d. Then she
moved to the table and took up a New Testament that was lying there. She
was an ardent and mystically-minded Unitarian, and her mind was much set
towards religion.

"Shall we have prayers at night?" she had said quite simply to the f
arm-girls on their arrival. "Don't if you don't want to." And they had
shyly said "yes"--not particularly attracted by the proposal, but willing
to please Miss Leighton, who was always nice to them.

So Janet read some verses from the sixth chapter of St. John: "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting
life ... I am the Bread of Life ... I am the living Bread which came down
from Heaven ... The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they
are life."

Closing the book, while her quiet eyes shone in the gleaming dusk, she
said a few simple things about the Words of Christ, and how the human
soul may feed on them--the Word of Love--the Word of Purity--the Word of
Service. While she was still speaking, the door opened and Rachel came
in. It had been agreed between her and Janet that although she had no
objection to the prayers, she was not to be asked to take part in them.
So that Janet's pulses fluttered a little when she appeared. But there
was no outward sign of it. The speaker finished what she had to say,
while the eyes of her three hearers were sometimes on her face and
sometimes on the wide cornfield beyond the open window, where the harvest
moon, as yet only a brilliant sickle, was rising. The Earth Bread
without--the "Bread of Life" within; even in Jenny's primitive mind,
there was a mingling of the two ideas, which brought a quiet joy. She sat
with parted lips, feeling that she liked Miss Leighton very much, and
would try to please her with the cows.

Betty, meanwhile, beside her, passed into a waking dream. She was
thinking of a soldier in the village: the blacksmith's son, a tall,
handsome fellow, who had just arrived on leave for ten days. She had
spent Sunday evening wandering in the lanes with him. She felt
passionately that she must see him again--soon.

The little reading passed into the Lord's Prayer. Then it was over and
the two girls disappeared to bed. Janet felt a little awkward when she
was left alone with Rachel, but she went back to her sewing and began to
talk of the day's news of the war. Rachel answered at random, and very
soon said good-night.

But long after everybody else in the solitary farmhouse was asle