he boy."

"He deserves it, I am sure," said Sophy.

"It will keep him easier to the right way, and it would be harder for
him when I am gone, and his father come home! And Mr Harford, he says
he will find a good place for Judy. She is a good girl, a right good
girl."

"That she is."

"And, maybe, Mrs Carbonel and you, when you come home, would be good to
my poor sister. She've been a good sister to me, she has, with it all,
but it has all been against her, and she would be a different woman if
she could. Please remember her."

"We will, we will if we can."

Then Judith went on to beg Sophy to write to her former mistress, Mrs
Barnard, with all her thanks for past kindness. That seemed to exhaust
her a good deal, and she lay back, just saying faintly, "If you would
read me a little bit, miss."

The Prayer-Book lay nearest, and Sophy read, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy
servant depart in peace," as well as she could amid the choking tears.
She felt as if she were lifted into some higher air, but Judith lay so
white and still that she durst not do more than say, "Good-bye, dear
Judith." She was going to say, "I will come and see you again," but
something withheld her. She thought Judith's lips said, "Up there."
She bent down, kissed the cheek, now quite white, and crept down,
passing Molly at the turn.

Two days later Mr Harford came to say that Judith was gone. Her last
communion with Johnnie, and with George Hewlett, had been given to her
the day before, and she had not spoken afterwards, only her face had
been strangely bright.

The Carbonels could only feel that her remnant of life had been
shortened by all she had undergone for their sakes, and Edmund and Sophy
both stood as mourners at her grave, Sophy feeling that her life had
been more of a deepening, _realising_ lesson than anything that had gone
before, making her feel more than had ever come yet into her experience,
what this life is compared with eternal life.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

THE GOLDEN CHAINS.

"A form unseen is pulling us behind,
Threads turn to cords, and cords to cables strong,
Till habit hath become as Destiny,
Which drives us on, and shakes her scourge on high."
_Isaac Williams_.

Captain Carbonel lost no time after Judith Grey's funeral in sending
John Hewlett to his new master, Mr Jones. The place was the Carbonels'
old home, in a county far-away from Uphill. George had wished the lad
to go to a cabinet-mak