Poor, hasty, undisciplined Posey! That she had not been blameless she well knew. “But Mrs. Hagood was so mean,” so she justified herself, “or I’d never have done so, and I don’t believe anybody else would have stood it either. O dear!” and she sighed very deeply as she munched an apple, “how I wish Mr. Hagood and I could go away somewhere and live all by ourselves; I’m sure with him I’d never get angry and ugly, and feel like fighting.” For most of all it was love and tenderness that her lonely little heart longed for, and having these she thought to be good would be easy. “Oh, mamma,” was the whispered plaint that rose to her lips, “if you had only lived I might have been good, but how can I now? You told me that God would love me, but I don’t think He can for nobody else does.” The wind was rising, and as Posey leaned against the frame of the still open window and listened to it rushing and murmuring through the tall trees around the house, and watched the dim, shadowy motion of the waving branches, to her excited fancy the one seemed to urge, “Come away, come away,” and the other like inviting hands to beckon, “Come, come.” And as she looked and listened an impulse, a sudden resolve sprang in her heart, and setting her teeth firmly she murmured as if in answer, “I will come, I will!” Posey did not undress when she lay down again, though first she knelt down by the bed and repeated her, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” as usual. But to-night she felt that this was not enough, that she needed something to give fuller expression to the tumult of feeling within her. At the Refuge she had been taught the Lord’s prayer, but instinctively she shrank from that clause of forgiveness of others, for she well knew that the spirit throbbing so hotly in her heart was anything but a forgiving one, so for want of something better she added a petition of her own, “O Lord, I haven’t anybody in the world, unless it is you. Take care of me; show me what to do; help me, please do! Amen.” It was the first time in her life that Posey had ever really prayed—all which had gone before had been a form, a habit. But now in the hour of her heart-sinking and loneliness, in the stress of her anger and resentment, shaken by the mingled impulses of fear and the courage which comes of desperation, with no earthly support to lean on, her tumultuous young soul reached out, feebly it is true, but still with real longing, for a guidance and strength higher than her own.