my life, with only one shilling in my purse, and no prospect of where any more was to come from. Yet the presence of that child made no happy beyond words. I could not keep my eyes from her, as she flitted from one thing to another, examining every thing, and full of curiosity and delight.

"I'm so glad nurse lost me," she said. "I've always wanted to come and see you; but papa would never tell me a word about you, and Alice did not know anything. Alice is my grown-up sister; she is eighteen years old and I'm only eleven. You know nurse was talking to a soldier; and they went walking on and on, and there was a Punch and Judy show, and I forgot to look after them, and all in a minute they were out of sight, and I couldn't find them anywhere. I was very frightened; but I'm very glad now, aren't you?"

"Very glad," I said, with all my heart.

"How it pours with rain!" she went on prattling; "if it keeps on raining like that, I shall have to stay all night, and nurse will be as frightened as me; but that will serve her right, because she tells mamma she never talks to anybody when she is out with us children, and that isn't true. It's almost like a fairy tale, I think, to meet you just when I was going to cry. I should so like to have tea with you, if you don't mind, please."

That roused me up to kindle the fire, and set the kettle on it, for I was growing faint with hunger myself. The child chatted away without any shyness, as if she had known me all her life. How much happiness I had missed in not knowing Stephen's children! I wished I could have been their nurse, if nothing else.

"Your papa and mamma will be frightened too," I said.

"Oh, no!" she answered; "they are gone to Pembridge Hall, where Sir Francis lives, and Lady Pembridge, and Frank too. It's a very great secret, but I don't mind telling you, if you'll promise never, never to say a word---Alice is in love with Frank! Oh! I do hope they'll be married some day. Alice is gone with papa and mamma, but the children and me stayed at home with nurse. I'm glad it wasn't one of the children that was lost, for they wouldn't have known you; and very likely some wicked old woman would have picked them up, and taken them home with her. But instead of that I've found out where you live, and I'll come every day, and read that fairy-book aloud to you. Shall I read a little to you now?"

I gave her the book, and she sat down on Phoebe's hassock, and read aloud, whilst the rain beat against the roof and the casement, and low peals of thunder rolled all around us. There seemed little chance of the storm coming to an end soon, and I was in no hurry for it to go. I should be only too glad to keep the child all night, and it would be nothing else than a just judgment upon the unfaithful nurse to pass the time in dread. Besides, there was no one I could send to the house in Piccadilly, if I had wished it; for Mrs. Brown, in the front attic, was much older than myself, and the rain was falling in torrents. "Could you sleep in my little bed, Maggie?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!" she answered, frankly. "I love you ever so much, though you're not a lady."

No," I said, "I'm not a lady; but I love you as much as if I was the finest lady in London."

Yet I felt grieved that the young child should have said those words. What is it that makes a woman a lady? I asked the question aloud, and Maggie answered it.

"It's a great many little things," she said. "I think you're pretty near being one, only you're poor, and your clothes are old, and you haven't any grand relations. Papa says my mamma is quite a lady; but then she's very rich, and she's cousin to Lady Pembridge. And papa too comes of a good old family, he says; I heard him say so to Sir Francis, and I heard him tell mamma that Sir Francis thinks a deal more of family than money. I don't exactly understand what it means, but that's being a lady, you know."

I could not help smiling a little bitterly at Maggie's words. A good old family indeed! Well, there had been many a good man among the Beades of Condover, who had worked hard for his living, and did good to his neighbours, and lived and died in the fear of God. Yes, Stephen and I came of a good old family, but not in the sense he and Sir Francis Pembridge meant it.

"I don't know what to call you," said the child, as she sat opposite to me at tea; "you must have a name of some sort; tell me what it is ?"

"Margery," I answered, not caring to put my other name to it.

"Why! that is queer!" ; she exclaimed; "my name's Margery, only they call me Maggie. How funny that is! both of us are called Margery!"

She put down her cup, laughing merrily, and I laughed too, for her merriment was pleasant to see. Besides, I was glad to hear that Stephen had given my name to one of his children. He must have had some love left for me at that time, though it had been crusted over with riches, and pride, and the desire to be very great. Yet it was something like a man calling his child Emmanuel, when he has no love or thought whatever for the Lord Christ.

"I will tell you what made me so cross at not going with papa and mamma," she said; "they are going to see the dear old house where papa was born and lived when he was a boy, and I do so want to see it. He has told me about it often and often, till I seem as if I knew it; and oh! it is such a beautiful old place!"

All in a moment it sprang up before me---the old house, with its low roof covered with yellow stonecrop, and the yew trees in the front; the farmyard, with the building all round it; and the orchard, with its laden apple-trees. I fancied I could see the men sheltering from the rain in the threshing-floor of the barn, with the great doors open, and heavy drops falling from the eaves. It was past milking-time, but the cows would be still in the stalls, chewing the cud of the hay, whilst they were kept in for the storm to pass over. I wondered how the sheaves in the Three-cornered Patch would stand against the torrent; and how long the corn would be in drying again. Then it all died away again suddenly, like waking from a dream, and I found myself in my little attic in Westminster, with Stephen's child prattling to me.

"Had your papa no sister when he was a boy?" I asked, with a beating heart.

"No," she said; "he never had any, and my Grandfather Bede was not rich like papa. But that does not matter if he was of a good old family; I suppose it means that he did not belong to the poor, common people."

Poor father! I could see him plainly in his frieze coat, and corduroy breeches, and grey stockings of my own knitting; a good, honest, true man, industrious, and very indulgent to Stephen and me. But not a gentleman as the world calls it, any more than I was a lady. I began to see clearer and clearer what a gulf lay between Stephen and me; a gulf that could never be crossed.

"Papa went to see the place before we reached England," continued Maggie. "You know, he came a quicker road than we did, and he was here first; so he went into the country to see his old home, and he bought it for his very own. Perhaps we shall go and live there, and never go back to Australia, if Alice marries Frank; but that's a great secret, and nobody talks about it."

I was right glad to hear that Stephen had bought the old farmstead; and as I sat thinking of what Maggie had said I began to understand how perhaps it was for his children's sake that Stephen had disowned me. It was very plain that it would be a misfortune to them if I ever made myself known as his sister; so I resolved with a firm resolution that I would never let them know that their father had any relative living. In my very heart I hoped that Alice might marry him she loved, as Phoebe loved Cor; and I would never thrust myself into their way.

It had grown quite dark whilst we were talking, and still the rain came down in thick, soaking torrents. I felt no anxiety to relieve the terror of the untrustworthy nurse who had lost Maggie; and the child was more than content to stay with me. I let her look through my box to find a bedgown for herself; and it made me smile and sigh at the same time to watch her glee and curiosity. There was mother's sampler at the bottom of the box---for the child did not rest till she had had everything out; and there was father's little Bible, with all our names written in the fly-leaves; but I did not let her look at that, though she begged and prayed to read it, and it was hard to refuse her. I would not have had her read her father's name there for the world, though I turned to it and looked at it with mingled love and pain. It was the last in the book, for I had never entered my father's death in it, having put it off at first that Stephen might write it there when he came home; and now my right hand could not hold a pen. Maybe Cor would do it for me some day.

At last Maggie was asleep, lying on my little bed, with her golden hair all scattered about my pillow, and the long brown eyelashes resting quietly on her rosy cheeks. I put on my glasses and held the candle near her, but shading the light from her, a~d had a long, long look at her dear face. But I could not fall asleep myself that night. So much had happened to me during the day, and there was so much to think over---the loss of all my income, and the difficulty of my future life, and the presence of Stephen's child. The joy seemed to balance the sorrow; for whenever I grew most troubled thinking of the winter coming on and my poverty, then the thought of the child sleeping so peacefully, though in a strange poor place, and with a strange poor woman as her companion, made me feel how God would have me peaceful and trustful in strange circumstances. I was as much a child in His sight as Maggie was in mine, more precious to Him than she was to me. Wherever I might be I could hot stray beyond the shelter of His wing. I remembered that verse I had opened upon the day before Stephen went away for ever from home: "If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall uphold me."

Very early the next morning, whilst Maggie was still sleeping calmly, I crept out of my room and went to buy bread and milk with my last shilling for Stephen's child. She was awake when I returned, and was plainly quite at home, and not at all fearful at finding herself in a strange place. She was hungry too, and ate her breakfast with an appetite as good as if the milk was from our own cows at Condover, and the bread baked in our own oven. We did not hurry over our breakfast, for I knew my pleasure would never come again; though Maggie kept repeating her promise to come and see me very often, and bring Alice and the other children with her. Ah! no; Stephen would take care to prevent that.

But the end must come to every pleasure and pain in this life; and at last I tied on her bonnet and mine, and we walked together across the park, where every leaf on the autumn trees were all wet and glistening in the sunshine from the rain in the night. The blinds of the house in Piccadilly were still drawn down, for it faced the south; so I walked with her to the very door, and was just stooping down to give her a last kiss when it opened suddenly, and Stephen, pale and ghastly, as if he had passed through a terrible night, stood in the doorway. Neither he nor I could speak, but we gazed closely into one another's faces, whilst Maggie flung her arms about him.

"Papa!" she cried; "oh, papa! I've been lost, and she found me."

"Sir," I said, striving hard to speak to him as to a stranger, "I found your little girl lost in the streets, and I took her home with me. She has been quite safe and happy. I did not know you were at home, and I thought the nurse deserved some punishment. If I'd thought you were at home I would have found some way to let you know where the child was."

"They telegraphed to us the last thing last night," answered Stephen, looking at me still with an air of trouble and perplexity. "My wife and I were in terrible dread. We have been travelling all night, and she is very ill this morning."

"Good-bye," I said, turning away to go home again, for I felt faint at the very sight of him, and the longing to call him brother grew too strong for me.

"Stay!" he cried, earnestly. "Let me do something for you. You have been very good to my child, I know."

"I want nothing from you," I said, with some bitterness of heart; "I want nothing for taking care of your child."

We heard a lady's voice calling from some room within, "Stephen!" and he stood hesitating, looking sadly yet doubtfully at me, my shabby dress, and palsied head, and homely appearance, whilst he was a gentleman in manner and fashion. There had been the same difference, only slighter, when we were young; but we had each gone on in our own way, and now he was a man of the world, and I was nothing but a poor almswoman, who could be of no credit to him or his children. There was a hard struggle going on in his heart; I could see it by his troubled eyes and twitching lips. But I did not stay to add to his difficulty. The voice called again, and I turned away and got out of his sight as fast as I could. I heard the heavy door close between me and those two.

