Meg was a wild, untaught, uncared-for Arab child, a true offshoot of the lowest of the people. With a touch of gipsy blood in her veins, with the most ungoverned, uncontrolled passions, she yet was capable of a devotion, of an affection self-absorbing, self-forgetful. Offered up at any other shrine, it would have been idolatry; offered at this, it was worship. Meg loved, something as Mary Magdalene, something as the women who followed to the sepulchre, must have loved our Lord. All the love of a most loving nature had Meg given to Jesus. It was not alone gratitude which inspired this love. "It's jest cause He's so wonderful beautiful His own self," she would say; and it was agony to her, greater even than it would be to a mother to hear her little child abused, to have a word breathed against Him. Faith's words had wrung her heart. She was very sorry for Faith, very sorry that she could have so spoken; but she was more sorry for the pain she feared the words must have caused Jesus. "I 'ope as yer'll soon let us find the little 'un, for she's beginning to think real hard things of yer, and I can't abear 'em, I can't abear 'em," said Meg, looking up at the sky, and comforting herself with this very direct little prayer. As she was leaving the Sunday-school at the end of the morning's lessons, it came into her head that perhaps while she and Faith were so earnestly seeking for little Roy, he might all this time be safely at home. How stupid of them both never to have thought of this before! She had heard all about Faith's respectable home from the little girl herself. Yes; she would go there now and set her mind at rest on this point before returning to Faith. She reached the house. There was a common staircase, and the hall door stood open. She met no one as she ran up-stairs, and her feet, innocent of shoes and stockings, made no sound. A door was a little open on the first landing, and Meg, peeping in, saw a man seated by a table. He was a tall and powerful man, and Meg knew at once that she was looking at Faith's father. There was profound silence in the house, and Meg heard the man, whose face was bowed over his hands, presently say: "It's a lie, it's all a lie. There is no good God. If there were, He would never have torn my children away from me like this. And I have asked Him so often and so long to bring them back again. Yes; God does not hear prayer. It's a lie, I say. There is no God, no Christ, no nothing." "How dare yer!" said Meg, rushing into the room like a little fury. The man's words had stung her so hard that she lost both fear and self-control. She rushed at the man, and took his hands and shook them. "How dare yer, how dare yer!" she repeated. "Oh! yer a wicked, wicked man to say as there's no Jesus Christ."