as this! I declare it bewilders my poor head. I feel every time a horse puts his foot on my shadow as if I must cry out. Isn't it silly? It's all my big head -it's not me, you know, miss." Lucy could not yet make the remark, and therefore I make it for her how often we cry out when something steps on our shadow, passing yards away from ourselves! There is not a phenomenon of disease-not even of insanity that has not its counterpart in our moral miseries, all springing from want of faith in God. At least, so it seems to me. That will account for it all, or looks as if it would; and nothing else does. It ري the addition in letters equally golden, None of which was ever paid by his trustees. I will tell you who the worshippers were. There was the housekeeper in a neighbouring warehouse, who had been in a tumult all the day, and at nightfall thought of the kine-browsed fields of her childhood, and went to church. There was an old man who had once been manager of a bank, and had managed it ill both for himself and his company; and having been dismissed in consequence, had first got weak in the brain, and then begun to lay up treasure in heaven. Then came a brother and two sisters, none of them under seventy. The former kept shifting his brown wig and taking smuff. the whole of the service, and the latter two wiping, with yellow silk handkerchiefs, brown faces inlaid with coal-dust. They could not agree well enough to live together, for their father's will was the subject of constant quarrel. They therefore lived in three lodgings at considerable distances apart. But every night in the week they met at this or that church similarly endowed, sat or knelt or stood in holy silence or sacred speech for an hour and a half, walked together to the end of the lane discussing the sermon, and then separated till the following evening. Thus the better parts in them made a refuge of the house of God, where they came near to each other, and the destroyer kept a little aloof for the season. These, with the beadle and his wife, and Lucy and Mattie, made up the congregation. It seems to me, too, that in thinking of the miseries and wretchedness in the world we seldom think of the other side. We hear of an event in association with some certain individual, and we say "How dreadful! How miserable!" And perhaps we say "Is there can there be a God in the earth when such a thing can take place?" But we do not see into the region of actual suffering or conflict. We do not see the heart where the shock falls. We neither see the proud bracing of energies to meet the ruin that threatens, nor the gracious faint in which the weak escape from writhing. We do not see the abatement of pain which is paradise to the tortured; we do not see the gentle upholding in sorrow that comes even from the ministrations of nature-not to speak of human nature to delicate souls. In a word, we do not see, and the sufferer himself does not understand, how God is present every moment, comforting, upholding, heeding that the pain shall not be more than can be borne, making the thing possible—his last rays pouring in through a richly-stained and not hideous. I say nothing of the peaceable fruits that are to spring therefrom; and who shall dare to say where they shall not follow upon such tearing up of the soil? Even those long shadows gave Lucy some unknown comfort, flowing from Nature's recognition of the loss of her lover; and she clasped the little hand more tenderly, as if she would thus return her thanks to Nature for the kindness received. To get out of the crowd on the pavement Lucy turned aside into a lane. She had got half-way down it before she discovered that it was one of those through which she had passed the night before when she went with Thomas to the river. She turned at once to leave it. As she turned, right before her stood an open churchdoor. It was one of those sepulchral city churches, where the voice of the clergyman sounds ghostly, and it seems as if the dead below were more real in their presence than the half-dozen worshippers scattered among the pews. On this occasion, however, there were seven present when Lucy and Mattie entered and changed the mystical number to the magical. It was a church named outlandishly after a Scandinavian saint. Some worthy had endowed a week evening sermon there after better fashion than another had endowed the poor of the parish. The name of the latter was recorded in golden letters upon a black tablet in the vestibule, as the donor of £200, with Now when they left the lane there was no sun to be seen; but when they entered the church, there he was window, the only beauty of the building. This window -a memorial one-was placed in the northern side of the chancel, whence a passage through houses, chimneys, and churches led straight to the sunset, down which the last rays I speak of came speeding for one brief moment ere all was gone, and the memorial as faded and grey as the memory of the man to whom it was dedicated. This change from the dark lane to the sun-lighted church, laid hold of Lucy's feelings. She did not know what it made her feel, but it aroused her with some vague sense of that sphere of glory which enwraps