r hand
gently on Clare's arm.

'We've heard o' your sad loss, my dear, and our old hearts have ached
for you. 'Tis a heavy cross to have the hope of bein' a happy wife
snatched away, and a lone and loveless spinster's lot instead
stretchin' out in front o' you. 'Tis a long and weary road for young
feet to travel!'

Poor Clare burst into tears. She could not bear, as yet, to be
reminded of her trouble.

'Don't talk of it, Deb,' she said between her sobs; 'it only makes it
worse.'

'Ay, ay,' said the old woman, wiping a sympathetic tear away from her
own eye with the corner of her apron; 'ye'll be feelin' it sore for a
time. But the good Lord will comfort you, if no one else will.'

'It is so dreadful to have to live, whether you like it or not,' said
Clare, in that little burst of confidence she sometimes showed to
strangers, though never to her sisters.

'But seems as if it would not be easier to die if one left the work
that has been set us to others to finish,' said Deb gravely.

'I have no work at all,' Clare responded quickly, almost passionately.
'I could have been a good wife--I hope I could--but there's nothing
left me now; no one wants me, and there's nothing to do, and I'm sick
of everybody and everything!'

'I'm no preacher,' said Deb meditatively, 'and I don't live a saintly
life, so it's no good my settin' myself above my fellows, but Patty and
me has our Bibles out once every weekday, and most of all Sundays we're
readin' it, so I'll make so bold as to pass you a verse that I did a
powerful lot of thinkin' over last Sunday. 'Tis this, and maybe, with
your quick, eddicated brain, you'll take it in quicker nor I
did--"Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power,
unto all patience and longsuffering, with joyfulness." Maybe that's
your work just at present, my dear. Shall we go in now?'

Clare's eyes shone through her tears. Slowly and dimly she was seeing
light through her darkness. Miss Villars had done much to help her.
But nothing seemed to have shown her the grandeur of suffering as this
one verse, uttered in slow, halting accents by an uncultured woman.
She never forgot it. The verse--God's message to her--was then and
there engraved upon her heart; and though she had not yet found her
'rightful resting-place,' though she was still alternately halting and
groping her way towards the Light, yet the possibilities of a noble
life, a life in the midst of crushing sorrow,