Another soothing influence upon her spirited nature was the presence of any one whom she felt to be more than commonly holy, “not among those nearest and dearest to me at home,” she confesses:  “how perversely I overlooked them!—­but any very pious clergyman or other manifest and shining Christian.”  “All this while,” she continues, “I don’t think any one could have given the remotest guess at what passed in my mind, or have given me credit for a single serious thought.  I knew I was ’a naughty child,’—­never entertained any doubts on the subject; in fact I almost enjoyed my naughtiness in a savage desperate kind of way because I utterly despaired of getting any better, except by being ’made a Christian,’ which as months passed on, leaving me rather worse than better, was a less and less hoped-for, though more and more longed-for change.”

When she was nearly nine years old, Mr. Havergal was appointed to the rectory of St. Nicholas, Worcester, and thither the family removed.  Soon after their arrival, a sermon by the curate upon the text, “Fear not, little flock,” aroused her from the feeling of self-satisfaction into which she had drifted.  Having a favourable opportunity, she unburdened her heart one evening when alone with the curate, but he did not help the young seeker after peace.  He said the excitement of moving and coming into new scenes was the cause most likely of her feeling worse, and that would soon go off; then she was to try and be a good girl and pray.  So after that her lips were utterly sealed to all but God for another few years or rather more.

In 1848 her mother became seriously ill, and feeling that she was soon to leave her little girl, she said to her one evening:  “Fanny dear, pray to God to prepare you for all that He is preparing for you.”  The sad event which the mother thus anticipated Frances could not or would not understand.

But what God had prepared for her she did in some measure realise when, a few weeks later, outside the house a funeral procession passed from the rectory to the churchyard, and inside a little girl flung herself on her bed with the lonely cry of a motherless heart, “Oh, mamma, mamma, mamma!” Her bright and apparently thoughtless manner led to the idea that she was heartless, but all the while she was heavy and sad for her loss, and weary because she had not yet received pardon of her sins.

Thus she went on, longing and trying to find peace, until she was fourteen years of age.

II.

RECEIVING “LIFE.”

On August 15, 1850, Frances went to school at Belmont.  The night before she left, her sister Ellen spoke to her of God’s love, and she gave to her the first indication of her real feelings in the words, “I can’t love God yet, Nellie!” But it was not to be so for long, however.  During the first half-year at school a “revival,” as she calls it, took place among the school girls,