have cared to confess. During the long prayer (the minister could
talk to God at much greater length than he could talk about Him), Miss
Vilda prayed that the Lord would provide the two little wanderers with
some more suitable abiding-place than the White Farm; and that, failing
this, He would inform his servant whether there was anything unchristian
in sending them to a comfortable public asylum. She then reminded Heaven
that she had made the Foreign Missionary Society her residuary legatee
(a deed that established her claim to being a zealous member of the
fold), so that she could scarcely be blamed for not wishing to take two
orphan children into her peaceful home.

Well, it is no great wonder that so faulty a prayer did not bring the
wished-for light at once; but the ministering angels, who had the
fatherless little ones in their care, did not allow Miss Vilda's mind to
rest quietly. Just as the congregation settled itself after the hymn,
and the palm-leaf fans began to sway in the air, a swallow flew in
through the open window; and, after fluttering to and fro over the
pulpit, hid itself in a dark corner, unnoticed by all save the small
boys of the congregation, to whom it was, of course, a priceless boon.
But Miss Vilda could not keep her wandering thoughts on the sermon any
more than if she had been a small boy. She was anything but
superstitious; but she had seen that swallow, or some of its ancestors,
before.... It had flown into the church on the very Sunday of her
mother's death.... They had left her sitting in the high-backed rocker
by the window, the great family Bible and her spectacles on the little
light-stand beside her.... When they returned from church, they had
found their mother sitting as they left her, with a smile on her face,
but silent and lifeless.... And through the glass of the spectacles, as
they lay on the printed page, Vilda had read the words, "For a bird of
the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the
matter;" had read them wonderingly, and marked the place with reverent
fingers.... The swallow flew in again, years afterward.... She could not
remember the day or the month, but she could never forget the summer,
for it was the last bright one of her life, the last that pretty Martha
ever spent at the White Farm.... And now here was the swallow again....
"For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings
shall tell the matter." Miss Vilda lo