And then she poured forth the story of her life of sorrow as I had never heard it before. A heart trained to distrust and suspect through a childhood of bondage under the petty tyrannies of a stepmother and her children. One year of happy married life, ending in a sudden widowhood, which widowed her heart also of all its remnant of hope in God, and left her to struggle prayerless and alone with a hard world, for bread for herself and her orphan babe. The growing up of this child to be a stay and comfort, and, for three years, a second home with her when she married. This second home broken up as suddenly as the first, by the death of the daughter and her husband in one month, from a catching sickness, leaving the grandmother once more alone to toil with enfeebled strength for two orphan babes; the boy, poor, faithful Tim, half-witted and sickly; the girl, Cicely, wilful and high-spirited, and the beauty of the village. Then the terrible morning when Cicely was gone, and no account could be got of her beyond Tim's confused and exulting statement, that Cicely had cried, and laughed, and kissed him, and told him to wish grandmother good-bye for her, and she would come back a lady and bring Tim a gun like Master Roger's; to Gammer Grindle tidings worse than bereavement or all the misery she had known, for she came of a truly honourable yeoman's house that had never known shame. Tim, however, could never be brought to look on his sister's disappearance in any but the most cheerful light, and would watch for hours at the corner of the path leading to the village for Cicely and the "gun like Master Roger's," until, as time passed on, the expectation seemed to fade away, only to be awakened once again by the mysterious touch of death. And since then not a word of the poor lost girl. Tim in the grave, and the vain longing that Cicely were there too. And all the little world around her, as she believed, leagued against her crushed but unconquered heart. She ended with,-- "But it's but natural. When the lightnings have rent the trunk the winds soon snap the boughs. They say the devil stands by me. If he did no one need wish him for a friend. They say the Almighty is against me. And most times I think belike He is." Then Aunt Gretel's words came back to me, "_Anywhere but there. Put the darkness anywhere but there_;" and I said,-- "Never, Gammer, never. The devil said that thousands of years ago; but the Lord Christ came to show what a lie it was. He stood by the stricken and wounded always. The lame and the blind came to Him in the temple, and he healed them." She listened as if she half believed, and then, after a silence, she said,-- "The devil is no easy enemy to deal with, mistress, but if I could be sure it was only him, maybe I might look up and try again."