“I’ll go for her,” said Frank, “the moment Thurnall comes back to watch you.”

“What need to go yourself, sir?  Old Sarah will go, and willing.”

Thurnall came in at that moment.

“I am going to fetch Miss Harvey.  Where is she, Captain?”

“At Janey Headon’s, along with her two poor children.”

“Stay,” said Tom, “that’s a bad quarter, just at the fish-house back.  Have some brandy before you start?”

“No! no Dutch courage!” and Frank was gone.  He had a word to say to Grace Harvey, and it must be said at once.

He turned down the silent street, and turned up over stone stairs, through quaint stone galleries and balconies such as are often huddled together on the cliff sides in fishing towns; into a stifling cottage, the door of which had been set wide open in the vain hope of fresh air.  A woman met him, and clasped both his hands, with tears of joy.

“They’re mending, sir!  They’re mending, else I’d have sent to tell you.  I never looked for you so late.”

There was a gentle voice in the next room.  It was Grace’s.

“Ah, she’s praying by them now.  She’m giving them all their medicines all along!  Whatever I should have done without her?—­and in and out all day long, too; till one fancies at whiles the Lord must have changed her into five or six at once, to be everywhere to the same minute.”

Frank went in, and listened to her prayer.  Her face was as pale and calm as the pale, calm faces of the two worn-out babes, whose heads lay on the pillow close to hers:  but her eyes were lit up with an intense glory, which seemed to fill the room with love and light.

Frank listened:  but would not break the spell.

At last she rose, looked round and blushed.

“I beg your pardon, sir, for taking the liberty.  If I had known that you were about, I would have sent:  but hearing that you were gone home, I thought you would not be offended, if I gave thanks for them myself.  They are my own, sir, as it were—­”

“Oh, Miss Harvey, do not talk so!  While you can pray as you were praying then, he who would silence you might be silencing unawares the Lord himself!”

She made no answer, though the change in Frank’s tone moved her; and when he told her his errand, that thought also passed from her mind.

At last, “Happy, happy man!” she said calmly; and putting on her bonnet, followed Frank out of the house.

“Miss Harvey,” said Frank, as they hurried up the street, “I must say one word to you, before we take that Sacrament together.”

“Sir?”

“It is well to confess all sins before the Eucharist, and I will confess mine.  I have been unjust to you.  I know that you hate to be praised; so I will not tell you what has altered my opinion.  But Heaven forbid that I should ever do so base a thing, as to take the school away from one who is far more fit to rule in it than ever I shall be!”