How lonely my room looked when I reached it! There was the bed to make and the breakfast things to clear away, but I was not very long in doing all there was to do. Then I had only to think, for it was very little sewing or knitting I could manage with my lame hand, and it was too damp to go and sit out of doors. I did not get any dinner, for Maggie had left enough bread and milk to make me a scanty meal, and there were only a few pence in my purse. So, to while away the long afternoon, I strolled out again down to the abbey, where I was used to take my winter walks, never growing weary of it.

I hardly know why it was, but the abbey made me think more of the woods at home than even St. Paul's had done. Sometimes I seemed to see them as plainly as if I was there; the tall slender trunks of the fir-trees, all brown and dark, going up and up in their straightness, till I had to bend my head back to see where the dark green branches met and crossed one another overhead. So the great pillars of the abbey, divided into many columns, brown and polished with age, rose straight up to the high roof above us, where many lines branched off, meeting and crossing each other. And the light that came in through the windows was a soft low light, like that under the shadow of thick trees, where the sunbeams fall through the green curtain of many leaves. When I lived in the country I used to think of heaven as a garden, a new and better paradise, where the tree of life was growing in the midst; but now after long years in London, I had come to think of it more as a city, with streets of gold and many mansions, and the glory of God, which knows neither rising nor setting, flooding it with light, and whole nations of them that are saved walking about it with songs and gladness, and everlasting joy upon their heads. But it was easier for me to think so when I was sitting in the grand gloom of the abbey, than when I was passing through the narrow, filthy, crowded alleys within a stone's-throw of it, where the men and women seemed lower than the brutes, and the children that played about them were dwarfed, and ugly, and famished---that makes my heart ache now with an aching there are no words for.

It was late, when I reached home again; and I was sitting in the dark, having neither fire nor candle to waste, when I heard Phoebe's step on the stairs. Perhaps she was bringing a letter from Cor, so I struck a match, and lit my candle immediately. But her face was too grave for her to be bringing news of Cor, unless it was bad news. She sat down with a wearied air, as if she was quite worn out; and I knew she had hard work with her pupils sometimes, for they had grown pretty nearly beyond her hand.

"Anything the matter, Phoebe?" I asked, in as cheery a tone as I could.

"How quickly you see it, Margery!" ; she said. "Yes, there's a good deal the matter. I've lost my situation."

"How have you done that?" I said.

"Oh, I've done nothing," she answered. "Only yesterday Mr. Cox paid me a quarter's salary, and said he did not need my services more than a month longer, and I'd better be looking out. That's my trouble, Margery."

"It's bad news," I said; "but you know my old jangle, "If in trouble you are troubled, you will have your trouble doubled." Wait a little while, and you will see that it is all right."

"Is everything right?" asked Phoebe. "Are you happy---really happy, Margery?"

"Yes," I said, in a low voice, after questioning myself closely, "yes, I'm happy, deep down in myself. I'm like a little pool amongst the hills, all of a ruffle at the top, where the wind catches it; but the deeper down it is the calmer it is."

"Tell me why, Margery," urged the young girl, laying her head on my shoulder.

"I've told you scores of times," I answered.

"Tell me again to-night," she said.

"I cannot be anything but happy," I said, "because I believe the Lord Christ has given me the right and the power to become one of the daughters of the Lord God Almighty; and there never was a father, even a king upon his throne, who cared for his children as my Heavenly Father cares for me. Could I be anything else but happy and at peace, Phoebe?"

"But it was so hard about Stephen," she sobbed. "I thought when he came back everything was going to turn out all right for you at last."

"Everything has been right for me all along," I said, stroking her head softly. "Do you think God sends us more trouble than we need? I'm a poor, stupid scholar, and He has some hard lessons to teach me; but I would rather learn them all than go ignorant into the other world, and miss understanding something there. Besides, I am learning them at His knee, Phoebe, not sitting a long way off, out of the reach of His hand, and He lays it on my head now and then, like my hand is on your head, my dear."

"Suppose Stephen should never come back ?" she said. From that I knew Cor had not told her about Stephen, and I was glad of it. It was very thoughtful of Cor.

"He is somewhere in God's world," I answered. "This may be the hardest lesson I have to learn; but it cannot be a very long one now."

"Do you think God will be angry with me if I am just a little down-hearted about losing my situation?" asked Phoebe.

"Not at all, my darling," I said; "no no. The Lord Christ understands it all. He knows all the trials and cares that belong to our daily life, as well as the soul's troubles and anxieties. I suppose He went through many troubles like yours just now."

"I like to hear you say that," answered Phoebe, brightening up; "of course He knows. I shouldn't have given in so soon, but aunt frets so; and I've been to a governess office this evening, and they have a hundred and seventy daily governesses on their list, and not one application for them! Aunt will not hear of me leaving her altogether; but I must do that, if I can get no other work."

"Shall you tell Cor?" I asked.

"Not yet," she said; "not till the month is over, at any rate. I know Cor would want me to take money from him; but that would not be pleasant, would it? I shall try to get along somehow; and I'll see for some sewing to do, till I hear of more pupils. I am so glad you and aunt are provided for for life. It is not much, I know; but then it is certain. I almost wish I had not come and troubled you about it; but I couldn't help it, Margery."

No; she was a young thing yet, and it was her nature to cry out to some one when the blow fell upon her. It is as we grow older that we learn to be still and silent; like people who are in the night, and cannot see where the blow comes from, but who are waiting for the dawn to break. The brightest light we can kindle to glimmer upon our troubles here is but a tiny rushlight, and they look like giants ready to destroy us; but when the morning comes, we shall discover in them the faces and the strong arms of friends who have been fighting for us, not against us.

I could not find it in my heart to tell Phoebe then of my own loss and difficulty; for it would have been like breaking the bruised reed; and our Lord never did that. But I could not keep the truth from her for many weeks. I heard nothing either from the trustees of Bede's Charity or from Stephen, though I partly expected to have some message from both. It was a dreary autumn to us all. Mrs. Moss fretted and fumed till she fell ill, and then Phoebe had to nurse her. As for me, all my little property, so long mine, went where my watch Margery had gone before. The winter came on all the same; the days grew shorter and darker, and the nights colder. My attic, comfortable and pretty enough when Maggie stayed all night with me, became very bare and comfortless, as one thing after another disappeared from it. The money I got at the pawnbroker's seemed to melt away in my hands. Though, to be sure, there was Phoebe to help sometimes, for Mrs. Moss would not hear of pawning any of her furniture; and six shillings a week was not likely to go very far in keeping two persons, when one of them was ill. Phoebe did not know at first where the money I lent her came from; but when she missed the things from my room, and forced my secret from me, she threw her arms about me, clinging very closely, like a child who is frightened.

"Oh, Margery!" she sobbed, "pray God I may be like you some day! If I could but trust Him as you do, and go about with such a smile as yours upon my face!"

For all that time these words were in my heart:

"Now also, when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not. Thou, which hast showed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side.

"O Lord, I flee unto Thee to hide me. Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my God: Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness."

So the winter came creeping on, like some cruel wild beast stealing on to its prey, and I knew it would spring upon us before long---not upon Phoebe and me only, but upon the thousands, poorer than we were, who were shivering and shrinking beforehand at the thought of it. Before the middle of December it was hard to find anything in my room that I could pawn; and still Mrs. Moss was ill, and Phoebe had heard of no work. Cor had gone out again to sea the third week in November, and we did not know exactly when he would be back in Liverpool. He had not been home yet, because of the expense; but he talked of coming over for a day or two next time he was in England. Then he would find out my secret, and I should become a burden upon him. Yet if the Lord laid that cross upon me, and not only upon me, but Cor, I was sure he would not murmur, neither would I.

But just two or three days before Christmas, Mrs. Brown, the woman from whom I rented my attic, told me that her married daughter and her children were coming to live with her, and she would want my room as well as her own. Phoebe thinks it was just a trick to get rid of me; and it is true I owed her several weeks' rent; but I offered her my little bed for it. It was worth more than the money due to her; yet perhaps I could not have got more for it at the pawnbroker's, besides the cost of having it moved there. It seemed very hard to have to turn out of my home, where I had been so happy and comfortable so many years; just at the darkest time of the year too, and when I had neither money nor goods. I am afraid the old woman thought I should be left on her hands, and she had better get me out at once. But how can I blame her for taking care of herself? She had never fairly learned that God was taking care of her.

I went down to the almshouses to tell Phoebe of this unexpected turn in my affairs. The little house that used to look so bright and cheery was now dull and cold; and Mrs. Moss was still fretful and ailing. She was sitting before the fire, with her feet on the fender, and a blanket hung over her chair; for the fire was low, and the day was damp and foggy. She shed a few tears when I sat down beside her, and looked very miserable.

"I'm sure I don't know whatever is to become of us," she said, moaning and rocking to and fro, "and me so ill, without a doctor, or medicine, or any comfort, and the winter coming on so sharp, and Phoebe earning next to nothing. It's well to be you, with nobody to think of but yourself, and neither chick nor child, as the common people say, and me with Phoebe to keep; and she cannot get any work, though we've only six shillings a week for both of us; and the district visitors giving money and coals to all the other almshouses against Christmas, and saying they think Phoebe shouldn't stay at home, but go out to service, one of them said---when her uncle was clerk in a bank, and my grandfather was a clergyman, and nobody belonging to me has ever been a servant."

"No, no," I said; "Cor would not like Phoebe to go to service. But you've something to be thankful for---that you're sure of your house, Mrs. Moss, and six shillings a week, and Phoebe to wait upon you into the bargain. Most people would say you're better off than me."

I did not think she was better off than me. I would not have changed places with her for all the world except to have Phoebe.

"But I was brought up so different," she said, with more tears. "I never thought I should come to be a widow, living in a poky little almshouse on less than a shilling a day, and Phoebe into the bargain. You don't know what it is, with nobody belonging to you except your brother, and he was lost in the streets last Easter, and never seen or heard of again; which is a blessing to you, I dare say, for brothers are not much help to a woman."

"Is all your money gone?"

