The poor woman shook her head, ‘They were my husband’s, sir.’

‘Your husband was a pious man, then?’

’He used to read the Bible and have family worship.  Sometimes I went with him on Sunday to hear the minister, but I was always tired and drowsy, and could not keep awake.’

‘I suppose you don’t go at all now?’

‘No, sir’

‘Nor read the Bible?’

‘No, not very often—­I don’t get time.’

‘You surely have time on the Sabbath-day?’

’Oh, sir, that is the only leisure day I have, and then I like to take little James, and go with him to his father’s grave, and when I get back, there’s tea to make, (I never have tea but on Sundays, sir,) and somehow the time slips away till dark, when I go to bed.  I can’t afford to light a candle on Sunday nights.’

‘Do you never visit your neighbours on that day?’

’Oh no, sir, since my husband died, I have not cared for going out, and a lone woman like me is but poor company for others, so they never come to see me.’

’You tell me of visiting your husband’s grave—­when you stand over it, do you ever think of the time you will meet him again?’

’Not often; he used to talk to me about it, but I never can think of anything but him, just as he lived, and I remember a great many kind things he used to say, and speak them over to the baby (little James—­he was named for his father, sir,) in his own words.’  And the poor woman bent over her work, and plied her needle faster than ever.

‘It is natural,’ said Mr Maurice, kindly, ’that you should remember your husband as he was when living, but it is strange that you so seldom think of seeing him again.’

’Oh, sir, that looks like a dream to me, I can’t more than half believe it, but I know the other to be reality.’

‘Yet one is as true as the other.’  The woman sighed, and her countenance looked troubled, but she made no answer.

‘You believe the Bible?’

‘Ye-es, sir—­my James believed it, and so it must be true.’

‘Then you will allow me to read you a chapter, I suppose.’

’If you please, sir, but it always seemed to me a very gloomy book, and I am afraid it will make me low-spirited.’

‘No, I think not, it may raise your spirits.’  Mr Maurice took down the Bible, and opened it at the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians.  A piece of torn paper lay between the opened leaves, and a few of the verses were marked with a pencil.  As Mr Maurice proceeded to read, the face of the poor woman was gradually lowered till it almost rested on her bosom, and at last, yielding to the intensity of her feelings, she buried her face in the bed-clothes, and did not raise it again till the chapter was finished.

‘Oh, many and many is the time he has read it to me!’ she exclaimed, ’and he put in the mark only the day before he died, so that I might find it; but I could not, oh I couldn’t bear to read it!’