Into the innermost sanctuary of her religious life we can have no desire and have no right to pry, but the outward manifestation of such feeling is a common ground upon which all feet may tread. To complete then the sketch of this dissenting maiden we may add that her sense of duty, at all times clear and keen, was of that nature which loves the harmony of perpetual details, small and numberless. Alice had her little laws with regard to all things that she did, the making of a pie-crust or the wearing of a gown--and this habit, almost unconscious before the time of her conversion, she recognised now as the principle of her life. A disposition by nature opposed to morbidness saved her from dangers that might have been possible; although it must be owned at the same time that these endless regulations were not always convenient to others in the house. A life thus self-governed is mostly solitary, but Alice had not the warmth that desires companionship; with a truth and sincerity of nature that rendered her capable of friendship she generally preferred to go on her way alone. She was thin, slender, and quiet (to conclude her description with her portrait), and usually dressed in some dark, sober gown; without being pretty she was not inharmonious, and it was this sensation which satisfied those near her. The villagers said that ‘t’ girl was well eno’, an’ a good girl too who ’ud do her duty well, but if you wanted a face as lads ’ud like there was Thackbusk Annie was worth ten on her.’ There were a few lads, however, as it seemed, who had found the daughter of the farmer fair enough. And now these two rivals, for once in unison, were close together in Alice’s little room, whilst without pigeons fluttered, and the yard-boy came and went, and the light of a sober noon-tide shone on the yard. The girls were silent, but both were deeply moved, each indeed more thrilled than she would have dared to say--Annie with a delirious sense of pressing danger; Alice with a secret anxiety that affected her like shame. Oh! why should she mind if Nat came to see Miss Gillan, and had been engaged to do joining work for her?.... the Gillans they were a bad lot, that they were; but it wasn’t the place o’ the boy to think o’ that. She should not mind--but it was not easy to forget that low in her heart there stirred a secret pain, a fear for one who had been an old companion, and who was yielding now to other influence than hers. For Alice had played with Nat when they were children, had reproved him for errors and tempers even then; and, although actually by a few weeks his junior, had not tried to restrain a mother’s love for him. A woman loves the position of a guardian; and such anxiety tends to tenderness.