But here I heard the voices of all the school children, and many of the congregation beside, join in the "Good Lord deliver us," and other responses of the litany. I had now given up all pretence of reading and listened with all my ears. I found myself strangely affected by these English prayers. The short petitions seemed calculated to meet almost every case of need or sorrow common to man. I felt the tears very near my eyes, and when the choir sung the twenty-third psalm— "The Lord is only my support, And He that doth me feed, How can I then lack anything Whereof I stand in need. "In pastures green He feedeth me Where I do safely lie, And after leads me to the streams Which run most pleasantly—" The drops ran over. I believe this was the first time I had ever thought of God, Himself, as my Father, or as a possible friend. The Father was to me up to that time, as an awful stern power far away in the heavens, yet watching all I did with a jealous eye; from whose wrathful justice I was to be saved, if at all, by the intercession of Mary, and by her commands laid upon her Divine Son, in my favor. I listened eagerly for the sermon, but it disappointed me; I could hardly tell why. It was well written and faultlessly delivered, no doubt, but I must confess, the whole might have been summed up, as Jenny Trevathy summed up one of poor old Doctor Brown's one day last summer— "It is nice to be good, and naughty to be wicked, and if you are good, you will have a nice time, and if you are not, you won't." But of how to be good—how to get rid of that traitor within, which was always corresponding with the tempter without, and opening the doors to him—of that I heard nothing. "To resolve was everything," Mr. Cheriton said. But I had not yet found to resolve was anything. I got up as the congregation began to disperse, and went into the house. I found Amabel up, and bathing her face with cold water. "How is your headache?" I asked. "Quite gone," she answered. "Have you been sitting here all the morning?" "No! I have been in the garden, listening to the music in the church. Do you know, Amabel, they have all their service—prayers and chants and all—in plain English, and the people join in them?" "Yes, I knew as much as that!" answered Amabel. "But I am not sure it was right to listen to them." "There was no harm in them, that I could see," I answered. "They seemed to me very good prayers." "They are heretical, and so they cannot be good," answered Amabel, in her mildly positive way. "They have no mass at all, and even what they call the communion, only once in a month, and you know Lucy, the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was instituted partly to atone for the affronts offered to it, by Protestants." "How far away all that seems!" said I. "Does it to you?"