new that
pain is with some the only harbinger that can prepare the way for the
entrance of kindness: it is not understood till then. In the lulls of
her pain he told her about the man Christ Jesus--what he did for the
poor creatures who came to him--how kindly he spoke to them--how he
cured them. He told her how gentle he was with the sinning women, how he
forgave them and told them to do so no more. He left the story without
comment to work that faith which alone can redeem from selfishness and
bring into contact with all that is living and productive of life,
for to believe in him is to lay hold of eternal life: he is the
Life--therefore the life of men. She gave him but little encouragement:
he did not need it, for he believed in the Life. But her outcries were
no longer accompanied with that fierce and dreadful language in which
she sought relief at first. He said to himself, 'What matter if I see no
sign? I am doing my part. Who can tell, when the soul is free from the
distress of the body, when sights and sounds have vanished from her,
and she is silent in the eternal, with the terrible past behind her, and
clear to her consciousness, how the words I have spoken to her may yet
live and grow in her; how the kindness God has given me to show her may
help her to believe in the root of all kindness, in the everlasting love
of her Father in heaven? That she can feel at all is as sure a sign of
life as the adoration of an ecstatic saint.'

He had no difficulty now in getting from her what information she could
give him about his father. It seemed to him of the greatest import,
though it amounted only to this, that when he was in London, he used to
lodge at the house of an old Scotchwoman of the name of Macallister,
who lived in Paradise Gardens, somewhere between Bethnal Green and
Spitalfields. Whether he had been in London lately, she did not
know; but if anybody could tell him where he was, it would be Mrs.
Macallister.

His heart filled with gratitude and hope and the surging desire for the
renewal of his London labours. But he could not leave the dying woman
till she was beyond the reach of his comfort: he was her keeper now. And
'he that believeth shall not make haste.' Labour without perturbation,
readiness without hurry, no haste, and no hesitation, was the divine law
of his activity.

Shargar's mother breathed her last holding his hand. They were alone. He
kneeled by the bed, and prayed to God, saying,

'Fa