to see you. Here she is--Miss Derrick."

Faith came to the side of the bed. Little her quiet face shewed how she
was trembling. In her soft sweet way she asked the sick woman how she
did. And Mrs. Custers turned her head a little, and gazed up into the
blooming face with strange, eager, feverish eyes--eyes that thirsted,
but with no bodily thirst. Then she closed them again and turned her
face away, but said nothing.

"Have you been sick long?" asked Faith.

She did not answer, then; though as if the tones of Faith's voice were
making their way, there came presently a slight quiver of the face, and
a bright drop or two that the closed eyelids could not quite keep back.
But she was at that point of time where the fear of man has lost its
power,--where the doctor loses his supremacy and visiters their
interest: where men and things are pushed like shadows into the
background, and the mind can see no object save "the great white
throne." This was what the silence expressed,--it was not dislike, nor
churlishness; but those surface questions failed to reach her where she
stood. The next gentle and tender "What is the matter?"--was so spoken
that it found her even there. Her eyes came back to Faith's face with
the sort of look they had given before. And then she spoke.

"Where would you be going if you were lying where I be?"

Faith heeded not the doctor then, nor anything else in the world. She
waited an instant; she had drawn herself up on hearing the question;
then leaning forward again she said slowly, tenderly,

"I should be going--to be happy with my divine Redeemer. Are not you?"

"What makes you think you would?"

"Because I have his word for it," said Faith. "He says that whoever
believes in him shall not perish, and that every one that loves him
shall be with him where he is;--I believe in him and love him with my
whole heart; and I know he is true. He will not cast me away." Slowly,
clearly, the words were spoken; so that they might every one enter and
be received by the ears that heard.

The woman looked at her,--scanned her, examined her,--looked down
towards the foot of the bed at the doctor--then back at Faith.

"Do you believe all that?" she said.

"I know it!"--said Faith, with a tiny bit of joy-speaking smile.

Again that intent look.

"Well _he_ don't," she said with a motion towards the doctor. "Which of
ye am _I_ to believe?"

"Don't believe either of us!" said Faith quickly, her look rat