It may be imagined what a consolation this letter was to Letty Thorsby amid the dark days now lowering over her and her whole family, and she, too, prayed that God would spare no correction to her husband which would leave him sobered and strengthened into permanent stability. Spring was once more advancing, but to the afflicted family and the prisoner at Castleborough it came only with anxious fears and dreadfully depressed spirits. The Woodburns, collected together at Letty’s, were very very low in heart; and Mr. Woodburn himself, as time drew on, became very restless and desponding. He had borne up well, and said very little about his case, except that it would be all right. But as the time of trial approached and no new light whatever had been cast on the mystery of Mr. Drury’s death, he began to be very low too. Sometimes, after sitting long in silence, he would suddenly seem to wake out of a reverie, and say, “It is strange, very strange that nothing turns up.” His family would say, “Very strange, indeed; but we must trust in God.” And once or twice lately he had startled them by saying, as if angrily, “Yes, trust in God, that is always the word; but is there a God at all?” The shock this gave them was dreadful. Ann exclaimed, “Oh, dear father, don’t, don’t let go your faith in God! Think what mercies He has shed on your whole life. Think on the love by which you are surrounded, on the influential friends ready to do everything possible for your defence.” “If anything,” said Mr. Woodburn, “would make me doubt the truth of Christianity, it is those very ready, flourishing promises that it abounds in. ‘Whatever ye ask in my name, believing, ye shall receive.’ ‘Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened; ask, and it shall be given you.’ Now, have I not asked day after day, in the name of Christ, that the truth might be revealed in this case? Have I not sought, and knocked, and asked, and all to no purpose?” “But, dear father,” said Ann, in the greatest perturbation, “the time is not yet over and past. Our time is not God’s time. He may wish to try us all, and may solve the enigma even at the last moment.” “It may be so,” said Mr. Woodburn, gloomily; “but what does it mean where it says that if any man lose houses or land or wife or children for Christ’s sake, he shall receive tenfold more in this world of houses, land, and the rest of it, and in the world to come life everlasting? Now, Ann, I have heard of thousands being ruined, and even burnt and killed for Christ’s sake, but I never yet heard of one who received tenfold property for what he lost. These things make one believe the whole to be a cunningly devised fable. If the Gospels are not true altogether, they may not be true at all.”