all our lower spheres, and she bowed her knees and her head, and her being worshipped, if her thoughts were too troubled to go upwards. The prayers had commenced; and as she kneeled, the words " He pardoneth and absolveth," were the first that found luminous entrance into her soul; and with them came the picture of Thomas, as he left the court with the man of the bad countenance. Of him, and what he might be about, her mind was full; but every now and then a flash of light, in the shape of words, broke through the mist of her troubled thoughts, and testified of the glory-sphere beyond; till at length her mind was so far calmed that she became capable of listening a little to the discourse of the preacher. He was not a man of the type of Mr. Potter of St. Jacob's, who considered himself possessed of worldly privileges in virtue of a heavenly office not one of whose duties he fulfilled in a heavenly fashion. Some people considered Mr. Fuller very silly for believing that he might do good in a church like this, and with a congregation like this, by speaking that which he knew, and testifying that which he had seen. But he did actually believe it. Somehow or other I think because he was so much in the habit of looking up to the Father-the prayers took a hold of him once more every time he read them; and he so delighted in the truths he saw that he rejoiced to set them forth-was actually glad to talk about them to any one who would listen. When he confessed his feeling about congregations, he said that he preferred twelve people to a thousand. This he considered a weakness, however; except that he could more easily let his heart out to the twelve. He took for his text the words of our Lord: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden." He could not see the faces of the strangers, for they sat behind a pillar, and therefore he had no means of discovering that each of them had a heavy-laden heart: Lucy was not alone in trouble, for Syne had been hard upon Mattie that day. He addressed himself especially to the two old women before him, of whose story he knew nothing, though their faces were as well known to him as the pillars of the church. But the basin into which the fountain of his speech flowed was the heart of those girls. No doubt presented itself as to the truth of what the preacher was saying; nor could either of them have given a single argument from history or criticism for the reality of the message upon which the preacher founded his exhortation. The truth is not dependent upon proof for its working. Its relation to the human being is essential, is in the nature of things; so that if it be but received in faith-that is, acted upon-it works its own work, and needs the buttressing of no arguments any more than the true operation of a healing plant is dependent upon a knowledge of Dioscorides. My reader must not, therefore, suppose that I consider doubt an unholy thing; on the contrary, I consider spiritual doubt a far more precious thing than intellectual conviction, for it springs from the awaking of a deeper necessity than any that can be satisfied from the region of logic. But when the truth has begun to work its own influence in any heart, that heart has begun to rise out of the region of doubt. When they came from the church, Lucy and Mattie walked hand in hand after the sisters and brother, and heard them talk. "He's a young one, that!" said the old man. "He'll know a little botter by the time he's as old as I am." "Well, I did think he went a little too far when he said a body might be as happy in the work'us as with thousands of pounds in the Bank of England." "I don't know," interposed the other sister. "He said it depended on what you'd got inside you. Now, if you've got a bad temper inside you, all you've got won't make you happy." By this time they had reached the end of the lane, and, without a word to each other, they separated. "Syne," said Mattie, significantly. Syne was evidently her evil incarnation. Lucy did not reply, but hastened home with her, anxious to be alone. She did not leave the child, however, before she had put her to bed, and read again the hymn that had taken her fancy before they went out. I will now show my reader how much of the sermon remained upon Lucy's mind. She sat a few minutes with her grandmother, and then told her that she felt better, but would like to go to bed. So she took her candle and went. As soon as she had closed her door, she knelt down by her bedside, and said something like this-more broken, and with long pauses between-but like this: "O Jesus Christ, I come. I don't know any other way to come. I speak to thee. Oh, hear me. I am weary and heavy laden. Give me rest. Help me to put on the yoke of thy meekness and thy lowliness of heart, which thou sayest will give rest to our souls. I cannot do it without thy help. Thou couldst do it without help. I cannot. Teach me. Give me thy rest. How am I to begin? How am I to take thy yoke on me? I must be meek. I am very troubled and vexed. Am I angry? Am I unforgiving? Poor Thomas! Lord Jesus, have mercy upon Thomas. He does not know what he is doing. I will be very patient. I will sit with my hands folded, and