ouse, although his teaching
would certainly make a very poor show, yet his sweet Christian life had
come up to plead for him, and Marion was forced to feel that the truth
had "made him free."

"But it is a real pity not to study his lesson," she said, as she went
about her gloomy-looking room. "Those girls didn't get a single idea to
help them in any way. Some of them need ideas badly enough. Two or three
of them are members of the church, I am sure. That Allie March is, but
she has no ideas on _any_ subject; you can see that in the grammar
class."

And then Marion remembered that Allie March was in _her_ grammar class;
and Allie was a professed Christian. Could _she_ help her? It was not
pride in Marion, but she had to smile at the thought of herself being
helped by so very third-rate a brain as that which Allie March
possessed. And then she paused, with her hand on the clothes-press door,
and her face glowed at the new and surprising thought that just then
came to her.

"Would it not be possible for her, Marion Wilbur, to help Allie March,
even in her Christian life!"

All that afternoon, though, she went about or sat down in her room with
a sense of loneliness. No one to speak to who could understand and would
believe in her, even in the Sunday-school they were afraid of her. How
could she help or be helped, while this state of things lasted?

It was in the early twilight that, as she sat with her hat and sack on,
waiting for Eurie, who had engaged to call for her to go to church, she
strayed across a verse or two in her new possession, the Bible, that
touched the point. It was where Saul "essayed to join himself to the
disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was
a disciple." Her experience precisely! They were afraid of her
influence; afraid of her tongue; afraid of her example; and, indeed,
what reason had they to feel otherwise? But she read on, that blessed
verse wherein it says: "But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the
apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way,
and that he had spoken to him." She was reading this for the second
time, when Eurie came.

"See here, Eurie, read this," she said, as she passed her the Bible and
made her final preparations for church. "Isn't that our experience? I
mean I think it _is_ to be ours. Judging from to-day as a foretaste,
they will be afraid of us and believe not that we are disciples."

Eurie laughed, a q