Looking yet deeper into it, I found that till this morning I had experienced no personal mortification with respect to Miss Oldcastle.  It was not the mere disappointment of having no more talk with her, for the sight of her was a blessing I had not in the least expected, that had worked upon me, but the fact that she had repelled or seemed to repel me.  And thus I found that self was at the root of the wrong I had done to one over whose mental condition, especially while I was telling him the unwelcome truth, I ought to have been as tender as a mother over her wounded child.  I could not say that it was wrong to feel disappointed or even mortified; but something was wrong when one whose especial business it was to serve his people in the name of Him who was full of grace and truth, made them suffer because of his own inward pain.

No sooner had I settled this in my mind than my trouble returned with a sudden pang.  Had I actually seen her that morning, and spoken to her, and left her with a pain in my heart?  What if that face of hers was doomed ever to bring with it such a pain—­to be ever to me no more than a lovely vision radiating grief?  If so, I would endure in silence and as patiently as I could, trying to make up for the lack of brightness in my own fate by causing more brightness in the fate of others.  I would at least keep on trying to do my work.

That moment I felt a little hand poke itself into mine.  I looked down, and there was Gerard Weir looking up in my face.  I found myself in the midst of the children coming out of school, for it was Saturday, and a half-holiday.  He smiled in my face, and I hope I smiled in his; and so, hand in hand, we went on to the vicarage, where I gave him up to my sister.  But I cannot convey to my reader any notion of the quietness that entered my heart with the grasp of that childish hand.  I think it was the faith of the boy in me that comforted me, but I could not help thinking of the words of our Lord about receiving a child in His name, and so receiving Him.  By the time we reached the vicarage my heart was very quiet.  As the little child held by my hand, so I seemed to be holding by God’s hand.  And a sense of heart-security, as well as soul-safety, awoke in me; and I said to myself,—­Surely He will take care of my heart as well as of my mind and my conscience.  For one blessed moment I seemed to be at the very centre of things, looking out quietly upon my own troubled emotions as upon something outside of me—­apart from me, even as one from the firm rock may look abroad upon the vexed sea.  And I thought I then knew something of what the apostle meant when he said, “Your life is hid with Christ in God.”  I knew that there was a deeper self than that which was thus troubled.

I had not had my usual ramble this morning, and was otherwise ill prepared for the Sunday.  So I went early into the church; but finding that the sexton’s wife had not yet finished lighting the stove, I sat down by my own fire in the vestry.