ority to her claims.
After having once declared herself immovable, Annie bore all in silence;
the pleas that her lamp was so seldom wanted; that it would be well
tended for her, while she could sleep all night, and every night; that
it had become a passion with Lady Carse to obtain this house, and that
anyone was an enemy who denied her the only thing she could enjoy.
These pleas Annie listened to in silence, and then to reproaches on her
selfishness, her obstinacy, her malice and cruelty. When both her
visitors had exhausted their arguments, she turned to Lady Carse, and
intimated that now they had all spoken their minds on this subject, she
wished to be alone in her own house. Then she turned to Mr Ruthven,
and told him that whatever he had to say as her pastor, she would gladly
listen to.

"In some other place than this," he declared with severity. "I have
tried rebuke and remonstrance here, beside your own hearth, with a
perseverance which I fear has lowered the dignity of my office. I have
done. I enter this house no more as your pastor."

Annie bowed her head, and remained standing till they were gone; then
she sank down, melting into tears.

"This, then," and her heart swelled at the thought; "this, then, is the
end of my hope--the brightest hope I ever had since my great earthly
hope was extinguished! I thought I could bear anything if there was
only a pastor at hand. And now--but there is my duty still; nothing can
take that away. And I am forgetting that at this very moment, when I
have so little else left! crying in this way when I want better eyes
than mine are now for watching the sea. I have shed too many tears in
my day; more than a trusting Christian woman should; and now I must keep
my eyes dry and my heart firm for my duty. And I cannot see that I have
done any wrong in staying by the duty that God gave me, and the house
that I must do it in. With this house and God's house--" And her
thoughts recurred, as usual, to the blessing of the sabbath. She should
still have a pastor in God's house, if not in her own. And thus she
cheered her heart while she bathed her eyes that they might serve for
her evening gaze over the sea.

She was destined, however, to be overtaken by dismay on the sabbath, and
in that holy house where she had supposed her peace could never be
disturbed. The pastor read and preached from the passage in the 18th
chapter of Matthew, which enjoins remonstrance with sinner