knees, with my eyes on my dear little girl's
lovely face. I could pray.

I thought of Harold's love as turned from
me for ever, so my heart was very sad, and
I prayed for patience, but my heart was very
resolved too, and I prayed for strength. But
I did not feel that I prayed aright. I could
not feel that my prayer winged its way to the
eternal footstool, and I determined that I
would learn how, in what spirit, to pray.

I had a Bible, and went to fetch it. But I
heard voices below, so I crept down as
hastily as my weak clinging to the bannisters
would let me.

Dr. Ryton was not come; it was Mr. Morton
whom I had heard. Aunt Aston went
up to put Lily into her own bed when she
should wake, and to watch her while she
still slept.

The warm evening light was pouring into
the room down-stairs, it bewildered me
somewhat after the dimness of my own. I
looked out silently for a few moments, raising
my head up from off the couch where my
aunt had put me, trying to collect my
thoughts. But the brilliant glow on the cornfield,
yellowing now rapidly, and on the still
surface of the blue sea, dazzled me.

Mr. Morton came to my side, as I turned
round wearily from gazing on the external
brightness. The gentle manner of that good
old man encouraged me to ask him many questions.
He could tell me much, but not all,
that I wanted to know. He could tell me
about my husband's visit, of his having seen
his little girl waking, for a moment, when I
left her; and of his having watched beside
her while she slept after I fainted. Had he
stood by me, too? had he bent down over
me? But no! I knew he had not, I dared
not ask. He told me, also, that my husband
had been to the churchyard, that he had
knelt and wept by our boy's grave.

Why had they not told me sooner that my
husband lived? I asked.

He had lain very long between life and
death, Mr. Morton said. Dr. Ryton had
many times utterly despaired of his rallying,
and had, at others, hardly dared hope that
he would ever recover health of mind and body
after the dreadful injuries he had sustained;
so he had thought it best to let me believe
him already dead. Others about me had
often longed to rouse me, by any means, from
the apathy lying so heavily upon me, and
had wished to tell me the truth; but Dr.
Ryton had sternly bade them do so at
peril of my life. When my boy's danger did
at last rouse me, and when my husband was
first considered to be steadily and surely
gaining strength, Dr. Ryton still told them
not to tell me yet; he thought it right that
the discipline of conscious suffering should
first do its work. He was not wise there. It
was love and mercy that wrought a blessed
change.

Where had my husband been? Why had
Dr. Ryton ever left him? Who had nursed
him? And as I asked that last question, a
cry of agony broke from my lips, at the
thought that I, his wife, had rendered
myself unworthy that office.

Mr. Morton could tell me that Mrs. Ryton
had most heedfully nursed my husband, and
that Dr. Ryton had only left him because
Harold, when conscious, implored him to be
here, to watch over his children. He knew
that Harold in those short intervals of consciousness
had talked much of his children,
and been painfully solicitous for their welfare,
and that even in his delirium, he had still
spoken of them: but whether, and if at all, how,
my husband mentioned me he could not tell.

After I had exhausted Mr. Morton's knowledge
by my eager questions, I was ready,
and very willing, to listen calmly to the old
man's wisdom. That evening he spoke to my
heart and to my need. I was very weak, and
worn, and weary, and had little hope of happiness
in this world, and yet I had an infinite
mercy for which I desired, and as yet hardly
knew how, to thank God. That my husband
would ever again take me back to his heart
and home, I scarcely hoped; and if I hoped
the time would come, it looked so distant that
my weak spirit wearied at the dreary desert
to be traversed first. But that my husband
lived, that I was free from the blood-guiltiness
that had lain on my conscience, that my
Lily had still a wise and tender father—did
not these things demand boundless gratitude?

As, day after day, I sat in spirit very
meekly at that good man's feet, the darkness
gradually cleared away. By degress I learned
all the story of his own life, of his loves, and
losses, and martyrdom of pain; I learned
how his faith had been purified, and his soul
sublimed, by patient suffering of the Lord's
will.

Then, stilled to reverent attention, I heard
the story, and was instructed in the teaching
of another life. In my weakness and spiritual
ignorance I had somewhat of the simplicity
of a child, I listened simply to what was
simply told, and all I heard came to me fresh
and strange, and infinitely sweet and consoling.
Through the unperplexed medium of
the soul of a faithful believer, I could look
clearly and steadily at the grand Idea of the
Christian life.

And while I listened and learned, I exercised
my newly-striven-after patience. Doctor
Ryton did not come, and days passed in which
I heard nothing of my husband. During those
few quiet, even though somewhat anxious,
days, I grew familiar with my future life. I
did not harass and perplex myself by effort
to discern its features, to depict its joys and
sorrows, endeavours and failures, and far-off
success; but I tried to realise to my own
consciousness the spirit in which I ought to
live, and in which, with God's help, I would
live.