ripped. I went
glowering like a wild thing. I knew I'd never see Dan now nor hear his
voice again, but I hated the Lord that had done it, and I made my heart
like the nether millstone. I used to try and get out of folks's sight;
and roaming about the back-streets one day, as the snow went off, I
stumbled on Miss Catharine. "Old Miss Catharine" everybody called her,
though she was but a pauper, and had black blood in her veins. Eighty
years had withered her,--a little woman at best, and now bent so that
her head and shoulders hung forward and she couldn't lift them, and she
never saw the sky. Her face to the ground as no beast's face is turned
even, she walked with a cane, and fixing it every few steps she would
throw herself back, and so get a glimpse of her way and go on. I looked
after her, and for the first time in weeks my heart ached for somebody
beside myself. The next day mother sent me with a dish to Miss
Catharine's room, and I went in and sat down. I didn't like her at
first; she'd got a way of looking sidelong that gave her an evil air;
but soon she tilted herself backward, and I saw her face,--such a happy
one!

"What's the matter of ye, honey?" said she. "D'ye read your Bible?"

Read my Bible!

"Is that what makes you happy, Miss Catharine?" I asked.

"Well, I can't read much myself, I don't know the letters," says she;
"but I've got the blessed promises in my heart."

"Do you want me to read to you?"

"No, not to-day. Next time you come, maybe."

So I sat awhile and listened to her little humming voice, and we fell to
talking about mother's ailments, and she said how fine it would be, if
we could only afford to take mother to Bethesda.

"There's no angel there now," said I.

"I know it, dear,--but then there might be, you know. At any rate,
there's always the living waters running to make us whole: I often think
of that."

"And what else do you think of, Miss Catharine?"

"Me?" said she. "Oh, I ha'n't got no husband nor no child to think about
and hope for, and so I think of myself, and what I should like, honey.
And sometimes I remember them varses,--here! you read 'em now,--Luke
xiii. 11."

So I read:--

"And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen
years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And
when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, 'Woman,
thou art loosed from thine infirmity.' And he laid his hands on her: and