“I have been wrong,” she said to herself. “I have been fancying lately that the peculiar weight of my cross lay in the need for bearing it together with petty money cares, and with work for which one must brace oneself up, and shut away one’s mere personal feelings. Now I begin to see that these are less added weights than props on which from time to time the burden of a great trial may rest till it is almost lifted from one’s own strength.” “We are taught, too,” she went on musingly, “that we can best approach God and serve Him by our service to others—the simple service which comes naturally out of our living and working among them. Does it not, therefore, seem reasonable that in the same fashion we may also best approach and serve those whom we love—the parted—or the dead?” and Lucy’s lips quivered. “It is the day’s hard work, too, which gives the sweet sleep and the good dreams! How absurd it sounds to put into words what is really the wonderful discovery that one makes, sooner or later (though one is always forgetting it!), to wit, that God knows what is best for His children, and that if they keep in His ways, they shall find the food and the tasks that are the most ‘convenient’ for them.” “I thank Thee, my Father,” she said aloud, clasping her hands together as she stood in the shadowy little parlour, “I thank Thee that Thou hast filled my hands with duties so that I need have no empty hour. I thank Thee that my love for Charlie may run, woven into my love for Thee, through all my work and all my thoughts—the golden thread, which binds all together into a chaplet, not indeed meet to present to Thee, yet which Thou wilt accept, because it is Thy daughter’s offering. And I thank Thee—oh, how I thank Thee!—for the little child Thou hast given me, to whom I must be, for a while, both mother and father too. And, Father, be with Charlie in his ship tossing on Thy seas. Give him sweet sleep and happy dreams. Make him feel assured that all is well—with Hugh and me.” She paused; she could not bring herself to pray. “Bring him home safely, if it be Thy will.” She could only say, “Father, we are in Thy will, and there we are safe—and together—always!” Nobody was there to see her then, or they would have marked the shining of her face—for she had been with God. But such mounts of transfiguration rise abruptly from the broil and bicker of life’s dusty plain, and often it is when we descend from them that we encounter the demons! (_To be continued._) THE GIRL’S OWN QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS COMPETITION. WHO ARE THE PRIZE-WINNERS AND CERTIFICATE-HOLDERS? EXAMINERS: JAMES MASON AND THE EDITOR.