ger ideas about
the importance of "continuing." She had a renewed sense of the
blessedness of being made "free." She went home with a renewed desire to
consecrate herself, and not only to enjoy, but to labor, that others
might enter into that rest. Blessed are those teachers whose earnest
Sabbath work produces such fruit as this!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

BURDENS.

UNDER the influence of the sermon, and the prayers, and the glorious
music, life grew to be rose-color to Marion before she reached home that
Sabbath evening. She came home with springing step, and with her heart
full of plans and possibilities for the future. Not even the dismalness
of her unattractive room and desolate surroundings had power to drive
the song from her heart. She went about humming the grand tune with
which the evening service had closed:

"In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time."

As she sang, her whole soul thrilled with the joy of glorying in such a
theme, and her last thought, as she closed her eyes for the night, was
about a plan of work that she meant to carry out.

What could have happened in the night to so change the face of the world
for her! It looked so utterly different in the morning. School was to
open, and she shrank from it, dreaded it. The work looked all drudgery,
and the plans she had formed the night before seemed impossibilities.
The face of nature had changed wonderfully. In place of radiant sunshine
there was falling a steady, dismal rain; the clouds bent low, and looked
like lead; the wind was moaning in a dismal way, that felt like a wail;
and nothing but umbrellas, and water-proofs, and rubber over-coats, and
dreariness, were abroad.

The pretty, summery school dress that Marion had laid out to wear was
hung sadly back in her wardrobe, and the inevitable black alpaca came to
the surface. It seemed to her the symbol of her old life of dreariness,
which she imagined had gone from her. It was not that she felt utterly
dismal and desolate; it was not that she had forgotten her late
experiences; it was not that she did not know that she had the Friend
who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever;" it was simply that she
could not feel it, and joy in it as she had done only yesterday; and her
religious life was too recent not to be swayed by feeling and impulse.

The fact that there was a clear sun shining above the clouds, and a