eath; she had risen to life; for Luke was dead, and was alive
again,--therefore she lived also. Tears came into the girl's eyes,
unexpected, abundant, as she listened to the missionary's pleading with
these parents, to give their little ones to their Heavenly Father, and
themselves to lives of holiness.

He would set the mark of the cross on their foreheads, he said, to show
that they were Christ's servants;--and then he preached of Christ,
seeking to soften the tough souls about him with the story of a divine
childhood; and he verily talked to them as one should do who felt that
in all his speaking their human hearts anticipated him. It was not
within the compass of his voice to reach that savage note which in
brutal ignorance condemns, where loving justice never could condemn.
He had an apprehension of the vital truth that belief in the world's
Saviour was not belief in a name, but the reception of that which Jesus
embodied. He came down to Diver's Bay, expecting to find human nature
there, and the only pity was that he had not time to perform what he
attempted. Let us, however, thank him for his honest endeavor; and be
glad, that, for one, Clarice was there to hear him,--she heard him so
gladly.

To take a vow for Gabriel, to give him to God, to confirm him in
possession of the name she had bestowed, became the desire of Clarice.
One day when she had some business to transact in the market, she
dressed Gabriel in a new frock she had made for him, and took him with
her to the Port, carrying him in her arms half the way. She did not find
the minister, but she had tested the sincerity of her desire. When he
came down again to the Bay, as he did the next Sunday, she was waiting
to give him the first fruits of his labors there.

He arrived early in the morning, that he might forestall the fishermen
and their families in whatever arrangements they might be making for the
day. When Clarice first saw him, her heart for a moment failed her,--she
wished he had not come, or that she had gone off to spend the day before
she knew of his coming. But, in the very midst of her regrets, she
caught up Gabriel and walked forth to meet the preacher.

The missionary recognized Clarice, and he had already heard the story
of the child. He was the first to speak, and a few moments' talk, which
seemed to her endless, though it was about Gabriel, passed before she
could tell him how she had sought him in his own home on account of the
boy