And without waiting for reply the low-toned, musical voice read on through that marvel of simplicity and grandeur, the 121st Psalm:  “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth.  He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:  he that keepeth thee will not slumber.  Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.  The Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.  The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.  The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil:  he shall preserve thy soul.  The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

“Ester, will you pray?” questioned her cousin, as the reading ceased, and she softly closed her tiny book.

Ester gave her head a nervous, hurried shake.

“Then shall I? or, dear Ester, would you prefer to be alone?”

“No,” said Ester; “I should like to hear you?” And so they knelt, and Abbie’s simple, earnest, tender prayer Ester carried with her for many a day.

After both heads were resting on their pillows, and quiet reigned in the room, Ester’s eyes were wide open.  Her Cousin Abbie had astonished her; she was totally unlike the Cousin Abbie of her dreams in every particular; in nothing more so than the strangely childlike matter-of-course way in which she talked about this matter of religion.  Ester had never in her life heard any one talk like that, except, perhaps, that minister who had spoken to her in the depot.  His religion seemed not unlike Abbie’s.  Thinking of him, she suddenly addressed Abbie again.

“There was a minister in the depot to-day, and he spoke to me;” then the entire story of the man with his tract, and the girl with blue ribbons, and the old lady, and the young minister, and bits of the conversation, were gone over for Abbie’s benefit.

And Abbie listened, and commented, and enjoyed every word of it, until the little clock on the mantel spoke in silver tones, and said, one, two.  Then Abbie grew penitent again.

“Positively, Ester, I won’t speak again:  you will be sleepy all day to-morrow, and you needn’t think I shall give you a chance even to wink.  Good-night.”

“Good-night,” repeated Ester; but she still kept her eyes wide open.  Her journey, and her arrival, and Abbie, and the newness and strangeness of everything around her, had banished all thought of sleep.  So she went over in detail everything which had occurred that day but persistently her thoughts returned to the question which had so startled her, coming from the lips of a stranger, and to the singleness of heart which seemed to possess her Cousin Abbie.

“Was she a fellow-pilgrim after all?” she queried.  If so, what caused the difference between Abbie and herself.  It was but a few hours since she first beheld her cousin; and yet she distinctly felt the difference between them in that matter.  “We are as unlike,” thought Ester, turning restlessly on her pillow.  “Well, as unlike as two people can be.”