Just as the Rev. Mr. Holworthy had completed his great effort and driven the last nail home, as it were, by reciting for the last time the noble words of St. Paul which had formed the theme of his discourse, there was a sudden stir in the congregation. Mrs. Holworthy had fallen forward in her seat, and her children were peering at her face with the unsuspecting curiosity of those who have experienced neither care nor sorrow. When the kind-hearted women who came to her relief had laid her on the cushioned seat, her lips moved as if she were repeating something, but the only word they could catch was “Love.” She had gone to a place where love truly “worketh no ill to his neighbour.” “This is indeed a mysterious dispensation of Providence,” said the Rev. Mr. Holworthy to his awe-stricken parishioners. But the village doctor, who was a man of few words, confided to his wife that evening that he thought that Mrs. Holworthy had died of a “dispensation of children.” I had just finished reading this article in the _Bitter Cry_, when there was a knock at my door, and Mr. Lister entered. “Come Mr. Carford,” he said, “it is past two o’clock and as the women’s parade will not pass through this street, we must take our luncheon at once and go down to the public square.” I sprang up. “Let us go,” I said. “I would not miss such a spectacle for worlds. The sun never looked down on its like before, and it probably never will again.” And taking a hasty luncheon, we left the house. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. The street through which the women were to pass was, we found when we reached it, already thickly lined with men, many of whom bore marks of their fearful struggle with fire of the night before. Arms and hands bound up in slings, and foreheads bandaged with cloths, told of the scathing wounds that had been received in the fiery conflict. Blanched and haggard faces and heavy eyes also told of sleepless anxiety before and after the fire. Some of those who had been so injured as to be unable to appear on the streets, were propped in easy chairs at the open windows. Not to see womankind after such an unprecedented absence, was a deprivation not to be endured. It would have been like missing the sight of the sun after a dreary, Arctic winter.