"It's more than gone," she answered, "for we're in debt everywhere, and I don't know how we shall get out of it; and they won't give us any more credit; and we've only coal-dust left for firing, and scarcely money to buy bread for a week. A pretty Christmas it will be for me, who used to have a stuffed turkey every year that came round, and mince-pies and plum-puddings; and if Phoebe had only listened to me, and taken Mr. Russell, instead of a poor ship's doctor that's only risen out of the scum of the streets, we should have been having a wedding at Christmas, instead of being starved to death, like the poor men and women out of work in the city."

Poor Phoebe was sitting close to the small window, where the last rays of the dull, foggy daylight came in, sewing busily. I saw her stop to wipe away a tear or two whilst her aunt was fretting so; and my heart ached for her, she looked so low and sad, as is natural to young creatures before they have grown used to bearing the cross. I could not tell her my new difficulty; but I tried to cheer up Mrs. Moss instead, by talking of other things. It was very little use; for she was one of those people who are never happy without some trouble to wail over and make themselves miserable about. It was a hard lot for Phoebe.

I took my leave after a while, and went homewards through the dark streets, with my head bowed down, and my eyes to the ground. Just in the light of a shop-window, I saw something on the muddy pavement glittering like gold. I stooped down to pick it up, and there lay a half-sovereign! I could not believe it at first, it seemed so strange and sudden, and I had never found anything in the streets before. But there it was, the bright small coin, worth a great deal to me.

I am almost ashamed to own that my first thought was not of Phoebe; but the saying is, "Second thoughts are best;" and my second thought was of her sorrowful, anxious young face, and the smouldering fire in the grate, and the fretting tongue of Mrs. Moss. I turned back to the almshouse, and tapped lightly at the door; but there was no answer, and I opened it quietly. Mrs. Moss was going to bed, and Phoebe was helping her; for I could hear their voices in the room upstairs. There was a basin upon the table, and some gruel simmering on the bar; so I put the money into the basin, where Phoebe could not help but see it, as soon as she went to pour in the gruel. For I knew she would not take it from me direct; but if she came upon it in that way, she might accept it in the depth of her distress. What was distress to me, an old woman, who had found out how full the world was of trouble, compared to what it was to her, a young girl only on the threshold of life?

But before I reached the end of the street again, I heard footsteps running and a voice calling after me. I knew before I turned round that it was Phoebe. There she stood under a lamplight, with a shawl thrown over her head, and her pretty face peeping from under it and her eyes shining brighter than I had seen them for many a day.

"No, no, Margery!" she cried; "no, my best, dearest old Margery! I cannot take your money, and I will not; I would not keep it for the world. I thought I heard you downstairs, and I saw what you had come back for the minute I came down. Aunt Moss does not think how much better off we are than you."

"Take half of it, Phoebe," I urged.

"Not one farthing," she said; "I shall get some money for my sewing to-morrow, and I'm not so greedy as to take it from you. If you were a rich woman, Margery, I'd take it just the same as if you were my own mother. But you are poorer than we are---you are indeed."

She did not know then how poor I was. Still, it was of no use to urge her; she pressed the coin back into my hand, and would leave it there. Neither could she stay many minutes, for she had left the door unfastened, and her aunt in bed; so we bade one another good-night, and both of us went on our way towards our homes.

Mine led me past a large railway station, with bills of Christmas excursions put up all about the entrance, easy to read in the strong light of the gas. The name of Thornbury caught my eye---Thornbury, the little town where father had always gone to market, less than three miles from my old home. I stopped to read it. I had never thought of there being a railway to Thornbury, yet it was likely enough, for it lay along a line where there were two or three large towns. There was an excursion starting the next day, being the day before Christmas, which stayed on the way at Thornbury; and the price of third-class return tickets was fifteen shillings. A strong yearning came across me to see my own place, and my own people once more. I tried to reason against it in vain, telling myself I had never made any friends in the parish, except a few old people, who must all be dead and gone. I felt my longing growing too strong for me, as, one after another, everything that had happened to me when I was a girl went hurrying through my brain, never staying for a moment, until I felt as if I should die unless I arose and went home---home to my father's house.

It was not too late to pawn the few things left to me, for the pawnshops keep open till very late in the night. There was the half-sovereign I had found, and the money I raised upon my goods made the sum more than sufficient. I put two or three things into a reticule basket to carry with me; and then I lay down for the last time in my little bed, which Uncle Simister had bought so many, many years ago; and, between waking and sleeping all night, wandered about the narrow, winding lanes, and in the garden, and up the solitary hill, thinking it was summer time. I could not believe that the trees there would be leafless, and no flowers blooming, and the birds all silent, save the robin.

There was a great crowd about the station, the next morning, of people going by the excursion; but I did not see many women as old as myself, and those few were not alone, as I was. Yet I had no difficulty at all in getting a good seat, and the passengers in the same carriage with me were very kind. I was glad I had made up my mind to come; and it seemed as if all my past troubles were growing dim and cloudy in my brain, so that I could not clearly remember them when I tried. But I did not vex myself about them; for very soon we were passing through the country, all brown and bare, lying fallow in the winter, with a light sprinkling of snow upon the barren fields. I do not think I felt the cold at all, for my mind was so full and busy; and my fellow passengers gave me food, and lent me wrappings, as if I was a dear friend to them. We were seven hours before we reached Thornbury, and the early night had already fallen. I felt sorry to leave the train and my good companions, and a sort of dull, uncomfortable dread was making me chilly. The place was so familiar, and yet so strange. I remembered the church very well, with the churchyard four or five feet above the level of the street, from the number of graves that had been dug in it. But the streets were partly the same, and partly very different. It was like going through a place you know very well iii your dreams; you see a corner before you, and turn round it, and it is altogether another place, and you are a stranger in it. I thought I would go and stay all night at the Sun, where father used to put up, and where there would be some little room, not too dear, for me to sleep in. I knew where the Sun stood as well as I knew the farm-buildings at home, but I could not find it anywhere about the market-place. I stopped at a shop-door, and asked an elderly tradesman who was standing at it where the Sun Inn was.

"The Sun!" he said, looking closely at me; "why, the railway goes right through it; that's over fifteen years ago. It's a long time since you were in Thornbury."

"And where is the landlady?" I inquired.

"Dead," he answered. "She'd be an old woman if she was living now. I'm getting on, and she was thirty years older than me."

"Could you tell me of any decent, quiet place, where I could stay a night or two?" I said; "not an expensive place, but very reasonable."

"There's the George," he said; "it's round the next corner, and---"

"Thank you, I know the way," I answered. I knew the house too; and I went straight to it. There was a large, clean kitchen, with country people coming in and out, bringing Christmas baskets and parcels. Their very voices sounded like old times, loud, and slow, and drawling; and their fresh, red, coarse faces looked at rue again, as if I was in a dream. Most of them seemed shy of speech with a stranger; but when the landlady brought me my tea, I asked her if she knew Condover.

"Oh, ay!" she answered, "I ought to. My master married me from there."

"Did you know a farm where the Beades lived?" I said.

"Old Beade's farm? to be sure," she answered. "They tell me young Beade's come back from Australy, and bought it off the parson at Condover. He's goin' to build a fine place there, so they say."

She was obliged to hurry away, for it was a busy night, and I could not ask her any more; but I sat still, half dozing and dreaming, by the fire, which was large and burning hotly. I heard a man's voice call "Jerry!" in a sharp, loud tone, and I almost believed it was father. I started up, and looked about me with a wild and scared look.

"Who's that?" I asked of an old man, who was smoking in the chimney-corner.

"That's the master," he answered, "a-callin' of Jerry, the hostler. You needn't be skeered."

"Did you ever know a servant at Beade's farm called Jerry?" I asked.

"Old Jerry, the wag'ner?" he said; "oh, ay! poor old Jerry; he died in the union not very long ago. He'd ha' been main and glad to ha' heerd o' young Beade a-coming home. Poor old chap!"

Poor old Jerry! I had written to him two or three times after I came to London, but he could neither read nor write; and I had heard nothing of him. I was grieved to learn he had died in the union; yet what could I have done to help it?

I went to bed early, for the people began to grow noisy and boisterous. But again I was in that strange state as if I slept, though my heart was awake. Long before there was a streak of light in the east I was altogether awake, watching restlessly for it, and listening to the carol-singing in the dark streets below my window---shrill, sing-song voices, like those in the old days at our farm-house door, growing louder and louder until we opened it, and gave them mince pies of my making, and apples gathered from our orchard. I wondered if they were singing there now, in the cold darksome morning; and my heart throbbed, and my limbs trembled with impatience to be up and on my way home.

I got up as soon as there was any sound in the house, and hurried over my breakfast; yet it was after nine o'clock before I started. I told no one where I was going, for I knew every inch of the way; and my heart felt as light as a bird's when it has found its nest, as soon as I reached the entrance of the woods, through which there were narrow winding footpaths, scarcely to be seen by any stranger, which lead by a nearer road home. There had been a light snow in the night, a mere soft scattering of tiny snow-flakes, which had hardened in the frosty air, and lay like silver dust upon every branch, and spray, and curled up leaf-bud. The dead ferns, brown as cinnamon, were sprinkled with it, and the highest sprig of the oak trees shone white with it against the pale sky. The sun was just rising above a line of clouds, but it lay low in the sky, and shone aslant through the thick network of the trees. The air was very keen, but my head was burning, and its icy touch refreshed me. There was no change here in the woods, and I felt almost young again; every foot of the path was just as it used to be when I was a strong happy girl, and rejoiced in the keen breath of a wintry morning. How silent it was! There was no sound but the crackling of frosty twigs under my feet. It was more silent even than in summer, when there would have been birds singing and insects buzzing. Oh! what a rest it was for my ears, after the ceaseless din and turmoil of London. It brought to my mind the silence that there was in heaven about the space of half an hour.

So I journeyed on towards home, every turn bringing to my remembrance something belonging to those old lost days; as if Eve crept back in her old age to the very gates of Eden, and looked down its beautiful pathways which her feet might never tread again. But I could tread the old beaten tracks; and here was the oak where Stevie had climbed so often, hiding among the leafy branches to let me pass on under them when I went to meet him coming from school, and there were the wild strawberry roots, where ho had picked the small red fruit, and strung them upon thin threads of grass, to carry them home for me uncrushed and cool. Then I came to the solemn fir coppice which I had remembered so often amid the tall columns and the arched roof of the abbey, where Phoebe would be already wondering what kept me away. That was the first time I had thought of Phoebe, and it gave me a strange, bewildered feeling. It was getting near the time for the service, I knew; for now and then there came through the silent woods the soft tinkling of bells, very far away, but chiming gladly through the wintry air.

