“You believe that?  I cannot say I do.  We need other means of moral and intellectual life besides spiritualism.  At least I have tried to be religious, but I always get weary.”

“That is only because you have not found the straight and true road,” said Bertie, earnestly.  “Pray, my dear Miss Liddell—­pray, and light will be given you.”

“Thank you—­you are very good,” murmured Katherine “At all events, though we can do but little, it is a comfort to help some of these poor creatures, especially the children and old people.”

“It is,” he returned.  “And if it be consolatory to minister to their physical wants, how much more to feed their immortal souls!”

Katherine was silent for a few minutes, and then said:  “It is impossible they can think much about their souls when they suffer so keenly in their bodies.  Poverty and privation which destroy self-respect cannot allow of spiritual aspiration.  Is it to be always like this—­one class steeped in luxury, the other grovelling in cruel want?”

“Our Lord says, ‘Ye have the poor always with you,’” returned Bertie.  “Nor can we hope to see the curse of original sin lifted from life here below until the great manifestation; in short, till Shiloh come.”

“Do you think so?  I do not like to think that Satan is too strong for God,” said Katherine, thoughtfully.

Bertie replied by exhorting her earnestly not to trust to mere human reason, to accept the infallible word of God, “and so find safety and rest.”  Katherine did not reply.

“I think you could help me in a difficult case,” said Bertie, a few days after this conversation.

“Indeed!” said Katherine, looking up from the book she was reading by the fire after dinner.  “What help can I possibly give?”

“Hear my story, and you will see.”

“I shall be most happy if I can help you.  Pray go on.”

“You know Dodd, the porter and factotum at the Children’s Refuge?  Well, Dodd has a mother, a very respectable old dame, who keeps a very mild sweety shop, and also sells newspapers, etc.  Mrs. Dodd, besides these sources of wealth, lets lodgings, and seems to get on pretty well.  Now Dodd came to me in some distress, and said, ’Would you be so good, sir, as to see mother? she wants a word with you bad, very bad.’  I of course said I was very ready to hear what she had to say.  So I called at the little shop, which I often pass.  I found the old lady in great trouble about a young woman who had been lodging with her for some time.  She, Mrs. Dodd, did not know that her lodger was absolutely ill, but she scarcely eats anything, she never went out, she sometimes sat up half the night.  Hitherto she had paid her rent regularly, but on last rent-day she had said she could only pay two weeks more, after which she supposed she had better go to the workhouse.  When first she came she used to go out looking for work, but that ceased, and she seemed in a half-conscious