"Then that's what it means!" cried Charlotte, lifting up her head, and looking at him with shining eyes. "All day long, for the last five or six days, there's been a whisperin' in my mind, 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' It's God's voice, father. He's spoken beforehand to me, to comfort you and me." Joanna raised her care-worn and tearful face, and Amos laid his rough hand tenderly on his daughter's head. Neither of them doubted that God had indeed spoken to her. "A father couldn't do anything to his child that seems worse than slaying it," continued Charlotte, "but I've read of fathers, loving fathers, that have done it rather than let them fall into the hands of wicked men that would kill them cruelly. The children would trust their fathers to kill them. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'" "Ah! Dear heart! We'll trust in Him," Amos answered. They sat up late that night talking over the utter change in their future life, and trying to face the calamity from every point of view. But, after all their discussion, there was nothing for it but to accept the sorrow as God's will, to which they must meekly submit their own. The trouble fell most lightly on Amos. His home was where his wife and daughter were; and he had lost neither of these. All his days had been passed away from the cottage, and his life had not been so closely interwoven with it. Besides, he was almost as ignorant as a child about ways and means. His weekly wages had always been handed over, as soon as he received them, to Joanna, who provided for him everything he needed, leaving him only a few pence in his pocket to meet any unforeseen contingency. The faculty of dealing with money, which is one of the latest we acquire, and one of the earliest we lose, had never been developed in Amos. No anxious foreboding troubled him as to food, shelter, and clothing. Joanna was there; she would see to all that. Charlotte, also, had never had the spending of five shillings in her life. All she needed came to her as the air and the light came, without care and without thought. Joanna had shielded her always from all anxiety. It would be a great grief to quit the old home; but there rose in her something of the self-sustaining spirit of a martyr. If she must suffer, she would suffer with rejoicing. There had been women who trusted in God whilst they were wandering about in deserts, and mountains, and caves, and holes in the earth, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. This trial of her faith was nothing compared with theirs. God should find her trusting Him through sorrow and trouble, as she had trusted Him in peace and tranquility. She would take up the cross willingly, and follow the Lord whithersoever He pleased to lead her.