“Remember that every neglected opportunity, every idle word, every wrong thought of yours has been written down this day.  You can not take back the thoughts or words; you can not recall the opportunity.  This day, with all its mistakes, and blots, and mars, you can never live over again.  It must go up to the judgment just as it is.  Have you begged the blood of Jesus to be spread over it all?  Have you resolved that no other day shall witness a repeatal of the same mistakes?  Have you resolved in your own strength or in His?”

During the reading of the tract, a young man had entered, paused a moment in surprise at the unwonted scene, then moved with very quiet tread across the room and took the vacant seat near Ester.  As the reader came back to her former seat, with the pink on her cheek deepened into warm crimson, the new comer greeted her with—­

“Good-evening, Miss Fannie.  Have you been finding work to do for the Master?”

“Only a very little thing,” she answered, with a voice in which there was a slight tremble.

“I don’t know about that, my dear.”  This was the old woman’s voice.  “I’m sure I thank you a great deal.  They’re kind of startling questions like; enough to most scare a body, unless you was trying pretty hard, now ain’t they?”

“Very solemn questions, indeed,” answered the gentleman to whom this question seemed to be addressed.  “I wonder, if we were each obliged to write truthful answers to each one of them, how many we should be ashamed to have each other see?”

“How many would be ashamed to have Him see?” The old woman spoke with an emphatic shake of her gray head, and a reverent touch of he pronoun.

“That is the vital point,” he said.  “Yet how much more ashamed we often seem to be of man’s judgment than of God’s.”

Then he turned suddenly to Ester, and spoke in a quiet, respectful tone: 

“Is the stranger by my side a fellow-pilgrim?”

Ester was startled and confused.  The whole scene had been a very strange one to her.  She tried to think the blue-ribboned girl was dreadfully out of her sphere; but the questions following each other in such quick succession, were so very solemn, and personal, and searching—­and now this one.  She hesitated, and stammered, and flushed like a school-girl, as at last she faltered:  “I—­I think—­I believe—­I am.”

“Then I trust you are wide-awake, and a faithful worker in the vineyard,” he said, earnestly.  “These are times when the Master needs true and faithful workmen.”

“He’s a minister,” said Ester, positively, to herself, when she had recovered from her confusion sufficiently to observe him closely, as he carefully folded the old woman’s shawl for her, took her box and basket in his care, and courteously offered his hand to assist her into the cars for the New York train thundered in at last, and Mr. Newton presented himself; and they rushed and jostled each other out of the depot and into the train.  And the little tract hung quietly in its corner; and the carpenter who had left it there, hammered, and sawed, and planed—­yes, and prayed that God would use it, and knew not then, nor afterward, that it had already awakened thoughts that would tell for eternity.