If her voice trembled now it was from shyness, and a little pink colour gave some warmth to her cheek, for she was not accustomed to speak to those around her of the religious exercises in which she indulged herself. Some time ago, Alice had chosen, as the church-people in the village sarcastically observed, to give her parents ‘more trouble nor she was worth by taking up with them Dissenters in the town’--and they had added that ‘her parents they were too soft with her, they should ha’ let her know their mind, that they should.’ At the same time the village Dissenters, who were numerous, were not on their part disposed to be pleased with her, they said that ‘she held her nose a deal too high, she ’ud have to come down afore her life was done.’ This was hard upon Alice, who at the desire of her parents had abstained from attending the red chapel at the bottom of the hill--though it must be owned that her obedience was the easier because she preferred the Wesleyan place of worship in the town. A young heart has a natural instinct for the place where its religion was first stirred into life, a yearning like that which makes us turn back again to visit the scenes where our childhood played. Poor Alice, although confirmed, was entirely ignorant of the history, the claims, the pretensions of the Church; she was only aware of the help that touched her life as the wounded man of the hand of the Samaritan. And certainly since that time her life had found new happiness, a transfiguration of duty which made all things sublime.