She returned from Switzerland in good health, and resumed her active work at home.  At one time it was helping a young friend into light and peace; at another, it was making an appointment to break her journey at Willesden Station, to talk with some one in trouble.  For “it will be worth ANY fatigue if I can comfort her,” was her unselfish remark.  Amid so much activity, little could she have anticipated what was so soon to befall her.

IV.

TRIED IN THE FURNACE OF PAIN.

The journey was broken as arranged, though Frances R. Havergal was by that time very ill.  Through some mistake she waited an hour and a half before the friend came, and then took her with her some miles so that they might not lose the longed-for interview.  When home was reached, she was seized with shivering, fever set in and was pronounced to be typhoid fever.  In the middle of November, 1874, it was thought her end was near.  But prayer, continued and earnest, was made that her valuable life might be spared, and God graciously heard and answered, and brought her back from the gates of death.  When asked afterwards if she had any fear of dying, her answer was, “Oh no, not a shadow.”  “Then was it delightful to think you were going home, dear Fan?” “No, it was not the idea of going home, but that He was coming for me and that I should see my King.  I never thought of death as going through the dark valley, or down to the river; it often seemed to me a going up to the golden gates and lying there in the brightness, just waiting for the gate to open for me....  I never before was, so to speak, face to face with death.  It was like a look into heaven, and yet when my Father sent me back again, I felt it was His will, and so I could not be disappointed.”

In January, 1875, she was removed to Winterdyne, where she heard of the sudden death of her brother Henry.  After a few days a relapse set in, and her stepmother was sent for.  After the fever had passed away she suffered very severe pain.  She remarked to her sister once, “Oh, Marie, if I might but have five minutes’ ease from pain!  I don’t want ever to moan when gentle sister Ellen comes in.  How I am troubling you all!”

Health gradually returned to her, and with it she recommenced her active work for the Master.

V.

COMING FORTH AS GOLD.

The Refiner’s work in F.R.  Havergal was very evident.  Of this year’s illness and slow convalesence she speaks:  “It has been the most precious year of my life to me.  It is worth any suffering to prove for oneself the truth of ‘when thou passest through the waters I will be with thee,’ and worth being turned back (as it seemed) from the very golden gates if one may but ‘tell of all His faithfulness.’  It is so real.”