bear all my sorrow, and not vex Grannie with it; and I won't say an angry word to Thomas. But, O Lord, have mercy upon him, and make him meek and lowly of heart. I have not been sitting at thy feet and learning of thee. Thou canst take all my trouble away by making Thomas good. I ought to have tried hard to keep him in the way his mother taught him, and I have been idle and self-indulgent, and taken up with my music and dresses. I have not looked to my heart to see whether it was meek and lowly like thine. O Lord, thou hast given me everything, and I have not thought about thee. I thank thee that thou hast made me miserable, for now I shall be thy child. Thou canst bring Thomas home again to thee. Thou canst make him meek and lowly of heart, and give rest to his soul. Amen." Is it any wonder that she should have risen from her knees comforted? I think not. She was already gentle and good as she had always been-more meek and lowly. She had began to regard this meekness as the yoke of Jesus, and therefore to will it. Already, in a measure, she was a partaker of his peace. Worn out by her suffering, and soothed by her Good Words, May 1, 1867.] prayer, she fell asleep the moment she laid her head upon the pillow. And thus Lucy passed the night. CHAPTER XXI-MORE SHUFFLING. Toy went home the next night with a racking headache. Gladly would he have gone to Lucy to comfort him, but he was too much ashamed of his behaviour to her the night before, and too uneasy in his conscience. He was, indeed, in an abject condition of body, intellect, and morals. He went at once to his own room and to bed; fell asleep; woke in the middle of the night miserably gnawed by "Don Worm, the conscience;" tried to pray, and found it did him no good; turned his thoughts to Lucy, and burst into tears at the recollection of how he had treated her, imagining over and over twenty scenes in which he begged her forgiveness, till he fell asleep at last, dreamed that she turned her back upon him, and refused to hear him, and woke in the morning with the resolution of going to see her that night, and confessing everything. His father had come home after he went to bed, and it was with great trepidation that he went down to breakfast, almost expecting to find that he knew already of his relation to Lucy. But Richard Boxall was above that kind of thing, and Mr. Worboise was evidently free from any suspicion of the case. He greeted his son kindly, or rather frankly, and seemed to be in good spirits. "Our friends are well down the channel by this time, with such a fair wind," he said. "Boxall's a lucky man to be able to get away from business like that. I wish you had taken a fancy to Mary, Tom. She's sure to get engaged before she comes back. Shipboard's a great place for getting engaged. Some hungry fellow, with a red coat and an empty breechespocket, is sure to pick her up. You might have had her if you had liked. However, you may do as well yet; and you needn't be in a hurry now. It's not enough that there's as good fish in the sea: they must come to your net, you know.” ¢ /}} Tom laughed it off, went to his office, worked the weary day through, and ran round to Guild Court the moment he left business. Lucy had waked in the night as well as Tom; but she had waked to the hope that there was a power somewhere a power working good, and upholding them that love it; to the hope that a thought lived all through the dark, and would one day make the darkness light about her; to the hope that a heart of love and help was at the heart of things, and would show itself for her need. When, therefore, Tom knocked-timidly almost-at the door, and opened it inquiringly, she met him with a strange light in her pale face, and a smile flickering about a lip that trembled in sympathy with her rain-clouded eyes. She held out her hand to him cordially, but neither offered to embrace-Thomas from shame, and Lucy from a feeling of something between that had to be removed before things could be as they were-or rather before their outward behaviour to each other could be the same, for things could not to all eternity be the same again: they must be infinitely better and more beautiful, or cease altogether. Thomas gave a look for one moment full in Lucy's eyes, and then dropped his own, holding her still by the consenting hand. "Will you forgive me, Lucy ?" he said, in a voice partly choked by feeling, and partly by the presence of Mrs. Boxall, who, however, could not hear what passed between them, for she sat knitting at the other end of the large room. "Oh, Tom!" answered Lucy, with a gentle pressure of his hand. Now, as all that Tom wanted was to be reinstated in her favour, he took the words as the seal of the desired reconciliation, and went no farther with any confession. The words, however, meaning simply that she loved him and wanted to love him, ought to have made Tom the more anxious to confess all-not merely the rudeness of which he had been guilty and which had driven her from the room, but the wrong he had done her in spending the evening in such company; for surely it was a grievous wrong to a pure girl like Lucy to spend the space between the last and the next pressure