Joan went to church at every opportunity. Faith seemed so easy, and soon so necessary. Secret prayer became a real thing to be approached with joy. To own to sins was as satisfactory as casting down a heavy burden at a journey's end; to confess them to God was to know that they were forgiven. There were not many clouds in her religious sky. As Mary's religion was bounded by her own capabilities and set forth against a background of gloom, which never absolutely vanished save in moments of rare exaltation, so Joan's newfound faith took upon itself an aspect of sunshine. Her clouds were made beautiful by the new light; they did not darken it. Mary's gray Cornish mind kept sentiment out of sight. She lived with clear eyes always focusing reality as it appeared to her. Heaven was indeed a pleasanter eternal fact than hell; yet the place of torment existed on Bible authority; and it was idle to suppose it existed for nothing. Grasping eternity as a truth, she occupied herself in strenuous preparation; which preparation took the form of good works and personal self-denial. Joan belonged to an order of emotional creatures widely different. She loved the beautiful for its own sake, kept her face to the sun when it shone, shivered and shut up like a scarlet pimpernel if bad weather was abroad. And now a chastened sunshine, daily growing stronger, shot through the present clouds, painted beauty on their fringes, and lighted the darkness of their recesses so that even the secrets of suffering were fitfully revealed. Joan grasped at new thoughts, the outcome of her new road. Nature presently seemed of a nobler face, and certain immemorial achievements of man also flashed out in the side-light of the new convictions; as objects, themselves inconsiderable, will suddenly develop unsuspected splendors from change of standpoint in the beholder. The magic of that Christianity, which Joan now received directly from her Bible, wrought and embroidered a new significance into many things. And it worked upon none as upon the old crosses, some perfect still, some ruined as to arm or shaft, some quite worn out and gnawed by time from their original semblance. These dotted her native land. Them she had always loved, but now they appeared marvelously transfigured, and the soul hid in their granite beamed through it. Supposing the true menhirs to be but ruined crosses also, Joan shed on them no scantier affection than upon the less venerable Brito-Celtic records of Christianity. Bid so to do, and prompted also by her inclination, the girl was wont to take walks of some length for her health's sake; and these had an object now. As her dead mother's legends came back to her memory and knit Nature to her new Saviour, so the weather-beaten stones brought Him likewise nearer, marked the goal of precious daily pilgrimages, and filled a sad young life with friends.