throw herself back, and so get a glimpse of her way and go on.  I looked after her, and for the first time in weeks my heart ached for somebody beside myself.  The next day mother sent me with a dish to Miss Catharine’s room, and I went in and sat down.  I didn’t like her at first; she’d got a way of looking sidelong that gave her an evil air; but soon she tilted herself backward, and I saw her face,—­such a happy one!

“What’s the matter of ye, honey?” said she.  “D’ye read your Bible?”

Read my Bible!

“Is that what makes you happy, Miss Catharine?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t read much myself, I don’t know the letters,” says she; “but I’ve got the blessed promises in my heart.”

“Do you want me to read to you?”

“No, not to-day.  Next time you come, maybe.”

So I sat awhile and listened to her little humming voice, and we fell to talking about mother’s ailments, and she said how fine it would be, if we could only afford to take mother to Bethesda.

“There’s no angel there now,” said I.

“I know it, dear,—­but then there might be, you know.  At any rate, there’s always the living waters running to make us whole:  I often think of that.”

“And what else do you think of, Miss Catharine?”

“Me?” said she.  “Oh, I ha’n’t got no husband nor no child to think about and hope for, and so I think of myself, and what I should like, honey.  And sometimes I remember them varses,—­here! you read ’em now,—­Luke xiii. 11.”

So I read:—­

“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.  And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, ’Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.’  And he laid his hands on her:  and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”

“Ay, honey, I see that all as if it was me.  And I think, as I’m setting here, What if the latch should lift, and the gracious stranger should come in, His gown a-sweepin’ behind Him and a-sweet’nin’ the air, and He should look down on me with His heavenly eyes, and He should smile, and lay His hands on my head, warm?—­and I say to myself, ’Lord, I am not worthy,’—­and He says, ’Miss Catharine, thou art loosed from thine infirmity!’ And the latch lifts, as I think, and I wait,—­but it’s not Him.”

Well, when I went out of that place I wasn’t the same girl that had gone in.  My will gave way; I came home and took up my burden and was in peace.  Still I couldn’t help my thoughts,—­and they ran perpetually to the sea.  I hadn’t need to go up on the house-tops, for I didn’t shut my eyes but there it stretched before me.  I stirred about the rooms and tried to make them glad once more; but I was thin and blanched as if I’d been rising from a fever.  Father said it was the salt air I wanted; and one day he was going out for frost-fish, and he took me with him, and left me and my basket on the sands while he was away.  It was this side of the South Breaker that he put me out, but I walked there; and where the surf was breaking in the light, I went and sat down and looked over it.  I could do that now.