'I have always found life so hard,' sighed Olive. It did not seem strange to her that she should be talking thus to a stranger; was he not a clergyman--her father's curate--in spite of his boyish face? 'St. Paul thought it was better, you know; but indeed I am trying to be glad, Mr. Marsden, that I have all this time before me.' 'Trying to be glad for the gift of life!' Here was a mystery to be solved by the Rev. Hugh Marsden, he who rejoiced in life with the whole strength of his vigorous young heart; who loved all living things, man, woman, and child--nay, the very dumb animals themselves; who drank in light and vigour and cheerfulness as his daily food; who was glad for mere gladness' sake; to whom sin was the only evil in the world, and suffering a privilege, and not a punishment; who measured all things, animate and inanimate, with a merciful breadth of views, full of that 'charity that thinketh no evil,'--he to be told by this grave, pale girl that she envied his sister who died. 'What is the matter--have I shocked you?' asked Olive, her sensitiveness taking alarm at his silence. 'Yes--no; I am sorry for you, that is all, Miss Lambert. I am young, but I am a clergyman, as you say. I love life, as I love all the good gifts of my God; and I think,' hesitating and dropping his voice, 'your one prayer should be, that He may teach you to be glad.' CHAPTER XVII THREE YEARS AFTERWARDS--A RETROSPECT 'And still I changed--I was a boy no more; My heart was large enough to hold my kind, And all the world. As hath been apt before With youth, I sought, but I could never find Work hard enough to quiet my self-strife, And the strength of action craving life. She, too, was changed.'--Jean Ingelow. In the histories of most families there are long even pauses during which life flows smoothly in uneventful channels, when there are few breaks and fewer incidents to chronicle; times when the silent ingathering of individual interests deepens and widens imperceptibly into an under-current of strength ready for the crises of emergency. Times of peace alternating with the petty warfare which is the prerogative of kinsmanship, a blessed routine of daily duty misnamed by the young monotony, but which in reality is to train them for the rank and file in the great human army hereafter; quiescent times during which the memory of past troubles is mercifully obliterated by present ease, and 'the cloud no bigger than a man's hand' does not as yet obscure the soft breadth of heaven's blue. Such a time had come to the Lamberts. The three years that followed Olive's illness and tardy convalescence were quite uneventful ones, marked with few incidents worthy of note; outwardly things had seemed unchanged, but how deep and strong was the under-current of each young individual life; what rapid developments, what unfolding of fresh life and interests in the budding manhood and womanhood within the old vicarage walls.