ue in all Pleasant
Valley."

"How comes she to be an exception?"

Diana reflected again, but this time without finding an answer.

"Isn't it, that she has set her heart on what cannot fail her nor be
insufficient for her?"

"Religion, you mean."

"I do not mean religion."

"What then?" Diana asked in new surprise.

"I mean--Christ."

"But--isn't that the same thing?"

"Not exactly. Christ is a person."

"Yes--but"--

"And _he_ it is that can make happy those who know him. Do you remember
he said, 'He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that
believeth on me shall never thirst'?"

Looking up at the speaker and following his words, they somehow struck
Diana rather hard. Her lip suddenly trembled, and she looked down.

"You do not understand it," said the minister, "but you must believe
it. Poor hungry lamb, seeking pasture where there is none,--where it is
withered,--come to Christ!"

"Do you mean," said Diana, struggling for voice and self-command, but
unable to look up, for the minister's hand was on her shoulder and his
words had been very tenderly spoken,--"do you mean, that when
everything _is_ withered, he can make it green again?"

The minister answered in the words of David, which were the words of
the Lord: "'He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun
riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springeth
out of the earth by clear shining after rain.'"

Diana bent her head lower. Could such refreshment and renewal of her
own wasted nature ever come to pass? She did not believe it; yet
perhaps there was life yet at the roots of the grass which scented the
rain. The words swept over as the breath of the south wind.

"'The light of a morning without clouds'"--she repeated when she could
speak.

"Christ is all that, to those who know him," the minister said.

"Then I do not know him," said Diana.

"Did you think you did?"

"But how _can_ one know him, Mr. Masters?"

"There is only one way. It is said, 'God, who created the light out of
darkness, hath _shined in our hearts_, to give the light of the glory
of the knowledge of Christ.'"

"How?"

"I cannot tell. As the sun rises over the hills, and suddenly the gold
of it is upon everything, and the warmth of it."

"When?"

"I don't know that either," said Mr. Masters, gently touching Diana's
brow, as one touches a child's, with caressing fingers. "_He_ says: 'Ye
shall find me when ye shall search for