ufferer. "I will nurse you so tenderly, that you will soon be
well again."

"Good child--blessed child!" murmured she, closing her eyes beneath the
slumberous weight of the anodyne, and sinking into a deep sleep.

And now Helen sat alone, watching the aged friend, whose strongly-marked
and peculiar character had had so great an influence on her own. For
awhile the echo of Arthur's parting words made so much music in her ear,
it drowned the harsh, solemn ticking of the old clock, and stole like a
sweet lullaby over her spirit. But gradually the ticking sounded louder
and louder, and her loneliness pressed heavily upon her. There was a
little, dark, walnut table, standing on three curiously wrought legs, in
a corner of the room. On this a large Bible, covered with dark, linen
cloth, was laid, and on the top of this Miss Thusa's spectacles, with
the bows crossing each other, like the stiffened arms of a corpse. Helen
could not bear to look upon those spectacles, which had always seemed to
her an inseparable part of Miss Thusa, lying so still and melancholy
there. She took them up reverently, and laid them on a shelf, then
drawing the table near the fire, or rather carrying it, so as not to
awaken the sleeper, she opened the sacred book. The first words which
happened to meet her eye, were--

"Where is God, my Maker, who giveth me songs in the night?"

The pious heart of the young girl thrilled as she read this beautiful
and appropriate text.

"Surely, oh God, Thou art here," was the unspoken language of that
young, believing heart, "here in this lonely cottage, here by this bed
of sickness, and here also in this trembling, fearing, yet trusting
spirit. In every life-beat throbbing in my veins, Thy awful steps I
hear. Yet Thou canst not come, Thou canst not go, for Thou art ever
near, unseen, yet felt, an all pervading, glorious presence."

Had any one seen Helen, seated by that solitary hearth, with her hands
clasped over those holy pages, her mild, devotional eyes raised to
Heaven, the light quivering in a halo round her brow, they might have
imagined her a young Saint, or a young Sister of Charity, ministering to
the sufferings of that world whose pleasures she had abjured.

A low knock was heard at the door. It must be the young doctor, for who
else would call at such an hour? Yet Helen hesitated and trembled,
holding her breath to listen, thinking it possible it was but the
pressure of the wind, or some rat tram