"Who knows," thought Rachel, "but he will return some day? Who knows-- who can tell? Life is long, and hope is eternal. Ah! if he should come back, even though he never looked at me, never spoke, blessed, thrice blessed, should ever be held the day..." And a prayer, not framed in words, but in deep feelings, gushed like a pure spring from her inmost heart. But, indeed, when did she not pray? When was God divided from her thoughts? When did prayer fail to prompt the kind, gentle words that fell from her lips, or to lend its daily grace to a pure and blameless life? For to her, God was not what He, alas! is to so many--an unapproachable Deity, to be worshipped from afar, in fear and trembling, or a cold though sublime abstraction. No, Jesus was her friend, her counsellor, her refuge. There was familiarity and tenderness in her very love for Him; and, though she scarcely knew it herself, a deep and fervent sense of His divine humanity of those thirty-three years of earthly life, of toil, of poverty, of trouble, and of sorrow which move our very hearts within us, when we look from Bethlehem to Calvary, from the lowly birth in the Manger to the bitter death on the Cross. We might ask, were these the pages to raise such questions, why Jesus is not more loved thus--as a friend, and a dear one, rather than as a cold master to be served, not for love, but for wages. But let it rest. Sufficient is it for us to know that not thus did Rachel Gray love him, but with a love in which humility and tenderness equally blended. After a meditative pause, she quietly put away her things by moonlight, then again closed shutter and window, and softly stole up to the room which she shared with her step-mother. She soon fell asleep, and dreamed that she had gone to live with her father, who said to her, "Rachel! Rachel!" So great was her joy, that she awoke. She found her mother already up, and scolding her because she still slept. "Mother," asked Rachel, leaning up on one elbow, "was it you who called me, Rachel?" "Why aint I been a calling of you this last hour?" asked Mrs. Gray, with much asperity. Rachel checked a sigh, and rose. "Get up Jane--get up Mary," said Mrs. Gray, rapping soundly at the room door of the two apprentices. "Let them sleep a little longer, poor young things!" implored Rachel. "No, that I won't," replied her mother, with great determination, "lazy little creatures." And to the imminent danger of her own knuckles, she rapped so pertinaciously, that Jane and Mary were unable to feign deafness, and replied, the former acting as spokeswoman, that Mrs. Gray needn't be making all that noise; for that they heard her, and were getting up. "I thought I'd make them hear me," muttered Mrs. Gray, hobbling down stairs.