I left the woods at last, and turned into a field, where there was no track, except that made by a few feet walking across the brown furrows of the ploughed land. I was on my father's farm now. There, in one instant, I saw the old mountain before me, standing close and clear against the sky, white up to the brow of it, and glistening in the morning sunshine. I could go no farther for very gladness, and I leaned against the gate, gazing up to it till my poor dim eyes were dazzled. A few more minutes would bring me in sight of my home, with its fold-yard beside it, and the stacks of corn and hay clustering behind it, and my garden, so dear a place to me, lying round it. I wondered if, when my Lord went before His disciples into Galilee after His resurrection, it was to go and see His old home, and the fields, and the gardens, and the hills about Nazareth.

Before I moved again, the brief morning sunshine was growing colder, and some clouds were coming up behind the northern end of the hill. I could walk only very slowly now, for my breath came hurriedly, and my whole body was trembling with eagerness. It seemed a very long time before I reached the stile where I could catch the first sight of home, lying in a little round dingle like the hollow of a hand, so that one came suddenly upon it. I reached the stile, and leaned with both my hands upon it. The Condover church-bells were ringing their last peal before the service, and the sun had almost lost itself among the clouds. I looked and looked again; but there was no home there! It was gone---swept down, as if some great storm had blown across it, and left no stone standing on another.

I could not believe my own eyes at first. The anguish of it was too great for me to believe it was real. I crossed the stile, and entered the stack-yard. There was one stack left yet, but all the other frames were empty; and the shed for the harvest-waggons was only a heap of rubbish. The foundations of the buildings were left still; but everything else was gone. The house had disappeared altogether, yet I could just trace out the rooms; the old kitchen, where we used to sit of an evening, and the parlour that had been only used on a Sunday. There we had lived, father, and Stephen and me; and now I was a poor old woman, rambling alone to and fro among the ruins, as much a ruin and a wreck as they were.

There was not a creature about the place, and I had no heart left to go on down the lane to Condover. The garden-wicket was no longer hanging on its hinges, and I went into the old garden, treading the grass walk again towards the place where the bee-arbour had been. The snow lay white and still over everything, like the winding-sheet over my father's face after he was dead; for here it had fallen more thickly than in the woods. My feet left their prints in it, the only marks of a living creature about the deserted place. The wind had gone down, and nothing stirred, not even the snow-covered branches. It was all dead. It was the land of death and dreariness; no sound, no movement, no life. My home lay there before me, a corpse that could never, never live again. I lifted up my eyes to the hill, and it seemed to tower up in the sunless daylight, wan and cold, and awful as death, with a cold grey sky behind it. I sank down upon an old trunk of a tree against the bee-arbour, and felt as if I were about to die myself.

As from this point Margery is unable to continue her narrative, having quite forgotten what next happened to her, it remains for me, Phoebe, to give you such an account as Cor and I have been able to make out, after carefully tracing her movements between that time and the night we discovered her. Cor says that sometimes a severe mental shock will so deaden the vibrations of that portion of the brain where the memory is seated, that it is impossible for the person suffering it to recall any of the circumstances following upon it. But it is not entirely so with Margery. From time to time there have come to her mind vague and dim remembrances; and these we have gathered carefully, and we have met with persons that came across her during her wanderings, who have given us such information as makes it possible for me to give a clear, circumstantial account of most that befell her.

But first I think I must tell how I passed that Christmas Day, whilst my dear old Margery was rambling like a ghost about the ruins of her old home. I was very low, I must confess. Aunt Moss had nearly worn out my spirits, and I was sadly in want of comfort; but it was some relief to get away from her, and go to the morning service at the abbey, where I expected to see Margery, as usual. Of course she was not there, and her absence perplexed me, and made me uneasy. I returned home, and gave aunt her dinner, such as it was, and then started off for Margery's lodgings. The street-door was not fastened, and I walked straight up to her attic; but what was my surprise to find it filled with children, making such a racket as only children can make!

I suppose Mrs. Brown heard me, or was startled by the sudden stillness of the children when they saw me, for she came out on to the landing, and told me that Margery was gone away, and had left early the day before; carrying all the goods belonging to her in a reticule basket, except a box, which she had left in Mrs. Brown's care. She said most of Margery's things, clothes and all, were in pawn; and I was shocked beyond measure to hear of the straits she had been in, never saying a word to me, and at my own careless blindness and selfishness, which had led me to tell her all my troubles, without seeing how much greater hers were.

Mrs. Brown told me she was sure Margery had been half-starved for the last month, though she might not feel it herself. Fasting was a thing that was very slow and cunning, she said; you never knew you were being clemmed to death till it was too late. That made me feel a shiver all through me.

"But why did she leave her room here?" I inquired.

"Well," said Mrs. Brown, "I'm only a poor widow, and I've the rent to pay regular, and she couldn't pay her share when her 'lowance was stopped, and it run on week after week, and my daughter wanted to live with me and her children, so as soon as I told her she were quite willin' to go. She left her bed and bedstid for the back rent."

I knew it was not true that the old woman had any rent to pay, and I felt angry with her for her cold-heattedness, after knowing Margery so many years; but I kept myself under at present.

"Have you no idea where she went?" I asked.

"She did say somethink about going back to her old home," she said, "and of a trip train that was startin' for it yesterday mornin'. I shouldn't wonder if she thought she'd better get back to her own parish; but I didn't ask her any questions. It was no business of mine."

"It ought to have been your business then!" I cried, flaming out in spite of myself. "You're a selfish, good-for-nothing woman, after she has nursed you and waited on you, whenever you've been ill !"

It did no good in the world for me to lose my temper, for she went sulky, and I could not get another word from her. She had always been a sullen, selfish woman; and I often wondered how Margery could bear with her.

However, I returned home to tell my aunt, who was really roused up by the news, and ceased fretting on her own account. She was quite willing for me to go off to Paddington Station---the place Margery would start from. I saw the placard announcing an excursion train to Thornbury, which was to return the following Monday. It was Thursday now. I described Margery as well as I could to the porters who were about, but they did not seem to remember her. I suppose in their eyes she would be only an elderly white-haired woman, dressed in shabby black clothes. One of them said, but not at all unpleasantly, that he should have recollected me.

I was turning away out of the station when a Liverpool train came in, and I stayed a few minutes, just from idle curiosity, to see the passengers alight. I was never so surprised, and relieved, and delighted in my life, as when I saw Cor step out of a carriage on to the platform, looking brown and weather-beaten, but still the same Cor. He did not see me, and I was obliged to run after him as he was hurrying off, and put both my hands round his arm before he knew I was there.

"Why, Phoebe!" he cried, gasping for breath, "Phoebe! how did you guess I was coming home to-day?"

I did not know whether I should laugh or cry; and Cor, who sees everything, saw how hysterical and fluttered I was, and just drew my arm quietly within his own, and walked on without saying any more.

"How is it you are come home to-day?" I asked, as soon as I could speak.

"We put all steam on," he said, "to get in this morning for Christmas Day; and I managed to get off at once, and just caught the train. I shall spend Christmas evening with you and Miss Margery."

"Oh, dear, Cor!" I cried, "I've just lost Margery!"

"Lost her!" he repeated, growing very white. "You don't mean that she is dead ?"

"No, no!" I said, squeezing his arm to reassure him; and then I told him everything. He seemed thunderstruck, and quite unable to comprehend what I said, especially about poor Margery losing her pension from Bede's Charity.

"She ought to have told me!" he cried. "I have money laid by which is as much hers as mine. Friends should tell one another their troubles, and bear one another's burdens. But could you do nothing for her, Phoebe ?"

Then I had to tell him how I had lost my situation, and could not hear of another, or get enough work to keep me; and how Aunt Moss had fretted her heart out, and mine. Cor listened with a very grave and saddened face.

"Now," he said, "I shall never know when I am away whether those I love are well and happy, or are hiding their troubles from me. I shall always be fearing that some great misfortune has come upon you, that you will not tell me of."

"No, no, dear Cor," I answered; "please don't! I will promise faithfully to tell you everything if you won't do that."

It was a very cold afternoon, but we did not feel it, we had so much to talk about, particularly about Margery. Cor did not feel so sure she had gone down to Condover, for she had often said she had no friends left there now.

"Phoebe," he said, "there is one thing I've never told you; not about myself---there's the difference between my secrecy and yours. A doctor will often have secrets in his keeping which he cannot tell even to his wife. But I think I must tell you this now."

It was what he knew about Stephen Bede, and how rich and grand he was; for Cor had found out where he lived in Piccadilly, and that he had large estates in Australia, and how his eldest daughter was going to marry the eldest son of Sir Francis Pembridge. There was no doubt in Cor's mind that he was Margery's brother; but I could not believe in any man being so cruel and ungrateful, especially a man so pleasant in his manner and speech as Margery's brother Stephen,

"We will go and ask him if he knows anything about her," said Cor, boldly. "If he is not her brother, he will be only sorry for us; and if he is, I should like to try if he has any heart at all within him. We will tell him all her poverty and troubles."

It was not so far out of our way that we cared about the distance; and we were in no hurry to get home to Aunt Moss. Cor rang a peremptory peal at Stephen Bede's bell, and the door was opened by a butler, very lordly in his manner: but he did not deny Mr. Bede to us. He showed us into the dining-room, and even poked the fire in a patronizing way, asking us to draw near to it, before he went to call his master.

Mr. Bede came in immediately, and did not seem surprised to see us, shaking hands with me, as if he perfectly remembered meeting me at Cousin Moss's. His face had a downcast, humble look upon it, which struck me instantly.

"Mr. Moss has been to see you?" he said, speaking to me.

"No," I answered; "I have not seen my cousin to-day. Have you seen him?"

"I went there this morning," he said, in a low voice, "to ask after my sister Margery. Has he not sent you with some news of her?"

So astonished was I, that I could not answer a word. I looked from one to the other. Mr. Bede was leaning with his elbow on the chimney-piece, his head halfturned away from us; Cor stood beside my chair, his face---the openest, frankest face in the world ---was all flushing and working with his strong feelings.

"Your sister Margery!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, my sister," he said, painfully; "I've been denying her these twenty years, but I'm driven to own her at last."

