“Yes, ma’am.  He was only ten years old when our mother died.  I am glad she is dead now, what I’ve never said before.  There were only two of us—­Tom and I; and I being nearly six years the oldest, felt like a mother as well as a sister to him.  I’ve never spent much on myself as you know, and never had as good clothes as other girls with my wages.  It took nearly everything for Tom.  Oh, dear!  What is to come of it all?  It will kill me, I’m afraid.”

A few questions on my part brought out particulars in regard to Polly’s brother that satisfy me of his great lapse from virtue and sobriety.  He was now past twenty, and from all I could learn, was moving swift-footed along the road to destruction.

There followed a dead silence for some time after all the story was told.  What could I say?  The case was one in which it seemed that I could offer neither advice nor consolation.  But it was in my power to show interest in the girl, and to let her feel that she had my sympathy.  She was sitting with her eyes cast down, and a look of sorrow on her pale, thin face—­I had not before re-marked the signs of emaciation—­that touched me deeply.

“Polly,” said I, with as much kindness of tone as I could express, “it is the lot of all to have trouble, and each heart knows its own bitterness.  But on some the trouble falls with a weight that seems impossible to be borne.  And this is your case.  Yet it only seems to be so, for as our day is, so shall our strength be.  If you cannot draw your brother away from the dangerous paths in which he is walking, you can pray for him, and the prayer of earnest love will bring your spirit so near to his spirit, that God may be able to influence him for good through this presence of your spirit with his.”

Polly looked at me with a light flashing in her face, as if a new hope had dawned upon her heart,

“Oh, ma’am,” she said, “I have prayed, and do pray for him daily.  But then I think God loves him better than I can love him, and needs none of my prayer in the case.  And so a chill falls over me, and everything grows dark and hopeless—­for, of myself, I can do nothing.”

“Our prayers cannot change the purposes of God towards any one; but God works by means, and our prayers may be the means through which he can help another.”

“How?  How?  Oh, tell me how, Mrs. Wilkins?”

The girl spoke with great eagerness.

I had an important truth to communicate, but how was I to make it clear to her simple mind?  I thought for a moment, and then said—­

“When we think of others, we see them.”

“In our minds?”

“Yes, Polly.  We see them with the eyes of our minds, and are also present with them as to our minds, or spirits.  Have you hot noticed that on some occasions you suddenly thought of a person, and that in a little while afterwards that person came in?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve often noticed, and wondered why it should be so.”