of her hand in an atmosphere of vice. But the cloud cleared from his brow, and, with a sudden reaction of spirits, he began to be merry. To this change, however, Lucy did not respond. The cloud seemed rather to fall more heavily over her countenance. She turned from him, and went to a chair opposite her grandmother. Tom followed, and sat down beside her. He was sympathetic enough to see that things were not right between them after all. But he referred it entirely to her uneasiness at his parents' ignorance of their engagement. Some of my readers may think that Lucy too was to blame for want of decision; that she ought to have refused to see Thomas even once again, till he had made his parents aware of their relation to each other. But knowing how little sympathy and help he had from those parents, she felt that to be severe upon him thus would be like turning him out into a snowstorm to find his way home across a desolate moor; and her success by persuasion would be a better thing for Thomas than her success by compulsion. No doubt, if her rights alone had to be considered, and not the necessities of Thomas's moral nature, the plan she did not adopt would have been the best. But no one liveth to himself-not even a woman whose dignity is in danger-and Lucy did Yet, for the sake of not think of herself alone. both, she remained perfectly firm in her purpose that Thomas should do something. "Your uncle has said nothing about that unfortunate rencontre, Luey," said Tom, hoping that what had relieved him would relieve her. "My father came home last night, and the paternal brow is all serene." "Then I suppose you said something about it, Tom?" said Lucy, with a faint hope dawning in her heart. "Oh! there's time enough for that.-I've been thinking about it, you see, and I'll soon convince you," he added, hurriedly, seeing the cloud grow deeper on Lucy's face. "I must tell you something which I would rather not have mentioned." "Don't tell me, if you ought not to tell me, Tom," said Lucy, whose conscience had grown more delicate than ever, both from the turning of her own face towards the light, and from the growing feeling that Tom was not to be trusted as a guide. "There's no reason why I shouldn't," returned Tom. "It's only this-that my father is vexed with me because I wouldn't make love to your cousin Mary, and that I have let her slip out of my reach now; for, as he says, somebody will be sure to snap her up before she comes back. So it's just the worst time possible to tell him anything unpleasant, you know. I really had far better wait till the poor girl is well out to sea, and off my father's mind; for I assure you, Lucy, it will be no joke when he does know. He's not in any mood for the news just now, I can tell you. And then my mother's away, too, and there's nobody to stand between me and him." Lucy made no reply to this speech, uttered in the eagerness with which a man, seeking to defend a bad position, sends one weak word after another, as if the accumulation of poor arguments would make up for the lack of a good one. She sat for a long minute looking down on a spot in the carpet-the sight of which ever after was the signal for a pain-throb; then, in a hopeless tone, said, with a great sigh"I've done all I can." The indefiniteness of the words frightened Thomas, and he began again to make his position good. "I tell you what, Lucy," he said; "I give you my promise that before another month is over-that is to give my father time to get over his vexationI will tell him all about it, and take the consequences." Lucy sighed once more, and looked dissatisfied. But again it passed through her mind that if she were to insist farther, and refuse to see Thomas until he had complied with her just desire, she would most likely so far weaken, if not break, the bond between them, as to take from him the only influence that might yet work on him for good, and expose him entirely to such influences as she most feared. Therefore she said no more. But she could not throw the weight off her, or behave to Thomas as she had behaved hitherto. They sat silent for some timeThomas troubled before Lucy, Lucy troubled about Thomas. Then, with another sigh, Lucy rose and went to the piano. She had never done so before when Thomas was with her, for he did not care much about her music. Now she thought of it as the only way of breaking the silence. But what should she play? Then came into her memory a stately, sweet song her father used to sing. She did not know where he got either the words or the music of it. I know that the words are from Petrarch. Probably her father had translated them, for he had been much in Italy, and was a delicately gifted man. But whose was the music, except it was his own, I do not know. And as she sang the words, Lucy perceived for the first time how much they meant, and how they belonged to her; for in singing them she prayed both for herself and for Thomas. 