We were all silent for a moment or two after that, Mr. Bede's lips twitching and trembling as if he was in great pain, which he wished to control.

"I will tell you," he cried, suddenly, looking down at me; "perhaps you will have some mercy for my folly. Margery brought me up above my station, and my head was full of ambition and pride. I never told my wife I had any relations. Nay, I told her father, before our marriage, that I had none, and that I belonged to a good old yeoman family, of long descent, but now reduced to me only. He belonged to the Pembridges, a scapegrace of the family, who had been shipped out to Melbourne, and prospered there, till he had the finest run in the colony, and was one of the richest men. He took a fancy to me; but he would never have consented to me marrying his daughter if he had thought my family was a low one. You understand?"

"I understand," I answered; "you did it for love's sake?"

"Partly," he continued, with a half smile, "and partly from ambition; he was an honourable man, and he took my word. He believed I came of a good old family, and there was nothing about me to contradict it. But I never dared to own Margery to him---and what is worse, I never ventured to own her to my wife. I was ashamed of her."

"You should be ashamed of yourself, sir, "flashed out Cor; "she is one of the best, and kindest, and truest women God ever sent into this world."

"I am greatly ashamed," he said, sorrowfully; "and I loved Margery after a fashion. I called my second child after her, but I dared not keep up a correspondence with her. Besides, I felt a little sore that my father should have left everything to her, and never mentioned me in his will. My mother, Margery's stepmother, had very early given me the notion that everything belonging to my father would come to me; and I was a little---a very little---sore about that, when I left her letters uncalled for in the post-office at Melbourne."

"But you were rich," said Cor.

"Not then," answered Mr. Bede; "the lawyer, Mr. Garnett, who had always treated me as his adopted son, was just dead, and had left me only a small legacy, which seemed nothing in my first mortification and disappointment. I felt almost as if Margery might have wronged me, and it suited my circumstances---or rather, my circumstances made the temptation stronger---to cherish some bitterness against her, and persuade myself I spoke the truth when I told my wife's family I had no brother or sister, Margery being but my half-sister. I thought she was well provided for according to her station, and I have thought so till this morning. I had no idea that she was living upon alms, upon a poor pension of six shillings a week from Bede's Charity, whilst we have been living here as you see us."

"It has been worse than that," I said. "Margery lost her pension last Michaelmas, and she has been half-starved and famished to death since. She has pawned everything she has."

"Good heavens!" he cried; "will she ever forgive me? And she has been here twice, and seen all our comfort and wealth! Has she sent me any message by you? Are you come to ask me to help her?"

"We have lost her," I said---and I could scarcely speak for crying; "the woman she lodged with told her she must go, and we do not know where she is gone.

We came to see if by any chance you knew anything of her."

Mr. Bede did not answer me; but he walked up and down the room, as if only in that way he could command his feelings, and his face looked more wretched than I had ever seen a man's face look, then. He muttered, "My poor Margery! poor, poor Maggie!" over and over again, until he grew calmer, and came back to his old place by the chimney-piece.

"We must seek her everywhere," he said. "I have not told you yet how my secret came out. Yesterday, at night, I saw an advertisement in the "Times," for Margery Beade, of Beade's Farm, in the parish of Condover, heir of Jacob Simister, and daughter of Margery Simister, the wife of John Beade. An old Chancery suit has come to an end, and Margery is the sole representative of two of the claimants.

You see there was no possibility of concealing her relationship to me any longer; the name of the place I have bought---my father's old farm---was there as well as Margery's own home. I told my wife about it last night."

I could not ask him any question, though I longed to know how his wife had borne to hear that her husband had kept a secret from her---a secret of this kind--- for so many years. He looked miserable enough; and there was no sound of gaiety or mirth about the house. But I could not ask anything, and he said nothing.

"Will Margery have much money?" I inquired.

"I know nothing about that," he answered; "all we have to do now is to find her out, and I will do everything in my power to atone for my unkindness. What a fool I have been!"

I think Cor was pleased with him saying that, for his face cleared a little, and he spoke more cordially to him. We agreed what we were to do; Stephen Bede would go down to Thornbury the next day, to see if Margery had gone there, and Cor would make further inquiries at the station, and about the city, whilst I could only stay at home, in the hope that Margery would come to us in any extremity. I knew that she had half a sovereign left, and that was some comfort to us for we thought it probable that she was only settling herself in some new room, before letting me know she had been turned out of the old one---unless she had gone to see her home at Condover.

The last thing that Margery remembers is sitting down on the old trunk of a tree, in the snow covered garden at Beade's Farm. How she found her way back through the woods to the little inn at Thornbury, we do not know; but late in the evening on Christmas Day she returned there, very white and faint, with a strange, bewildered look upon her face, and a wandering in her speech, though she would not talk much, which alarmed the people of the house. It happened that the relieving officer of the parish was in the parlour of the inn, and they called him into the kitchen to look at her, and question her as to who she was, and where she came from. Margery could tell them nothing, though she seemed trying to recollect; and then the man, being afraid that she might become a burden upon the parish if she grew worse, searched her basket, and found the return half of her excursion ticket in it. He said he would arrange with the railway company to take her back the next day, instead of Monday; and in the meantime they were to give her some warm nourishing food, and let her have a good night's rest, to make her strong enough for the journey. Once in London, he said, there was no doubt she would find her way home.

It was all done as he had arranged; and it was after night-fall on Friday when Margery reached the station she had started from on Wednesday. I suppose she had lost her basket on the way, with her money and all her goods in it, for she has no remembrance of having it after she left the train. There was a great crowd about the station, with several excursion trains returning from their Christmas trips; and none of the porters noticed her as she passed through the throng into the streets. Her memory was quite gone; for no thought of me or Cor, or of her old attic in Westminster, seems to have found its way into her poor brain. She says she felt neither the darkness, nor the cold, nor her own hunger but that a confused glory and gladness seemed all about her, as she turned away from the station into the great network of streets, all twisted and tangled and woven together like a spider's web, where she might wander up and down all night long; no one caring for her, no one even seeing her, with an eye that had any friendly regard in it.

About ten o'clock at night she was seen knocking at the door of her Uncle Simister's old house in Pilgrim Street, as if her clouded memory had recollection of the time when she lived there. But my Cousin Moss was not at home, having come down to us in Westminster as soon as his shop was shut, to hear if we had any news of her. If she had been half an hour later she would have found him there; but a policeman, who was passing by, and who knew her by sight, told her there was nobody in, and asked her where she was going to.

"I am going home," she said, smiling at him, and in her slow, sweet voice---one of the sweetest voices Cor and I ever heard.

"Good-night!" said the man.

"It is a good night," she answered; "good-night to you."

The policeman stood still, and watched her out of sight. He noticed that her figure was bent, and her whole appearance aged a good deal; but she did not walk hesitatingly, as if not sure of her way. There was nothing in her manner that made him think she was not able to take care of herself. Her face, he said, was not troubled, and her voice, when she answered him, "It is a good night," was very glad. Why he stood to watch her out of sight he could not tell; only she had made him feel pleasanter in himself.

It was after eleven o'clock, when Margery, farther away from home than ever, stopped beside one of those charcoal fires in brasiers, where potato-sellers bake their potatoes for sale. The man's stock was not quite gone, and he was still lingering, in hope of more customers. She spread her bare hands, blue with cold, over the hot embers, saying nothing, but looking at the man with pleasant, smiling eyes. He did not speak a word to her, good or bad. It was at the corner of a street, and the wind was driving keenly down it from the north-east, bringing with it little scuds of rain and hail, which spattered on the fire. After a few minutes Margery drew her shawl closer about her, and sat down on a door-step close by, where she was more sheltered, with her eyes fastened on the red coals, whispering softly to herself, but so low that he did not hear what she said.

She had been sitting there some time, and he had just made up his mind to pack up his things and go away, when a woman, with a baby in her arms, and a child holding on to her gown, came up and bought two potatoes. They stood by the fire eating them, and shivering with cold, and he could not hurry them away. When the woman paid for the potatoes it was with some half-pence she had tied up in the corner of her handkerchief.

"That's the last penny I've got in the world," she said, laughing aloud as she put them down on the stall---a bitter laugh, which made Margery look up in her face.

"Are you going home too?" she asked, in her pleasant voice.

"Home!" said the woman; "I've got no home."

"Where are you going to sleep to-night?" she asked again, and standing up as if ready to go with her.

"Anywhere," said the woman; "we must creep in somewheres, the brats and me, such a night as this, or we'd be froze to death. I reckon it 'ud be as warm at the bottom o' the river as anywhere else, and I've half a mind to try it."

"Hush, don't say that!" said Margery; "there's a home somewhere, and I'm trying to find it. God has provided better things for us."

"God!" she cried; "much He cares for the likes of us. And why should He? We never thinks of Him, and He never thinks of us."

"Hush!" she said again. "He does think of us, and He's helping me to think, though there's something the matter with my poor head. I know He has provided a place for us somewhere, but I cannot remember where it is."

"All the refuges is full," answered the woman, "and the wards; it ain't of no use trying to git into e'er a one of 'em. It's past eleven now."

"Think again," said Margery; "there's sure to be some place. Give me the baby to carry, and you can carry the other little child, We shall find a place somewhere, and we'll put the children between us and keep them warm. It isn't as if God was not here."

They walked on slowly down the street, Margery holding the baby on her left arm, under her shawl; and the woman dragging her heavy feet beside her in slip-shod shoes that did not keep thorn off the icy pavement. There were very few persons about, for the cold was bitter; and it was then getting on for midnight. Margery was talking softly, half to herself and half aloud, as if to soothe the moaning baby; and the mother caught some words odd words they sounded to her, and she could only remember one here and there.

"They wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins," Margery was saying, "being destitute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was not worthy: they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and th dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better things for us---"

"You ain't used to tramping the streets," said the woman, looking curiously into Margery's tranquil face.

"No," she said; "but I'm not complaining; for even He had not where to lay His head. It's not much for me to have to do."

"Who's he?" the woman asked.

"My Master," she answered; "and the servant should never look to be above his master, should be ?"

"No; that stands to reason," said the woman; but the words puzzled her. Just then they were going down an almost empty street and crossing the entrance of a short side street, at the farther end of which were a few steps and a broad gateway. The woman looked down it anxiously. It was quite dark and very quiet---not a sound to be heard.

