So this old woman tried, and not without success, to comfort herself, and sustain her tender, proud, maternal heart.  The dire extremity into which she and her son had fallen did not crush her; few were the tears that fell from her eyes as she recalled for Jacqueline the years of her son’s boyhood,—­told her of his courage, as in various ways it had made itself manifest:  how he had always been fearless in danger,—­a conqueror of pain,—­seemingly regardless of comfort,—­fond of contemplation,—­contented with his humble state,—­kindly, affectionate, generous, but easily stirred to wrath by injustice, when manifested by the strong toward the weak,—­or by cruelty, or by falsehood.

Many an anecdote of his career might she relate; for his character, under the pressure of this trial, which was as searching and severe a test of her faith as of his, seemed to illustrate itself in manifold heroic ways, all now of the highest significance.  With more majesty and grandeur his character arose before her; for now in all the past, as she surveyed it, she beheld a living power, a capability, and a necessity of new and grand significance, and her heart reverenced the spirit she had nursed into being.

Removed to the distance of a prison from her sight, separated from her love by bolts and bars, and the wrath of tyranny and close-banded bigotry, he became a power, a hero, who moved her, as she recalled his sentence, and prophesied the morrow, to a feeling tears could not explain.

They passed the night together, the young woman and the old.  In the morning Jacqueline must go into the field again.  She was in haste to go.  Leaving a kiss on the old woman’s cheek, she was about to steal away in silence; but as she laid her hand upon the latch, a thought arrested her, and she did not open the door, but went back and sat beside the window, and watched the mother of Leclerc through the sleep that must be brief.  It was not in her heart to go away and leave those eyes to waken upon solitude.  She must see a helpful hand and hopeful face, and, if it might be, hear a cheerful human voice, in the dawning of that day.

She had not long to wait, and the time she may have lost in waiting Jacqueline did not count or reckon, when she heard her name spoken, and could answer, “What wilt thou? here am I.”

Not in vain had she lingered.  What were wages, more or less, that they should be mentioned, thought of, when she might give and receive here what the world gives not, and never has to give,—­and what a mortal cannot buy, the treasure being priceless?  Through the quiet of that morning hour, soothing words, and strong, she felt and knew to speak; and when at last she hurried away from the city to the fields, she was stronger than of nature, able to bear witness to the faith that speaks from the bewilderment of its distresses, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

Not alone had her young, frank, loving eyes enlivened the dreary morning to the heart of Leclerc’s mother.  Grace for grace had she received.  And words of the hymn that were always on John’s lips had found echo from his mother’s memory this morning:  they lodged in the heart of Jacqueline.  She went away repeating,—­