to bear such a
splendid name. I can hardly wait to meet the rest of the girls, who also
wear the mark of the King, who will be there at the conference. I may
be--oh, I hope I am--marked for a mast."

HER NEED

She was just a girl with a foreign name, a foreign face and a bit still of
a foreign dress. But she was a girl, just the same, and her face was full
of longing. Her home was near to a settlement where many girls came for
lessons and for play. But somehow they had never asked her to come, though
often she had sat on the steps at night where they must pass her. She had
seen them come with their arms about each other, talking and laughing and
singing--and when they had passed, she had gone to her lonely hall bedroom
and hidden her face in the pillow.

Oh, no, she didn't cry. She was too brave to cry. She just suffered alone
and longed for help.

It had been a year since she had left the home across the sea and had come
to join her father in the land where "work was plenty and friends were
easily made." But she had found her father living where she could not and
would not live. The friends he had made in America she could not and would
not have for hers. So when she had grown proficient enough in the factory,
she had gone to live in that loneliest of all lonely places--a boarding
house.

The days had passed one by one. Some of the boarders called her fussy;
some said she was cold; some said she was "stuck-up" and none of them had
found that beneath the surface there was a sweet, gentle, lonely heart.

Then came the strike--and she was out of work. In the bank she had a few
dollars but they had soon fled and now--oh, what could she do? The way was
so black ahead. She couldn't go to her father and his friends. What could
she do?

The girls passed her as they went to the settlement house but no one
noticed her sad little face. So she slowly rose and wended her way down
the street. Out of the poorer section she went, then down a long avenue
till she came to a great church. The altar lights were lighted. All was
quiet and restful, so she sat, and looked, and listened for the still,
small voice that she longed to hear.

A long, long time she sat there, counting her beads. Then she slowly rose
and entered the confessional, but when she came out there was still the
look of longing in her face. Toward the altar she went. Perhaps in the
communion she might find help for her troubled soul, and again she counted