ne left on
earth; no house for a refuge in time of sickness; no one to tell her
troubles to; no eye to laugh and weep with her; no person that would
weep when she should die; yes, perhaps no one who would escort her
coffin to that narrow, cold resting-place that they would some day have
to assign her. She was alone; solitary and forsaken she was to wander
through the turmoil of the world to her lonely grave; perhaps a long
journey through many, many lonely years, more bowed, more discouraged
and powerless from year to year--an old, withered, despised creature, to
whom scarce any would give refuge, even though begged for it in the name
of the Lord. New sorrow quivered in her heart, lamentations were about
to well up. Why did the good Father, who was called Love, let such poor
children, who had nobody in the world, live, to be cast out in
childhood, seduced in their prime, despised in old age? But then she
began to feel that she was sinning against God, who had given her more
than many had, who had preserved her innocence to this day, and had so
formed and developed her that an abundant living seemed secured to her
if God preserved her health. Little by little, as the hill-tops and the
tree-tops peeped out of the mist, so the love-tokens which God had
visibly scattered through her life began to appear--how she had been
guarded here and there, how she had enjoyed many more cheerful days than
many, many poor children, and how she had found parents too, much better
than other children had, who, if they had not taken her to their hearts
like father and mother, had still loved her and so brought her up that
she could face all people with the feeling that she was looked upon as a
real human being. No, she might not complain of her good Father up
yonder; she felt that His hand had been over her. And was His hand not
over her still? Had He perhaps taken compassion on the poor lonely girl?
Had He decreed, since she had remained faithful till then and tried to
keep herself unspotted by sin, to satisfy now the longing of her heart,
to give her a faithful breast to lay her head on-something of her own,
so that one day somebody would weep at her death, somebody escort her on
the sad road to the gruesome grave? Was it perhaps Uli, the loyal,
skilful servant, whom she had loved so long in her reserved heart; whom
she could reproach with nothing save his mistake with Elsie, and that he
too had been seized by the delusion that money makes h