a share of her
girls' bed. A few hours in the cheerful company of the Flints was a
real refreshment to the hard-worked and ever-abused drudge. But this
time she did not at once seek Mistress Flint. She walked, as Mistress
Winter had amiably suggested, straight to the now deserted Cross, and
sat down on one of its stone steps. It would not be dark yet for
another hour, and until the gathering dusk warned her to return, Agnes
meant to stay there. She was feeling very sad and perplexed. The glory
in which the world had been steeped only yesterday had grown pale and
grey. The cares of the world had come in. Poor Agnes had set out that
morning with a firm determination to serve God throughout the day. Her
idea of service consisted in the ceaseless mental repetition of forms of
prayer. Busy with her Aves and Paternosters, she had forgotten to shut
the oven door, and a baking of bread had been spoiled. She sat now
mournfully wondering how any one in her position could serve God. If
such mischances as this were always to happen, she could never get
through her work. And the work must be done. Mistress Winter was one
of the last people in the world to permit religion to take precedence of
housewifery. How then was poor Agnes ever to "make her salvation" at
all?

The mistake was natural enough. All her life she had walked in the mist
of self-righteousness; her teachers had carefully led her into it.
Starting from the idea that man had to merit God's favour, was it any
wonder that, when told that God loved her already, she still fancied
that, in order to retain that love, she must do something to deserve it?
The new piece was sewn on the old garment, and the rent was made worse.

But now, must she give up the glad thought of being loved? If serving
God, as she understood that service, made her neglect her every-day
duties, what then? How was she ever to serve God? It was a misfortune
for Agnes that she had heard only half of the Friar's sermon. The other
half would have removed her difficulties.

She had reached this point in her perplexed thoughts, when she was
startled by a voice inquiring--

"What aileth thee, my daughter?"

Agnes looked up, and beheld the same dark shining eyes which had flashed
down upon her from the Cross yesterday morning.

"I scantly can tell," she said, speaking out her thoughts. "It seemeth
not worth the while."

"What seemeth thus?" asked the Friar.

"Living," said the gi