stray through the gospels, without place of its own, what matters it so long as it can find hearts enough to nestle in, and bring forth its young of comfort!--Perhaps the woman herself told it, and, as with the woman of Samaria, some would and some would not believe her.--Oh! the eyes that met upon her! The fiery hail of scorn from those of the Pharisees--the light of eternal sunshine from those of Jesus!--I was reading the other day, in one of the old Miracle Plays, how each that looked on while Jesus wrote with his finger on the ground, imagined he was writing down his individual sins, and was in terror lest his neighbour should come to know them.--And wasn’t he gentle even with those to whom he was sharper than a two-edged sword! and oh how gentle to her he would cover from their rudeness and wrong! LET THE SINLESS THROW! And the sinners went out, and she followed--to sin no more. No reproaches, you see! No stirring up of the fiery snakes! Only don’t do it again.--I don’t think she did it again:--do you?” It was just here that Helen came and stood behind Leopold’s chair. The curate lay on the grass, and neither saw her. CHAPTER XVI. HOW JESUS SPOKE TO WOMEN. “But why wasn’t he as gentle with good women?” said Leopold. “Wasn’t he?” said the curate in some surprise. “He said What have I to do with thee to his own mother?” “A Greek scholar should go to the Greek,” said the curate. “Our English is not perfect. You see she wanted to make him show off, and he thought how little she knew what he came to the world for. Her thoughts were so unlike his that he said, What have we in common! It was a moan of the God-head over the distance of its creature. Perhaps he thought: How then will you stand the shock when at length it comes? But he looked at her as her own son ought to look at every blessed mother, and she read in his eyes no rebuke, for instantly, sure of her desire, she told them to do whatever he said.” “I hope that’s the right way of it,” said Leopold, “for I want to trust him out and out. But what do you make of the story of the poor woman that came about her daughter? Wasn’t he rough to her? It always seemed to me such a cruel thing to talk of throwing the meat of the children to the dogs!” “We cannot judge of the word until we know the spirit that gave birth to it. Let me ask you a question: What would you take for the greatest proof of downright friendship a man could show you?” “That is too hard a question to answer all at once.”