ere received, tears and sobs burst from the whole
company; and when time had been given for the first vehemence of their
feelings to subside, Thomas continued,--

"I've just one or two more things to say; and the first is this: will
you all promise me to pray for our dear young lady, that she may be
restored to us in health and strength again, and take her place once
more as your teacher?"

"Ay, that we will with all our hearts," was the cry, which was uttered
with tearful earnestness by all.

"And will you pray, for yourselves, for grace to remember and profit by
the lesson which she has sent you?"

"We will, Thomas, we will," was again the cry.

"Well, thank God for that," said Bradly. "He's bringing good out of
evil already, as he always does,--bless his holy name for it! And now,
I've just to tell you, girls, why I've asked you to tea, and given you
the messages and the photographs in this fashion--I daresay some of you
can guess."

"I think we can, Thomas," said one of the elder ones.

"Well, it were just in this way," he continued: "I'm jealous about our
dear vicar's character, and about dear Miss Clara's, and I'm sure we all
ought to be. Now, if I'd given you her message in the Sunday-school,
even if I'd had your class by yourselves, ten to one some of the other
scholars would have got hold of things by the wrong end, and it would
have been made out as Miss Clara had been doing something very wicked,
and her mother had been taking her away in consequence. Now, you see
how it is: Miss Clara's done nothing to disgrace herself or her family;
she's been following a lawful thing, only she's been following it too
closely; but she's found it to be only like chasing a shadow after all.
And now that the Lord has humbled her, he'll raise her up again; she'll
come out of the furnace pure gold; she'll be such a teacher when she
comes back as she never was afore, if the Lord spares her. So now that
I've got you here in this quiet way, I want you all to promise me you'll
not go talking about what Miss Clara sent me to tell you, but you'll
keep it as snug as possible; it ain't meant for the public, it's meant
only for yourselves. The world wouldn't understand it; they'd think as
there was something behind. And the devil, he'd be only too glad to
make a bad use of it. So promise me to keep our dear young lady's
lesson to yourselves in your own hearts and memories. You can show the
photographs to the other schola