ed
her heart one evening when alone with the curate, but he did not help
the young seeker after peace. He said the excitement of moving and
coming into new scenes was the cause most likely of her feeling worse,
and that would soon go off; then she was to try and be a good girl and
pray. So after that her lips were utterly sealed to all but God for
another few years or rather more.

In 1848 her mother became seriously ill, and feeling that she was soon
to leave her little girl, she said to her one evening: "Fanny dear, pray
to God to prepare you for all that He is preparing for you." The sad
event which the mother thus anticipated Frances could not or would not
understand.

But what God had prepared for her she did in some measure realise when,
a few weeks later, outside the house a funeral procession passed from
the rectory to the churchyard, and inside a little girl flung herself on
her bed with the lonely cry of a motherless heart, "Oh, mamma, mamma,
mamma!" Her bright and apparently thoughtless manner led to the idea
that she was heartless, but all the while she was heavy and sad for her
loss, and weary because she had not yet received pardon of her sins.

Thus she went on, longing and trying to find peace, until she was
fourteen years of age.

II.

RECEIVING "LIFE."

On August 15, 1850, Frances went to school at Belmont. The night before
she left, her sister Ellen spoke to her of God's love, and she gave to
her the first indication of her real feelings in the words, "I can't
love God yet, Nellie!" But it was not to be so for long, however.
During the first half-year at school a "revival," as she calls it, took
place among the school girls, and she began to be more in earnest about
her soul. One night she got into conversation with a Christian
companion, and bursting into tears told her in French that she wished to
love Jesus but could not. Her companion begged her to go to Jesus and
tell Him this. Of this advice she says, "The words of wise and even
eminent men have since then fallen on my ear, but few have brought the
dewy refreshment to my soul which the simple loving words of my little
Heaven-taught schoolfellow did." But peace had not yet come into
her soul.

At length, in February, 1851, Frances made a confidante of Miss Cook,
who in July, 1851, became her stepmother, and confessed that she desired
pardon of her sins above everything else. She thus writes in her
autobiography: "'Then, Fanny,' sa