CHAPTER XV.

A pleasant surprise.

“It would do you good to come to our meeting some Sunday, just to see Mr. Bowen’s face,” Mrs. Blake remarked to me one day, some time after the tailor and women folk had completed very satisfactorily their work.

“I would like to go for other reasons than that.  One is to hear your minister pray once more, and also to hear him preach.”

“Can’t you come next Sunday morning?”

“Our service is at the same hour.  I do not think Mr. Winthrop would like me to leave our own church.  He is very particular about such things.”

“I don’t see why he should; for he don’t set much store by religion.”

“He may give me permission to come some time.”

“I wish he would come too.  Our meetings are so good now.  Daniel has perfessed religion.”

She spoke in such subdued fashion I looked at her in surprise, thinking she might soon follow his example.  I think she was waiting for me to say something; but I felt myself so ignorant on this great subject, I knew not what to say.

“I’ve wished often of late that I’d never been born.  Where I’m to go to once the breath leaves my body, is an awful thought.”  She burst into a fit of bitter weeping that frightened me.

“Christ is very merciful,” I faltered, not knowing what to say.

“I’ve read that and heard it many a time; but we’ve been such a heathenish lot, I’m afraid He’s left us to ourselves.”

“If He has remembered Daniel, that should encourage you.”

“He’s not lived without thinking of Him as many years as I have.”

She sat with bowed head, quietly weeping, the picture of despair.  I touched the hard, wrinkled hand that had so often generously ministered to the wants of others.

“Have you asked Christ to forgive you?”

“Asked Him?” she sobbed, “I’ve been crying day and night for weeks; but I’m only getting further away all the time.”

“Does your son, or Mr. Lathrop know?”

“I reckon they don’t.  I was ashamed for any one to know; but I couldn’t help telling you.”

“I think it is because you are ashamed that Christ don’t bless you.”

“I’ve felt I ought to get up and tell them in meeting what a sinner I’ve been; but I’ve always prided myself on being as good as them that’s made a perfession, and they all know what a hard, proud wretch I am.  I expect they’d say I was a hypocrite.”

“I think if you confessed to your church what you have just told me, and asked them to pray for you, God would make you His child.  It seems to me any petition Mr. Lathrop and Mr. Bowen would dare to present would be received and granted.”

“It’s hard on flesh and blood,” she moaned.

I saw she was in deep distress and could not understand why she was unwilling to make the confession that might bring peace.