I ran after Maria when church was over, and went in to pay the promised visit to old Mother Lease. Daniel Ferrar was sitting in the parlour. He got up and offered Maria a chair at the fire, but she turned her back and stood at the table under the window, taking off her gloves. An open Bible was before Mrs. Lease: I wondered whether she had been reading aloud to Daniel. "What was the text, child?" asked the old lady. No answer. "Do you hear, Maria! What was the text?" Maria turned at that, as if suddenly awakened. Her face was white; her eyes had in them an uncertain terror. "The text?" she stammered. "I--I forget it, mother. It was from Genesis, I think." "Was it, Master Johnny?" "It was from the fourth chapter of St. Mark, 'Peace, be still.'" Mrs. Lease stared at me. "Why, that is the very chapter I've been reading. Well now, that's curious. But there's never a better in the Bible, and never a better text was taken from it than those three words. I have been telling Daniel here, Master Johnny, that when once that peace, Christ's peace, is got into the heart, storms can't hurt us much. And you are going away again to-morrow, sir?" she added, after a pause. "It's a short stay?" I was not going away on the morrow. Tod and I, taking the Squire in a genial moment after dinner, had pressed to be let stay until Tuesday, Tod using the argument, and laughing while he did it, that it must be wrong to travel on All Saints' Day, when the parson had specially enjoined us to be at church. The Squire told us we were a couple of encroaching rascals, and if he did let us stay it should be upon condition that we did go to church. This I said to them. "He may send you all the same, sir, when the morning comes," remarked Daniel Ferrar. "Knowing Mr. Todhetley as you do Ferrar, you may remember that he never breaks his promises." Daniel laughed. "He grumbles over them, though, Master Johnny." "Well, he may grumble to-morrow about our staying, say it is wasting time that ought to be spent in study, but he will not send us back until Tuesday." Until Tuesday! If I could have foreseen then what would have happened before Tuesday! If all of us could have foreseen! Seen the few hours between now and then depicted, as in a mirror, event by event! Would it have saved the calamity, the dreadful sin that could never be redeemed? Why, yes; surely it would. Daniel Ferrar turned and looked at Maria. "Why don't you come to the fire?" "I am very well here, thank you." She had sat down where she was, her bonnet touching the curtain. Mrs. Lease, not noticing that anything was wrong, had begun talking about Lena, whose illness was turning to low fever, when the house door opened and Harriet Roe came in. "What a lovely night it is!" she said, taking of her own accord the chair I had not cared to take, for I kept saying I must go. "Maria, what went with you after church? I hunted for you everywhere."