"There's a place down yonder we slept in last night," she said. "I know they wouldn't turn us away such a night as this, but let's go softly, and they'll not hear us."

"Was it warm?" asked Margery.

"Warm!" she repeated, shivering. "Well, it's warmer nor a bridge, or a doorstep, or tramping up and down all night. It's a market by day, and there's a roof to it, and stalls as you can creep under out o' the wind; and sometimes you'll happen on a mossel of straw or such-like to lie on. Yes, it's a bit warmer than the streets."

They stole softly down the narrow street and into the covered space beyond. it was dark and quiet, but not empty. Almost every stall sheltered some poor homeless wretches, who snarled at them like dogs out of their kennels. At last they found a corner untenanted, and in some measure protected from the wind. The woman crept into it, but did not try to lie down on the bare damp floor, only crouched up into the Corner in a sitting posture, with her child lying across her lap.

"The closer we sit the warmer it'll be," she said to Margery, beckoning her nearer. But Margery knelt down first, and said "Our Father!" like a child who has forgotten all other prayers. Then she sat down beside the woman, and seemed to sleep a little, but by fits and starts, growing colder and colder as the long night Wore away, but never once uttering a word of impatience or complaint.

They were in no haste to begin their dreary wanderings again the next morning; and as the stall that sheltered them belonged to a Jew, and it was Saturday, his sabbath, they were left there undisturbed long after the others who had taken refuge in the market were gone. Margery still kept falling into short broken slumbers; and when she awoke from one of these she found herself alone. The woman and her two children had left her.

She roused herself then, and got up to look about her, wandering through the market in search of them. It was getting on for mid-day, and the place was filling with customers; haggard men and women and still more haggard children, chaffering over dirty rags and broken articles of furniture The dismal crowd was thick, and she could scarcely make her way through it. Neither could she find her companion; so she went out once more alone into the streets.

How she passed the rest of that day, where she wandered, and whether any food crossed her lips at all, we never knew. It was a bleak, bitter day, the 27th of December Stephen Bede returned from Thornbury having discovered that Margery had been there, and how cruelly she had been sent back to London the day before That was all we knew about her. Where could she be? What shelter had she found? We never thought that she had found no shelter; yet it was a day of terrible suspense and anxiety to us all.

It was dark the next evening when Margery, with very feeble and faltering steps, passed along a close and narrow street, with grimy houses on each side, and stalls down the pavements, where a Saturday night's market was already begun, with groups of drunken men and evil-looking women thronging round each standing and shop. She was worn out with weariness, yet her face kept its calm and tranquil expression, and her dim eyes looked gently into the faces of those she met. Among these was the woman who had been her companion the night before, and who was plodding along as quickly as she could with her two children, but going in a different direction from Margery's.

"Eh! met again!" she cried. "Bless you! turn back with us, and we'll have a chance to get into the refuge to-night. It won't open till six, and it's not five now. I'd made up my mind to be in time to-night, and now here you are. That's lucky! I am glad, I am; and that's a deal for me to say. I haven't been as glad this many a day. Turn back; turn back."

"Give me the baby," said Margery, holding out her arms.

"No, no; you ain't fit to carry it," she answered. "You look ready to drop now, poor thing. But cheer up; we're bound to git in to-night; and them as are in Saturdays may stay all Sunday, and git a dinner of bread and cheese. I've been thinkin' of it all day long. We've been a-sittin' under a archway, me and the children, and it's been almost fit to freeze us to death. But we'll git in this night anyhow."

They were walking on as the woman said this, and turned into another and a narrower street. A crowd of ragged, destitute people, strangely quiet, were already gathered thickly about the door of a large building, pressed up against it as close as they could get. The woman looked anxiously at the throng, but took her place on the outside patiently.

"You stick close to me," she said to Margery. "There'll be a crush when the door opens; but I'll git you through. Hold on to me, and I'll say you're my mother; they'll be sure to take us in."

Margery was very silent, and seemed scarcely to hear what she said; but the woman drew her hand through her arm, putting her child before her, and when the crush came, after an hour's waiting, they were all carried in together. She was about to have Margery put down as her mother, but she roused herself a little, and said to the man who was entering the names in a book, "No, that's a mistake. It isn't my right name."

"What is it then?" he asked.

"Margery Beade," she answered, distinctly.

"Where do you come from?" was the next question.

"I don't know," she said; "I cannot remember anything."

"Where did you sleep last night?" he inquired.

She were with me, sir," said the woman. "We all slep' under a stall in one o' the markets, out o' doors---her, and me, and the two children."

They had a piece of bread given to each of them, and then they went on up a steep staircase into a large long room, with no ceiling, but with thick black beams supporting the roof, and showing clearly against the whitewashed walls. It was well lit up, and a good fire was burning. How warm it felt to the poor creatures who had been shivering, homeless and friendless, in the cold all day! Down each side of the wall the floor was partitioned off into long narrow cribs, furnished with a leather-covered mattress and a leather counterpane---nothing more. Those who were at home in the refuge, as some were, moved quickly but quietly to choose the best places; and very soon the cribs were filled with women, some lying down at once, as if exhausted with privation, and others sitting on the board at the foot of their bed, eating their piece of bread ravenously. Margery, with her white, smiling face, crept down the path between the two rows of cribs, and sank upon a mattress in the darkest corner of the room. She scarcely wanted to eat; and the instant her head fell upon the small hard pillow she dozed away into a deep and dreamless slumber.

Once Margery roused up again, wide awake, before the lights were put low for the night. The large room was quite full, and more than a hundred women, young and old, but all homeless like herself, were occupying the poor beds. There were other rooms in the refuge, for it could receive nearly seven hundred, and in the winter was often full by seven o'clock at night. Some of the women were already stretched on their. mattresses, as Margery was; but others were sitting up and sewing, mending their poor rags with patches, and tapes, and buttons, given out to them by the matron. There was an old woman in the crib next to Margery, many years older than herself, who was busily at work still, making flowers out of scraps of old crape, which she had begged or bought in some rag-fair. She nodded to her as soon as she saw her eyes open, and was beginning to tell her history, when a deep, heart-breaking sob on the other side of her made Margery turn feebly that way.

Very clear is this in Margery's clouded memory, though for a long time she fancied it was nothing but a dream. The division next to hers was nearest the end wall, and being a little wider than the others, it had been allotted to a woman who had a child with her. The little creature was lying close to Margery, with only the board which divided the beds between them. But it was so small, so starved, so withered, and lay so still, that at first she could not believe there was any life in the puny skeleton-like body. She stretched out her hand, and laid it very carefully and softly on the thin warm face; and then she raised her eyes, and saw the mother sitting on the foot-board, and bending over it with a grey, despairing face, and with bare arms, where the skin hung loose in wrinkles, and with eyes full of a dumb, hungry pain.

"It is alive," said Margery, trying to comfort her.

"It's the last," she answered, tears rolling one by one slowly down her cheeks. "I've buried two this winter, and I've only this one left."

"And you're afraid of this?" said Margery, her hand resting tenderly on the wasted, sleeping face of the child.

"Ay!" she answered. "I could scarcely keep life in it to-day, the wind cut so, and the snow fell. But you know. You've been out in it?"

"Yes," replied Margery.

"Folks say God knows," said the woman, lying down with the child in her arms; their faces were so near one another that she could hear Margery's faint voice, which was hardly louder than a whisper.

"Yes, He knows," she answered. "And He's taken your little children home to Himself, where there's no more cold, or hunger, or pain. He loves us spite of all. I don't know how all this has come about; but never think that God has forgotten any one of us."

The woman shook her head sorrowfully, but said no more; and Margery fell asleep again, and so lay waking and sleeping fitfully till the morning.

But when the morning came, and all the other women left their beds, some to go out into the wintry streets again, and others to sit up eating their portion of bread for breakfast---for it was Sunday, and no one need quit the refuge if they chose to stay---Margery lay still, and did not rouse herself even to eat. The matron came and looked at her, with her white, pinched face showing more distinctly by the daylight, but with an expression of peace and rest upon it as if, she said, she was some child rocked in a cradle.

"Are you ill?" she asked.

"No," said Margery. "Not ill or hungry, only very very tired."

"There'll be preaching downstairs soon," said the matron. "Will you go to it ?"

"I'm too tired," she murmured. "I can scarcely open my eyes. It feels as if my heart was tired, and my head; but I'm in no pain."

The matron was about to leave her to sleep a little longer, when Margery looked up again, her dim eyes brightening a little, and her voice growing stronger.

"Let nobody say He's forsaken me," she said; "let nobody think such a thing as that!"

"Who do you mean?" asked the matron.

"My Lord and my God," she answered; "Jesus Christ, who died for me on the cross. That's a thousand times worse than dying here. He has never left me nor forsaken me, as He said. I'm ready to go wherever He would have me go."

"Are you sure you don't feel ill?" asked the matron, anxiously.

"Oh, no!" she said, in a distinct, cheerful voice; "only very, tired, and as if I could sleep all day."

So she lay during the morning and afternoon, always answering the same, and smiling tranquilly, her face growing smoother and calmer every time the matron saw her. There was nothing to alarm any one, and as the night matron had left in the morning, and another had taken her place, it is not surprising that little notice was taken of Margery's long sleepiness. At last, in the evening, a doctor came, who attended the place regularly, to prevent any case of infectious disease or serious illness being admitted; and the matron called him to look at Margery. Her eyes were half closed, and a solemn look was upon her white face; but she was breathing lightly. He spoke to her, and then stooped down to feel her pulse.

"Why, the woman is sinking fast!" he exclaimed. "What has she had to eat?"

The matron could not say; her breakfast and dinner had been given to her the same as the others, only Margery had shared them between her two neighbours. But the doctor did not waste any time in useless questionings. He sent instantly for restoratives, and referred to the register to find out her name.

"Margery Beade!" ; he cried; "good heavens! that is Cor Bell's friend."

It was through his means that we heard where we could find Margery. All our efforts to trace her out after her return to London had proved fruitless; and Stephen Bede was consulting with us as to what further measures could be taken, when a messenger, sent from the refuge by Cor's friend, brought us the news that she was found. The message was very urgent that we should not waste any time, if we wished to see her alive. With what haste and dread we went, I need not say.

