When she had got to this point, Elizabeth left her seat by the window and crossed the room to a large wardrobe closet, on a high shelf of which sundry unused articles of lumber had found a hiding place.  And having fetched a chair in, she mounted upon the top of it and rummaged, till there came to her hand a certain old bible which had belonged once to her mother or her grandmother.  Elizabeth hardly knew which, but had kept a vague recollection of the book’s being in existence and of its having been thrust away up on that shelf.  She brought it down and dusted off the tokens of many a month’s forgetfulness and dishonour; and with an odd sense of the hands to which it had once been familiar and precious, and of the distant influence under the power of which it was now in her own hands, she laid it on the bed, and half curiously, half fearfully, opened it.  The book had once been in hands that loved it, for it was ready of itself to lie open at several places.  Elizabeth turned the leaves aimlessly, and finally left it spread at one of these open places; and with both elbows resting on the bed and both hands supporting her head, looked to see what she was to find there.  It chanced to be the beginning of the 119th psalm.

“BLESSED ARE THE UNDEFILED IN THE WAY, WHO WALK IN THE LAW OF THE LORD.”

By what thread of association was it, that the water rushed to her eyes when they read this, and for some minutes hindered her seeing another word, except through a veil of tears?

“Am I becoming a Christian?” she said to herself.  “But something more must be wanting than merely to be sorry that I am not what he is.  How every upright look and word bear witness that this description belongs to him.  And I —­ I am out of ‘the way’ altogether.”

“BLESSED ARE THEY THAT KEEP HIS TESTIMONIES, AND THAT SEEK HIM WITH THE WHOLE HEART.”

“‘Keep his testimonies,’” said Elizabeth, —­ “and ’seek him with the whole heart.’ —­ I never did, or began to do, the one or the other. ‘With the whole heart’ —­ and I never gave one bit of my heart to it —­ and how is he to be sought? —­”

“THEY ALSO DO NO INIQUITY; THEY WALK IN HIS WAYS.”

The water stood in Elizabeth’s eyes again.

“How far from me! —­ how very far I am from it!  ’Do no iniquity,’ —­ and I suppose I am always doing it —­ ’They walk in his ways,’ and I don’t even so much as know what they are.  —­ I wish Mr. Winthrop had said a little more yesterday!” —­

She pondered this verse a little, feeling if she did not recognize its high and purified atmosphere; but at the next she sprang up and went back to her window.

“THOU HAST COMMANDED US TO KEEP THY PRECEPTS DILIGENTLY.”

Elizabeth and the Bible were at issue.