‘When ye’re deein’, ye dinna perjure yersel’,’ replied Liz, with a faint return of the old caustic speech.  ’If ye dinna believe me, ask him.  Is Wat away?  Teen, ye micht gang an’ bring him back.’

The little seamstress rose obediently, and when they were alone behind the screens, Liz lifted her feeble hand again and touched the arm of Gladys.

‘Oh, dinna tak’ him!  He’s a bad man—­bad, selfish, cruel; dinna tak’ him, or ye’ll rue’d but yince.  I dinna want to excuse mysel’.  Maybe I wasna guid, but afore God I lo’ed him, an’ I believed I wad be his wife.  Eh, d’ye think that’ll be onything against me in the ither world?  Eh, wummin, I’m feared!  If only I had anither chance!’

That pitiful speech, and the unspeakable pathos on the face of Liz, lifted Gladys above the supreme bitterness of that moment.

‘Oh, do not be afraid,’ she cried, folding her gentle hands, whose very touch seemed to carry hope and healing.  ’Jesus is so very tender with us; He will never send the erring away.  Let us ask Him to be with you now, to give you of His own comfort and strength and hope.’

She knelt down by the bed, unconscious of any listener save the dying girl, and there prayed the most earnest and heartfelt prayer which had ever passed her lips.  While she was speaking, the other two had returned to the bed-side, and stood with bowed heads, listening with a deep and solemn awe to the words which seemed to bring heaven so very near to that little spot of earth.  The dying girl’s strength was evidently fast ebbing; the brilliance died out of her eyes, and the film of death took its place.  She smiled faintly upon them all with a glance of sad recognition, but her last look, her last word, was for Gladys, and so she passed within the portals of the unseen without a struggle, nay, even with an expression of deep peace upon her worn face.

A wasted life?  Yes; and a death which might have wrung tears of pity from a heart of stone.

But the Pharisee, who wraps the robe of his respectability around him, and, with head high in the air, thanks God he is not as other men are, what spark of divine compassion or human feeling has he in his soul?

Yet what saith the Scriptures?—­’He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XLV.

THE BOLT FALLS.

From that sad death-bed Gladys passed out into the open air alone.

‘When you are ready, Teen,’ she said, ’you can go home, and tell Miss Peck I shall come to-day, sometime.  I have something to do first.’