r whether she still heard voices in the night, she told me
that she frequently did; but that the present were mild voices, sweet
voices, encouraging voices, very different from the former ones; that a
voice, only the night previous, had cried out about 'the peace of God,'
in particularly sweet accents; a sentence which she remembered to have
read in her early youth in the primer, but which she had clean forgotten
till the voice the night before brought it to her recollection.

After a pause, the old woman said to me, 'I believe, dear, that it is the
blessed book you brought me which has wrought this goodly change. How
glad I am now that I can read; but oh what a difference between the book
you brought to me and the one you took away! I believe the one you
brought is written by the finger of God, and the other by--'

'Don't abuse the book,' said I, 'it is an excellent book for those who
can understand it; it was not exactly suited to you, and perhaps it had
been better that you had never read it--and yet, who knows?
Peradventure, if you had not read that book, you would not have been
fitted for the perusal of the one which you say is written by the finger
of God'; and, pressing my hand to my head, I fell into a deep fit of
musing. 'What, after all,' thought I, 'if there should be more order and
system in the working of the moral world than I have thought? Does there
not seem in the present instance to be something like the working of a
Divine hand? I could not conceive why this woman, better educated than
her mother, should have been, as she certainly was, a worse character
than her mother. Yet perhaps this woman may be better and happier than
her mother ever was; perhaps she is so already--perhaps this world is not
a wild, lying dream, as I have occasionally supposed it to be.'

But the thought of my own situation did not permit me to abandon myself
much longer to these musings. I started up. 'Where are you going,
child?' said the woman, anxiously. 'I scarcely know,' said I;
'anywhere.' 'Then stay here, child,' said she; 'I have much to say to
you.' 'No,' said I, 'I shall be better moving about'; and I was moving
away, when it suddenly occurred to me that I might never see this woman
again; and turning round I offered her my hand, and bade her goodbye.
'Farewell, child,' said the old woman, 'and God bless you!' I then moved
along the bridge until I reached the Southwark side, and, still holding
on my course,