her beads.

But, somehow, there was no prayer on the beads that seemed just what she
wanted to say. Again, she went to the altar. But this time she lifted a
face, white with suffering and thin from lack of food, to the face of the
Christ above the altar and from the depths of her heart she prayed,

"O God! My God! I do not ask for money, though I am hungry. I do not ask
for a home, though I am oh! so very lonely. I do not ask for work, though
I have none. For only one thing I ask. Give me a friend. Oh, give me a
friend! For Jesus' sake. Amen."

Again she walked back through the avenue and down the narrow street to her
only home. The doors of the settlement were opened and the girls came out,
happy as birds in the springtime. Quietly she watched them as they came
nearer. Then suddenly one of them stopped.

"Excuse me for speaking to you," she said, "but our guardian heard that
you lived in this house, so she asked us to come and invite you to come to
Camp Fire with us next Tuesday. We are to have a supper together so that
you will soon know us all and then we are to go for a hike together. Shall
we stop for you as we go?"

For a moment she could not answer. In her throat was a lump so big that
she could not swallow. Then she said in a low, sweet voice,

"Indeed I should like to go. Thank you for asking me."

And the girls passed down the street, singing their Camp Fire song.

But up in the little hall bedroom there was a girl with a foreign name,
and a foreign face, and a bit of a foreign dress. She was on her knees,
looking up at the heavens full of stars and over and over she was saying,
"Oh, I thank thee. I thank thee. I have a chance to be a friend."

And her heart was content.

THE MESSAGE OF THE MOUNTAIN

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."... "Lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world." These were the two sentences
that were neatly written on two pieces of paper on Marcia Loran's desk and
the girl sat looking at them while the minutes went steadily by. How could
they be? How could a power that made the earth be also in her life? How
could it be?

Marcia had always been a reader of her Bible; she had always loved her
mother's God and she loved Him now, but she was longing for help and no
one seemed near to give it. And the reason for the need of this help was
easy to give. The new girl who had moved into the next room had been
laughing at her belief in God a