The long room, with its double row of mattresses on the floor, was nearly full when we reached the refuge; but the women had been gathered together at the end farthest from Margery, leaving all that part clear. The matron was sitting on the floor beside her, trying to rouse her to swallow some restorative; and her head lay on the lap of a wretched-looking woman, who had a puny child leaning against her, with its fingers.on Margery's white hair. I glanced at Stephen Bede; but I did not dare to look into his face again, with its intolerable anguish, and I sprang forward a step or two before him and Cor, crying, "Oh, Margery! Margery!"

We saw a quiver come across her tranquil face, and her eyelids trembled a little. I called again, and she opened them; her eyes looked out at us earnestly and tenderly, and her lips parted.

"Why it's Cor!" she whispered, "and Phoebe. And it's Stevie! my boy Stevie !"

There was a little room at the side, where there were only a few beds, and Cor and the doctor carried her gently on her mattress into it. There was a fire-place, and a fire burning in it; and there Stephen Bede and I sat all night, watching and praying silently to God, whilst Cor nursed and fanned the flickering flame of life, which threatened every moment to go out, and leave us only the voiceless, sightless, dead body of Margery.

As Margery can remember what happened after this, I need not continue the narrative, but leave her to tell it in her own words.

I remember the first moment when I came quite to myself, and knew that I was not asleep and dreaming. I felt as weak as a child. There I was lying on a soft, white bed, in a pleasant room, with the windows darkened to suit my feeble eyes. It was quite a strange room; not my attic in Westminster, or my closet in Uncle Simister's house, or even my old room, which used to be mine when I was a girl. I had never seen any place like this before; but just after saying so much to myself, I fell asleep again being too weak and weary yet to remain long awake.

It was still a puzzle to me how I came into that strange room, when I roused up again. But I heard the whispering of voices, and I managed to draw the curtain a little on one side to see who it could be that was talking. There was Phoebe, and beside her Maggie, Stephen's child, with their faces close together, that they might not speak too loud. I could not help smiling to myself at them being so careful; only it made the puzzle of the room greater. At last Phoebe glanced round, and came quickly to me, when she saw me looking at them.

"Margery!" she said, in a questioning tone.

"Yes, Phoebe," I whispered, for I found I could not speak aloud.

"Do you know me?"

"Surely," I said.

"And this little girl?" she asked.

"Maggie," I said, trying to hold out my hand to the child; and then Phoebe burst into tears, and ran quickly out of the room, coming back with Cor.

"Where am I?" I asked him, as he stooped over me, saying not a word, though his eyes glittered with tears.

"Never mind at present," he answered; "you are at home, and Phoebe and I are taking care of you. That's enough for you to know at present."

But I was strong enough to hear a little more next morning. I was in Stephen's house---my brother Stephen's house! That seemed a strange thing; and I could not tell how I had got there. But some day we shall find ourselves awaking in our Father's house; and perhaps we shall not know the way by which we came into it.

I was very weak still, and did not trouble myself for long with wondering. Phoebe and Maggie were there, and waited upon me as if I had been some princess; and in the evening Alice came in, the beautiful, grand young girl I had so often seen in the parks. There was something pale and sad about her delicate face, which seemed to touch me to the heart. I had strength enough to clasp my fingers round her hand, and hold it fondly.

"You do not know me?" she said, with a faint smile.

"Yes," I answered; "I've seen you often and often in the park. You are Alice Bede."

"Your niece Alice, Aunt Margery!" she said, in a very pleasant voice. Oh, what joy it was! what gladness! Yet I wondered how it had come about.

Then in due time Cor told me everything; all that Phoebe has found out and written down of the things that I could not recollect of myself, for my mind had been under a cloud, remembering nothing clearly, except that I had not been unhappy; I had never felt forsaken and left to perish. And why should we ever think we are forsaken, even when we pass through great and sore troubles? Can a mother forget her child? Yea, she may possibly forget: yet will not my Lord forget us. He has but to look on His own pierced hands, and our names are written there upon the palm.

So then I was in Stephen's house, and Stephen's wife and children knew that I was his sister. But I had not seen him yet, and my whole heart yearned towards him. Why did he stay away? How was it that Alice and Maggie came often to my bedside, and he never came? Was he still ashamed of me? Was it a bitter thing for him to have me under his roof?

At last I spoke to Cor, and asked him why Stephen kept away from me; but he only answered, "You must get stronger first." That was all I had to do; to lie there, folded into peace and quietness, like a child on its mother's lap, without care or trouble; and those young girls about me with their fresh young voices and pretty faces, sometimes reading and sometimes singing, but always thinking what was best for me, as if I was the only person to be cared for in the world. After a few days I was strong enough to sit up in an easy chair, and then Cor said I might see Stephen; though I had heard his voice before, outside my room asking how his sister Margery was; and every word had thrilled through me, like the music of the organ in the abbey. His wife came with him, for they thought I should control myself the better if she was there. She was a small, gentle, simple-looking lady, and she kissed me affectionately before sitting down on one side of me, whilst Stephen stood opposite to us, looking down upon us both with his face sadder than it used to be, perhaps, but pleasanter to look upon.

"Can you ever forgive me, Margery?" he asked.

"Forgive you!" I said; "I've forgotten what there is to forgive. Maybe I shall remember some day; but not now, Stevie, not now, when we are together again!"

"It has been miserable folly in me!" he cried; "and I can never atone for it. Thank God, at any rate, you have been spared; but I cannot atone for my cruelty to you."

"There is no need to atone," I said: "the Lord Christ has done that. He has made up to me what was missing from you, Stephen; and He'll make up to the others, if there's anybody else who is suffering from it. It was a hard thing for you," I added, looking into his wife's face; "are you suffering from it?"

"Yes," she said, sadly; "it was a hard thing for me I had loved him so much, and trusted him altogether---and he could keep a secret from me! But Stephen knows I've forgiven it, though it's a hard thing to do, especially just now."

"Why now?" I asked, as she stopped, looking pale and sorrowful, like Alice.

"Margery," said Stephen, "I have told all to Sir Francis Pembridge, and he is justly angry and indignant. I never thought that others would have to suffer as they do---you, and my wife, and my poor Alice!"

"Alice!" I repeated.

"Yes," he said; "she was engaged to the eldest son of the Pembridges, and it is broken off, for a time at least. When I saw you in September, the morning you brought Maggie home, I should have owned you, Margery; I believe I should have owned you, and told my wife all; but just then I was expecting Frank Pembridge to propose for Alice every day, and I could not throw away the girl's happiness. It would have been better if I had done it even then; but I have been a fool altogether."

That seemed to darken my gladness indeed; but Stephen would not let me dwell upon it. He sat down on the other side of me, and began telling me of our old home.

"I had just returned from seeing it," he said, "when I met you last Easter. I had had a few days to spare before my wife and children could arrive, so I ran down to Condover. Margery, you would never understand how I had been deceiving myself about my father's farm. I had thought of it as a large old house, with all the marks of an ancient family place about it, with great buildings and stack-yards around it; and when I saw it, it seemed little better than a hovel to me. It was little, and poor, and mean-looking; the people living in it were slovenly and dirty. I could scarcely believe that it was my birthplace, and I was utterly ashamed of it. It would never do, I thought, to bring my children to see that miserable hole; so I inquired at once to whom it belonged, and bought it at the price asked, glad enough that it was for sale. As soon as I could get the tenants out, I had it pulled down to the ground; for I could not have shown it to any one as my birthplace as it stood."

I tried to understand Stephen's feelings, but I could not quite. It would have been very dear to me---the old place, however poor and neglected it might have been. But Stephen thought of it partly as Cor thought of the wretched garret where his mother lived and died. I wonder, when we are angels before God's throne, whether we shall look back upon this world as a poor, miserable birthplace, which we shall be glad to forget.

"Then," said Stephen, "when I came back to London, I thought I would find out Pilgrim Street, and your Uncle Simister's shop there. I saw the name "Moss, late Simister," above the door, and I stepped in to make a few inquiries, not knowing whether he was dead, or had only retired from business. You were there, as you know, and I was glad to see you. And I meant to see you again on Good Friday; but I received a telegram from Southampton that the vessel was coming in that was bringing my family, and I started at once to meet them. I did not mean to desert you altogether; but I was so occupied, and then my visit to you would have to be a secret. I never guessed you were so poor. You seemed more than content, and you told me your Uncle Simister had left you all he had."

"It was true," I answered; "but all he had was not much."

"Not then," he said; "but you remember we always thought he was rich; and my father wanted me to go to him instead of to Australia. An old Chancery suit is just closed, and you come into possession of his share of the property, and of your mother's as well. You are a poor woman no longer, Margery; and now I have no way to prove to you that I should have sought you out for yourself, and made you share in my prosperity, if I had known how poor you were. God has taken away any means of repaying you for all your goodness to me."

"No, no, Stevie!" I cried, "you can give me yourself; you can be my brother again. What is money between you and me? It is you I want; you and your children. Don't be ashamed of me because I am not learned, or a lady. I love you all, and I only want you to love me a little just as I am."

"Maggie, Maggie!" said Stephen, bending down his face to mine, "I never knew you before. Can I ever forgive myself?"

I have never asked him since whether he has forgiven himself; but his face has worn a happier, humbler look for a long while past. I believe that he has found out that forgiveness comes to us all out of the fulness. of love, as freely as the air we breathe and the light we see; and it is only because we shut our eyes and lock our lips to keep it out, that we do not rejoice in the sense of it all the day long. How could I be stinting in forgiveness, when the Lord Christ multiplies His pardon, not till seven times a day merely, but until seventy times seven?

I was a long while in getting strong again: but it was a pleasant time---so peaceful and glad, that I think it must be more like the first days in heaven, whilst we are recovering our strength after the great shock and change of death, than anything else I ever felt in my life. Phoebe, and Alice, and Maggie were about me, with their girlish joys, and even their girlish sorrows, making me feel young again. Stephen and his wife were growing to know and love me as their sister, whose heart was true to them, though she was not so learned and refined as themselves.

The two little children used to steal into my room whenever they could; and I used to hear them often escape from their nursery, and come flying downstairs to me with joyous laughter, as the pigeons used to fly down when they saw me in the fold-yard at home. And even Cor stayed one whole turn to take care of me, having procured a young doctor to be his substitute on board ship for one voyage to New York and back; and he did not leave me till I was fairly recovering.