1 I am so weary with the burden old Of foregone faults, and power of custom base, A mighty friend, to free me, though self-sold, But still his voice comes echoing below!? Come unto me the way all open lies! What heavenly grace will-what love-or what fate- That I may rest, and from the earth arise? Her sweet tones, the earnest music, and the few phrases he could catch here and there, all had their influence upon Tom. They made him feel. And with that, as usual, he was content. Lucy herself had felt as she had never felt before, and, therefore, astonished to find that her voice had such power over sung as she had never sung before. And Tom was him, and began to wonder how it was that he had not found it out before. He went home more solemn and thoughtful than he had ever been. Still he did nothing. A I CHAPTER XXILA COMING EVENT. THUS things went on for the space of about three weeks. Tom went to see Lucy almost every night, and sometimes stayed late; for his mother was still from home, and his father was careless about his hours so long as they were decent. Lucy's face continued grave, but lost a little of its trouble; for Tom often asked her to sing to him now, and she thought she was gaining more of the influence over him which she so honestly wished to possess. As the month drew towards a close, however, the look of anxiety began to deepen upon her countenance. One evening, still and sultry, they were together as usual. Lucy was sitting at the piano, where she had just been singing, and Tom stood beside her. The evening, as the Italian poets would say, had grown brown, and Mrs. Boxall was just going to light the candles, when Tom interposed a request for continued twilight. "Please, grannie," he said-for he too called her grannie-"do not light the candles yet. It is so sweet and dusky-just like Lucy here." "All very well for you," said Mrs. Boxall; "but what is to become of me? My love-making was over long ago, and I want to see what I'm about now. Ah! young people, your time will come next. Make hay while the sun shines.” "While the candle's out, you mean, grannie," said Tom, stealing a kiss from Lucy. * Petrarch's sixtieth Sonnet. Good Words, May 1, 1807.] GUILD COURT. "I can hardly drag one foot after another," she said, "I feel so oppressed and weary." sense of our own comfort into a complacent satisfac- Lucy lay awake for hours. There was no more + "I hear more than you think for," said the cheery old woman. I'll give you just five minutes' grace, and then I mean to have my own way. I am not so fond of darkness, I can tell you." "Will you open "How close it is!" said Lucy. " the window a little wider, Tom. Mind the flowers." She came near the window, which looked down on the little stony desert of Guild Court, and sank into ever, that such winds always drove her to her prayers. On the wings of the wind itself, she "from the windy storm and a high-backed chair that stood beside it. hastened her escape tempest." When at last she fell asleep, it was to dream that another flash of lightning-when or where ing dice with Molken, and then left them lapt in the appearing she did not know-revealed Thomas castdarkness of a godless world. She woke weeping, fell asleep again, and dreamed that she stood in the t somewhere near Thomas was casting dice with the devil for his soul, but darkness once more, and that she could neither see him nor cry to him, for the darkness choked both voice and eyes. Then a hand not in her ears, but in her heart-"Be of good cheer, was laid upon her head, and she heard the words And I," said Tom, who had taken his place behind her, leaning on the back of her chair, "am as happy as if I were in Paradise." "There must be thunder in the air," said Lucy. Oh dear!" "I fancy I smell the lightning already. "Are you afraid of lightning then ?" asked Thomas. ... "I do not think I am exactly; but it shakes me so! I can't explain what I mean. It affects me like a false tone on the violin. No, that's not it. I can't tell what it is like." こ A fierce flash broke in upon her words. Mrs. my daughter." It was only a dream; but I doubt if Boxall gave a scream.t "The Lord be about us from harm!" she cried. Lucy sat trembling. Thomas did not know how much she had to make her tremble. It is wonderful what can be seen in a single moment under an intense light. In that one flash Lucy had seen Mr. Molken and another man seated at a table, casting dice, with the eagerness of hungry fiends upon both their faces. T A few moments after the first flash, the wind began to rise, and as flash followed flash, with less and less of an interval, the wind rose till it blew a hurricane, roaring in the chimney and through the archway as if it were a wild beast caged in Guild Court, and wanting to get out. When the second flash came, Lucy saw that the blind of Mr. Molken's window was drawn down. All night long the storm raved about London. Chimney-pots clashed on the opposite pavements. One crazy old house, and one yet more crazy new one, were blown down, Even the thieves and burglars retreated to their dens. But before it had reached its worst. Thomas had gone home. He lay awake for some time listening to the tumult and rejoicing in it, for it roused his imagination and the delight that comes of beholding danger from a far-removed safety-a selfish pleasure, and ready to pass from a even-I must not name names, lest I should be in- It was not in London or the Empire only that that |