e read
on,--she was living out of herself.

At last she laid down the little volume, and resting her forehead on her
hand, thought long and deeply, her lips moving in silent prayer. Then
she started up hastily, stirred and brightened up the fire, and put the
room and herself into the best order that she could. Then she took up
the Bible again, and gazing at it earnestly, said slowly and half-out
loud to herself, "Wherever can this have come from?" And then a voice
seemed to speak within her; and lifting up her eyes reverently to that
heaven which she had never dared to think about for years past, she
exclaimed softly and fervently, as she clasped her hands together: "O my
God, thou didst send it! It came to me from heaven!"

But her thoughts were soon recalled to earth again. Her husband's step
was heard now. It was past ten o'clock, and he was returning from his
club.

It was often now that she had to watch and wait in weariness to as late
an hour. "He mustn't see this," she cried shudderingly to herself, as
she heard his hand upon the latch; "not yet, not yet!" So, snatching up
the little Bible, she placed it deep down under the clothes of the
baby's cradle.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE RAILWAY BRIDGE.

The Crossbourne station was not in the town itself, but on the
outskirts, about a quarter of a mile distant from the Town Hall.
Nevertheless, the town was creeping up to it in the form of a suburb,
which would ere long reach the station gates. Crossbourne, the present
flourishing manufacturing town, occupied the hills on either side of the
little stream, the greater part of it being to the north, in the
direction of the parish church. The station itself was on high ground,
and looked across over open country, the line in the London direction
passing from it through the centre of the town over a noble viaduct of
some twenty arches. In the opposite direction the line made a gradual
descent from the station, and at a mile's distance passed through a
cutting, towards the farther end of which it inclined northwards in a
sharp curve.

Just about the middle of this curve, and where the cutting was pretty
deep, a massive wooden foot-bridge was thrown across the line. This was
at a place not much frequented, as the bridge formed only part of a
short cut into a by-road which led to one or two farms on the hill-
sides. Along the rails round this ascending curve the ordinary trains
laboured with bated breath; and