Such were some of the questions which had been passing through Miss Preston’s mind; and the smile with which she greeted her class as she took her place was a little shadowed by her self-condemning reflections—­reflections which her fellow-teachers would have thought quite uncalled for in one who had been the most zealous and conscientious worker in that Sunday school.  But Mary Preston little thought of comparing herself with others.  She knew that to whom “much is given, of him shall be much required;” and judging herself by this standard, she felt how little she had rendered to the Lord for His benefits to her.  As her wistful glance strayed during the opening hymn to the faces of her scholars, she could not help wondering what influence the remembrance of what she had tried to teach them would exert on their future lives.

As her class had been much diminished by recent changes, and in view of her approaching departure the blanks had not been filled up, it consisted on this Sunday of only three girls, of ages varying from twelve to fourteen, but differing much in appearance, and still more widely in character and in the circumstances of their lives.

Close to Miss Preston, and watching every look of the teacher she loved and grieved at losing, sat Lucy Raymond, the minister’s motherless daughter, a slight, delicate-looking girl, with dark hair and bright grey eyes, full of energy and thought, but possessing a good deal of self-will and love of approbation,—­dangerous elements of character unless modified and restrained by divine grace.

Next to her sat fair, plump, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired Bessie Ford, from the Mill Bank Farm—­an amiable, kind-hearted little damsel, and a favourite with all her companions, but careless and thoughtless, with a want of steadiness and moral principle which made her teacher long to see the taking root of the good seed, whose development might supply what was lacking.

Very different from both seemed the third member of the class—­a forlorn-looking child, who sat shyly apart from the others, shrinking from proximity with their neat, tasteful summer attire, as if she felt the contrast between her own dress and appearance and that of her school-fellows.  Poor Nelly Connor’s dingy straw hat and tattered cotton dress, as well as her pale, meagre face, with its bright hazel eyes gleaming from under the tangled brown hair, showed evident signs of poverty and neglect.  She was a stranger there, having only recently come to Ashleigh, and had been found wandering about, a Sunday or two before, by Miss Preston, who had coaxed her into the Sunday school, and had kept her in her own class until she should become a little more familiar with scenes so strange and new.  Curiosity and wonder seemed at first to absorb all her faculties, and her senses seemed so evidently engrossed with the novelty of what she saw around her, that her teacher could scarcely hope she took in any of the instruction which in the most simple words she tried to impress on her wandering mind.  And so very ignorant was she of the most elementary truths of Christianity, that Miss Preston scarcely dared to ask her the simplest question, for fear of drawing towards her the wondering gaze of her more favoured classmates, who, accustomed from infancy to hear of a Saviour’s love and sacrifice for sin, could scarcely comprehend how any child,