er trouble returned to her and was not changed, yet for a moment it
had been lifted from her, and the peace which passeth all understanding
had entered her heart.

'But why, then,' said the little Pilgrim to her companion, when the
friend was gone, 'why will not the Father give to her what she asks? for
I know what it is. It is that those whom she loves should love Him and
serve Him; and that is His will too, for He would have all love Him, He
who loves all.'

'Little sister,' said her companion, 'you asked me why He did not let the
child remain upon the earth.'

'Ah, but that is different,' she cried; 'oh, it is different! When you
said that the secret was between the child and the Father I knew that
it was so; for it is just that the Father should consider us first one
by one, and do for us what is best. But it is always best to serve Him.
It is best to love him; it is best to give up all the world and cleave
to Him, and follow wherever He goes. No man can say otherwise than
this,--that to follow the Lord and serve Him, that is well for all, and
always the best!'

She spoke so hotly and hastily that her companion could find no room for
reply. But he was in no haste; he waited till she had said what was in
her heart. Then he replied, 'If it were even so, if the Father heard all
prayers, and put forth His hand and forced those who were far off to come
near--'

The little Pilgrim looked up with horror in her face, as if he had
blasphemed, and said, 'Forced! not so; not so!'

'Yet it must be so,' he said, 'if it is against their desire and will.'

'Oh, not so; not so!' she cried, 'but that He should change their
hearts.'

'Yet that too against their will,' he said.

The little Pilgrim paused upon the way; and her heart rose against her
companion, who spoke things so hard to be received, and that seemed to
dishonor the work of the Lord. But she remembered that it could not be
so, and paused before she spoke, and looked up at him with eyes that were
full of wonder and almost of fear. 'Then must they perish?' she said,
'and must her heart break?' and her voice sank low for pity and sorrow.
Though she was herself among the blessed, yet the thorns and briers of
the earth caught at her garments and pierced her tender feet.

'Little sister,' said the Sage, 'to us who are born of the earth it is
hard to remember that the child belongs not first to the parents, nor the
husband to the wife, nor the wife to the husband,