"She is dead. She sent for me one night in July. She was dying without a friend, and without a cent. I did what I could. I did what there was no one else to do, I tried to pray with her, and to tell her about a pitiful God and Christ." "You!" "Me. For I am the child of parents who loved God, and I have two little sisters whom I have sinned for, lest they should become sinners. I know I ought to have trusted God, but I thought He was never coming to help me--and so I took the devil's help. No one knows what the devil's wages are until they have earned them. Mary has taken his last coin, which is--death." "Poor little girl! She was a merry sprite." "Mirth was part of her bargain. She was dying while she was laughing"--and the face of the speaker was so instinct with grief that Harry suddenly found that all his suspicions were vanishing, and an irrepressible interest was taking their place. "Well, Cora?" "My name is Hannah--Hannah Young. My father and mother gave me that name, in the old meeting-house at Newburyport. It was the name registered in God's Book, and I would not see it on a play-bill; so I called myself--the other one. As I was telling you, I tried to talk to poor Mary, as I knew my mother would have talked to me. Alas! alas! it was too late!" Harry looked up startled and uneasy. "She had suffered so long and so cruelly, without anything to help or to relieve her pain. I brought her cold water and fruits and a doctor, and I told her that Christ saw all her trouble and pitied her, but she only said, 'It is not true! If He loved me He would have sent me help, when help might have saved me.' Then I got the Gospel, and I read it to her, and she cried wearily, 'I have heard it all before! I know He was loving and good, but that is all so long ago!' I said, 'Mary, if you could only pray!' and she asked angrily, 'To whom? To the fine ladies on Broadway, or to the men who preach now and then in the mostly closed churches?' I told her, 'Christ waits in this very room,' and she began to wail and cry out, 'It is not true! It is not true! Christ would have touched and healed me long ago!' Yes, in her very last moments she whispered, 'He does not know.' I shall never forget her eyes; no, not as long as I live. She went quite hopeless down the hard road to the grave; but I do believe now that the moment she touched the other side Jesus met and comforted her." Harry did not answer. His eyes were cast down, and he was holding his right hand in his left, with a nervous, restless motion.