, giving a full account of his mother's
illness and death, telling how beautifully the Superintendent had taken
part in the funeral service, and preserving for her son those last
precious messages of love and gratitude, of faith and hope, which
become the immortal treasures of the bereaved heart. As he read Helen's
letter Shock caught a glimpse of the glory of that departing. Heaven
came about him, and the eternal things, that by reason of the nearness
of the material world too often become shadowy, took on a reality that
never quite left him. Where his mother was henceforth real things must
be.

The letter closed with a few precious sentences of love and sympathy
from Helen, but in these Shock, reading with his heart in his eyes, and
longing for more than he could rightly find in them, thought he could
detect a kind of reserve, a reserve which he could not interpret, and
he laid down the letter with painful uncertainty. Was her love more
than she cared to tell, or was it less than she knew he would desire?

From Helen's letter Shock turned to Mrs. Fairbanks' and read:

My Dear Mr. Macgregor:

We all deeply sympathise with you in your great loss, as I know you
will with us in our grief. We can hardly speak of it yet. It is so new
and so terribly sudden that we have not been able fully to realise it.
My great comfort in this terrible sorrow is my daughter Helen. Mr.
Lloyd, too, has proved himself a true friend. Indeed, I do not know
what we should have done without him. We are more and more coming to
lean upon him. You will not have heard yet that we have been so greatly
attracted by Mr. Lloyd's preaching, and influenced by our regard for
him personally, that we have taken sittings in the Park Church.

Helen, I am glad to say, is beginning to take an interest in the church
and its work, and as time goes on I think her interest will grow. I
should be glad indeed that it should be so, for our relations with Mr.
Lloyd are very close; and, in fact, I may tell you what is yet a
secret, that he has intimated to me his desire to make Helen his wife.
Helen is very favourably disposed to him, and all our circle of friends
would rejoice in this as an ideal marriage. Mr. Lloyd belongs to her
own set in society, is a gentleman of culture and high character, and
in every way suitable. As for myself, in my loneliness I could not
endure the thought of losing my only daughter, at all, and her marriage
would be a great blow to me we