About the Chancery suit, and the property coming to me? Well, I had never known or troubled myself much about it. Uncle Simister had sometimes spoken of it when he was in his philosopher mood, and was sneering at the world in general, and lawyers in particular; but he had never expected any good to come of it, and quite naturally I had forgotten all about it. But now Stephen, who is clever and shrewd in all business matters, looked into it for me, and took care that I had my rights, without troubling me more than could be helped. I have often wondered since how I should have managed if the money had come whilst I was living alone, a poor, ignorant woman, with no friend to counsel me except Cor, who knew nothing about business of that kind. But all this had happened at the right time for me, for there was my brother Stephen standing between me and the lawyers.

"Margery," he said one day, when all was finished, "what do you mean to do with your money ?"

"How much is it, Stevie?" I asked.

"There are two shares for you," he answered, "your mother's and your Uncle Simister's. It is nearly eight thousand pounds altogether."

Eight thousand pounds! It was more than I could think of, or take into my mind all at once. Coming, too, to an old woman like me, nearly sixty years of age, who would not need any earthly thing for long.

"Stephen," I said, in a low voice, lest anybody else should hear, "would it make any difference to Sir Francis Pembridge if half of it was settled upon Alice?"

"No, no," he answered, "that would make no difference! Alice's fortune will be large enough. No, Maggie, none of my children must have a shilling of your money."

"Then there's Cor," I said. "He must have a practice, and a house; and he and Phoebe must be married; and I'll pay back the money to Bede's Charity; and there are many poor people I can help. Oh! it's a pleasant thing to have money!"

Yet I was very much afraid, when I came to think about it, and remembered how it was for thirty pieces of silver that Judas betrayed my Lord. Peter denied Him, and all the disciples forsook Him and fled for fear; but Judas betrayed Him for money. It seemed a strange thing for me to have to read my Bible as a rich woman, after all my life reading it as a poor one. Could it ever come to pass that I should forget Him, who, though He was rich, yet for our sake became poor? God forbid that I should ever grieve His Spirit!

It was a very happy spring-time, and the weeks and months seemed to fly past us. I found that Cor was not really yet Dr. Bell; and it was his great desire to pass through all the studies and examinations necessary before he could take his degree. So Stephen and his wife asked Phoebe to stay as governess to Maggie and the little children, and companion to me, until she and Cor were married; for they would not hear of me leaving them, and taking a house of my own before this marriage, after which I was to have my home with Phoebe and Cor, only spending three or four months every year with Stephen and his family. In this way all was settled for a season, and the only person at all discontented was Mrs. Moss; but, after we had found a girl to go in and wait upon her, she became more satisfied, and enjoyed hearing of our grandeur, and our way of living in the house in Piccadilly.

Even Alice's cloud soon cleared away; for at Easter only twelve months after they had come to England, she came into my bedroom early one day with a letter in her hand. Her eyes were red a little, as if she had been crying, but her face was beaming with smiles, such as I had not seen upon it before; though she had borne her trial bravely, and had done her best not to let it darken our gladness.

"Good news, Alice!" I cried, the moment I saw her face.

"It's a letter from Lady Pembridge," she said, colouring as well as smiling. "Sir Francis has been ill, but he is better now; and he told her yesterday to write and ask mamma and me to go down to Pembridge Hall."

"Oh, Alice! my darling!" I cried. "All will come right now! That is all I wanted. I'm too happy now."

"Frank is there; he will come to meet us," she whispered, hiding her happy face from me by laying her head down upon my pillow. I think Alice was almost as fond of me as Phoebe; only Phoebe, who had no mother, was like a daughter to me. We heard a day or two after that all had come right; and Alice was to marry Frank Pembridge, and be Lady Pembridge herself some day.

I have not very much more to say, yet Phoebe will not listen to my leaving off here---Phoebe, who has been writing so patiently, whilst I have done nothing but sit with my hands folded on my lap in the sunshine. She says I must tell you something about the wedding-day; only one wedding-day, though there were two brides and two bridegrooms.

It was the next Christmas---the one next to that when I went down alone to Condover, and found my old home all gone, swept away from the face of the earth, except the stony old foundations. It seems that Stephen, without saying anything to me, had hurried on the building of his new house there; a fine large mansion; nothing like Pembridge Hall, of course, but still a fine grand place compared to the poor old farmstead. All this was done during the spring, and summer, and autumn; and it was finished enough for us to go down there in December, though all the painting and beautifying was not done. We went down together, Stephen and his family and me, with Phoebe and Cor, who was now Dr. Cornelius Bell.

How different it was, and yet how surely it was the same place, where Stephen and I had been children together! The yew-trees were there in their odd shapes, but the fold-yard was gone, and the new house was in no way like the old one. Still, the garden had been restored almost as it used to be, though it was lying barren in the winter season; there was the broad grass walk, and the old-fashioned shrubs and flowers only waiting for the spring to blossom out again; and the bee-arbour had been set up again, with hives all quiet and soundless with the sleeping bees within. And the old, old mountain was there, standing solitary and clear against the wintry sky, with streaks of snow lying in the slopes, but still green with grass in places, and again grey with rocks. Phoebe and Cor had heard me speak of it often and often; but they had never thought how beautiful it was.

Pembridge Hall was in the next county, only fifteen miles away, with a railroad running from Thornbury direct to Pembridge. It was nothing of a distance to Frank Pembridge; and now he and Alice, Cor and Phoebe, walked down often through those woods which I knew so well. The wedding-day was drawing near fast, and who should take more interest in the preparations than Frank and Cor? Except, of course, Alice and Phoebe. The wedding was to be at Condover, in the old church, where father lay buried outside with his forefathers, and where Stephen had put up a marble tablet to his memory, on which the name was spelt B-e-d-e; for it had been proved beyond question that we were a branch of the ancient family whose name was so spelt; and everybody about Condover and Thornbury seemed to have altogether forgotten that he had been nothing but a poor, honest, hardworking farmer.

It was the day after Christmas Day. All the house was astir long before it was light, excepting me; and I lay quiet, watching the daybreak, and listening to all the country sounds which bring in the dawn; the chirping of the robins amid the apple-trees in the orchard, and the crowing of the cocks in our next neighbour's distant fold-yard, and the bleating of sheep, and the lowing of oxen going down for water to the lightly frozen pool. At last Phoebe came in half-dressed herself to help me to dress, but so absent in mind and so prettily distracted, that I was obliged to send her away and ask the fine lady's maid to give me a little help; me, Margery Bede, with a lady's maid! I was only just ready in time, in my lavender silk dress, given me by Stephen, which had made me shed a few tears over the memory of that evening before he left us to go to Australia, when he promised me he would pay me back in silk gowns and servants to wait upon me. Partly it had come true; partly, but oh, how differently from what we thought of then!

It is quite beyond me to say how the church looked when I went in, leaning on Cor's arm. It had been decorated for Christmas, with huge bunches of holly and ivy fastened to every pillar, and hanging from every arch, in the old-fashioned way, giving more the look of a forest of greenness than the way they decorate churches nowadays. The high square pews were crowded with people from all the country round, even up in the organ-loft, where the old organ stood, which had always given me so solemn a feeling when I was a girl. Cor took me into the chancel, and placed me in a seat where I could see them all coming up the aisle; and then he stood beside me waiting for Phoebe, with his face all of a glow, yet grave, as one who was too happy to be merry.

I was vexed to find my eyes growing dim with tears just as they were coming up the aisle, so that with wiping them away I lost sight of the first among them. But I saw Stephen coming, with Alice on his arm, looking simple yet stately, as if she would make a noble lady, and be no disgrace to the Pembridges. Behind them came Phoebe, smiling and blushing, yet with tears close to her dark eyes; and she was leaning on the arm of Sir Francis Pembridge himself!

Very little I heard of the solemn service, for my brain was busy, one thought flocking after another, like the flight of birds to their nests at evening. Their voices were in my ears, but the words were indistinct; only I know that when all was over, and the Amen said, Phoebe turned to where I sat close beside her, and threw her arms round my neck, kissing me through her white veil. Then Stephen took me down the aisle and put me into a carriage with his wife and Lady Pembridge; whilst he and Sir Francis, good friends once more, walked home together along the wintry lanes.

They were all gone before the early night fell. It was still light enough for me to walk up the long grass walk in the garden, as I had been wont to do in my early days, when I was weary with hard work, as if it were to bid the sun good-night, and look over the fields sloping upwards to the hill. Never a day like this had dawned and shone for me; short and fleeting, but all brightness. Did my Lord ever have a day like it upon earth? A bright perfect day of gladness in the joys of others? I cannot tell; only this I know, that He has so ordained it that often, nay always, the disciple is above his Master, and the servant above his Lord. Surely He bath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, leaving us in their stead His own peace and joy.

One word more, Phoebe. We are living now, Phoebe and Cor and me, in London, where we can work more and better, we think, for our Lord. Cor is especially busy as a doctor; and we often complain that we scarcely see him from day to day; but he is doing good work in all ways. Everywhere in this great city the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few, and the precious grain is wasting. Cor could not be spared from the field; and he knows well where to look for the ripest sheaves, and how to garner them in. He thanks God now that his birthplace was down in the darkness and the mire; for he does not need to learn how to deal with the lowest of the people, seeing he is one of them. Into the most dangerous of the courts and the foulest of the slums he can go, knowing their mode of life, their way of thinking, their pains and their sins; even as the Lord comes down amongst us in our darkness and guilt, and is touched with a feeling of our infirmities, having been one of us, the carpenter's son at Nazareth.

And whenever the night is very cold; when the wind howls along the streets, and the snow falls, or the rain beats agains the windows, then I see Cor start out just before I go to bed, with his greatcoat on, as if he is not coming in again soon.

Sometimes Phoebe goes with him, her rosy smiling face looking out pleasantly under her veil. I know very well what they are thinking of and what they are going to do. I see myself wandering about the streets, homeless and starving, shivering in the night wind. And I lie awake in my comfortable bed thinking it all over, and pitying and praying for the poor creatures who are in the same plight. Often it is long after midnight when I hear Cor and Phoebe come in again; I listen to their feet coming upstairs, and then my door is gently opened, and Phoebe's voice says, softly, lest I should be asleep, yet loud enough for me to hear if I am awake, "Some little children, Margery," or maybe, at times, "Some old men and women, Margery, are sleeping under shelter to-night, to make up for that night you passed out of doors."

God bless Cor and Phoebe!