"Charlotte," I said faintly, "I am Rachel
Holland. Don't you know me? Willie
Holland's sister?"

In a moment the withered hand had caught
mine, and led me in from the dark night, and
seated me in her own chair by the fireside, with
many muttered words of delight and amazement.
The poor desolate old creature rejoiced over me
as if I had been her daughter, and spread her
scanty meal for me with the finest edge of
hospitable gladness. For a little while, as I looked
round the tiny room, unchanged since the time
when as a child I came here on busy days at home,
to be out of my mother's way, and had played at
keeping house, compelling the old almswoman
to leave the work to me and let me wait upon
her—for a little while I felt that if but one more
shade of forgetfulness would come over the
weary years between, I could be once again a
buoyant, thoughtless girl. It was not till
Charlotte settled herself on the colder side of the
hearth, and peered at me anxiously from behind
her spectacles, that the bitterness of the present
returned.

"Has thee come across the seas?" she asked,
with a woman's keen glance at my poor dress.

"No; I've been at work," I answered; " I've
never been to Willie yet."

"Thee has been ailing," she continued, "and
fallen behindhand, maybe, with the world. Why
did thee not come home to me for a bit, Rachel?
Eh! I've thought of thee many a night and
day, thee and Willie. Lass, Willie never did
that; many's the time I've said it out loud
to satisfy myself; little Willie never could do
that. It will be made clear, Rachel, in its own
time."

Weeping was a rare luxury to me; but I wept
then, with old Charlotte's shrivelled arm round
my neck, and her broken voice speaking homely
words of comfort. A new tranquillity came
over me, and a strange sense of soothing in
being once again cared for and wept with. The
almswoman's simple cheery talk, the yellow-
stained walls, with their rows of polished tins,
the sanded floor, the low bed, where I lay down
to fitful slumbers, on a level with the window
which overlooked the churchyard, with its quiet
graves asleep in the moonlight—all seemed to
restore me to my childhood. Only now and then,
both waking and sleeping, there crossed my
fancy visions of the empty, echoing, haunted
house left behind, with ghostly faces reflected
in my little looking-glass, and ghostly feet
gliding to and fro with a silence worse than the
sounding of my own steps.

In the morning— the morning of the emblematic
passover from the house of bondage— I went to
church with my friend, sitting beside her in the
chancel upon the seats set apart for the
almswomen. There was a sense of freedom, a
deliverance from a corroding captivity of my soul;
I could pray; for George Denning was not in the
same house of prayer. Before me, beneath the
fair white linen cloth which covered the
sacramental elements, was the altar-cloth of crimson
velvet with its sacred initials and the golden
halo round them, which I had been working
with my own fingers on that terrible doomsday
that had fallen upon us. The " I. H. S." was just
beneath the edge of the snowy cover, and I saw
and heard nothing else of the solemn service.
Dimly and vaguely, but irresistibly, these words
laid hold of my thoughts, "Jesus, the Saviour of
men."

A profound peace, " peace on earth, and good
will towards all," possessed me, as I left the
church with the congregation; and while the
almswoman, in her simple faith, remained for
the concluding service, I paced to and fro in the
churchyard, past the graves of my parents. But
with this peace there mingled a strong yearning
for action, for returning once more to my house
of bondage, and freeing myself at once and for
ever from its doleful captivity. Even the
thought that I should set George Denning free
was pleasant to me, for here, close to the lanes
and fields where we had played as children, and
loitered as lovers, I remembered him as he was
before the sear and blight came upon our lives.
He, too, should be freed upon this day of
accomplished sacrifice. He also should be
forgiven, if he knew not what he did.

With reluctance the aged woman gave me
leave to depart, though my face, long set into
sorrow, was beginning to soften into a shadowy
smile. The early night was closing in when I
returned to the streets through which I had
crept, a hard and desolate woman, the day
before; but I had tasted love again, human and
divine; I had stooped to taste it, and in my
hidden heart I blessed the groups of happy
beings whom I passed. The bells of the churches
chimed together overhead, making a gladsome
music all the way along, as I pressed on to the
central street, where the deserted house was
waiting for me, with its tainted attic and empty
chambers. Under a lamp I met George Denniiig's
silly young wife, with a baby in her arms,
and talking gaily with some companions; but
though my heart stopped in its rapturous throbbing
for a moment, I moved gently out of her
path, and did not grudge her laughter, for little
mirth had she with her stricken husband. She
might have been coming from the house, for a
minute more and it rose before me on the
opposite side of the street, with its steep roof over-
topping all the others; and there in the little
dormer-window, glimmering like a feeble glow-
worm, there shone the palest, faintest mote of
light from within, just visible in the gathering
darkness of the night.

I understood the tell-tale beam, and a sudden
tingling ran through all my veins. At the very
moment in which I had surrendered the purpose
of my life I was to receive its fulfilment. I
entered the house as silently as death. The
smouldering fire upon my hearth, not kindled by
me, gave me light to find the soundless list slippers,
with which I could steal unheard upon the