t," said Susan, when he began to question
her, "your ma has sent a message to me by Miss Charlotte as I am not to
say nothing at all about it, and I never will." Of course no further
questioning was possible. It had more than once occurred to Ernest that
Charlotte did not in reality believe more than he did himself, and this
incident went far to strengthen his surmises, but he wavered when he
remembered how she had misdirected the letter asking for the prayers of
the congregation. "I suppose," he said to himself gloomily, "she does
believe in it after all."

Then Christina returned to the subject of her own want of
spiritual-mindedness, she even harped upon the old grievance of her
having eaten black puddings--true, she had given them up years ago, but
for how many years had she not persevered in eating them after she had
had misgivings about their having been forbidden! Then there was
something that weighed on her mind that had taken place before her
marriage, and she should like--

Ernest interrupted: "My dear mother," he said, "you are ill and your mind
is unstrung; others can now judge better about you than you can; I assure
you that to me you seem to have been the most devotedly unselfish wife
and mother that ever lived. Even if you have not literally given up all
for Christ's sake, you have done so practically as far as it was in your
power, and more than this is not required of anyone. I believe you will
not only be a saint, but a very distinguished one."

At these words Christina brightened. "You give me hope, you give me
hope," she cried, and dried her eyes. She made him assure her over and
over again that this was his solemn conviction; she did not care about
being a distinguished saint now; she would be quite content to be among
the meanest who actually got into heaven, provided she could make sure of
escaping that awful Hell. The fear of this evidently was omnipresent
with her, and in spite of all Ernest could say he did not quite dispel
it. She was rather ungrateful, I must confess, for after more than an
hour's consolation from Ernest she prayed for him that he might have
every blessing in this world, inasmuch as she always feared that he was
the only one of her children whom she should never meet in heaven; but
she was then wandering, and was hardly aware of his presence; her mind in
fact was reverting to states in which it had been before her illness.

On Sunday Ernest went to church as a ma