"O Miss Howard! it frightens me to think how bad I was at the mission school. I used to whisper and set the girls to laughing, and waste my thread, and do so many naughty things. Miss Farnum ought to have put me out. But if she had," sighing, "I never should have learned that good prayer" (speaking with great awe) "and then what should I have done when I was in such trouble? "I used to kneel in the corner and repeat it over and over till it seemed like I heard Jesus' voice say, 'I will, child.' Once when he"—she always alluded to her husband as he—"came home drunk, and beat me, I worried 'cause I couldn't get to my corner and kneel down. I did manage to sit up in bed and put my hands together as you told us, and I said it over and over in my heart. I thought, maybe as He knows all about us, He'd know how it hurt me to move, and wouldn't mind if I did cry and moan, 'cause I couldn't help it." "My poor child. I am very glad you knew where to go for comfort. Did you ever try to form a prayer for yourself?" "No, ma'am, not a prayer. I wasn't fit for it, you know; but when he was swearing and threatening to kill me,—not him, but rum,—I used to whisper, O God, pity me. Dear Jesus, take away the bad heart that makes him treat me so. Once after I had asked God to make him good and help me to be patient, he came and looked at me as I lay on the straw. He wasn't drunk then, and he said, 'I'm sorry for your sake you ever saw me, Esther.' His voice was real kind, like as though he pitied me. When he'd gone, I told Jesus about it. Was it naughty?" as she saw Miss Howard suddenly put her handkerchief to her eyes, "and I loved Jesus Christ so much that I forgot all the pain in my head and my side, so I fell asleep." CHAPTER VII. ESTHER'S FORGIVENESS. NO one but a faithful Christian worker in Christ's vineyard can understand the encouragement such a revelation as that described in the last chapter is to those who have been for years sowing good seed and waiting for the harvest. Esther, for years a member of the mission Sunday school,—light and frivolous, seemingly almost incapable of retaining any of the teachings repeated Sunday after Sunday in her hearing,—had been impressed by something in this simple prayer which the gracious spirit of God had fixed in her memory. It seemed to have been the "word in season," which had come back to her in her hours of deepest need, and proved to her in truth that God was really a loving Father watching over and pitying His sorrowing children. Marion related the incident which had so deeply affected her to her friend in England adding, "I suppose I may learn from this a lesson of trust. We have the glorious privilege of sowing the seed in the hearts of these poor waifs. It is God's part, which He has promised to do, to help it to sink into the light soil and spring up to everlasting life.