ly laid the old head on the pillow, when a form,
almost to her as of an angel, suddenly appeared at the door. It was the
pastor's wife, her face beaming with the tender interest she was feeling
for the lone dweller in the cottage. She understood the whole as she saw
Karin's streaming tears, and the changed old face beside her.

"My mother is dead!" said Karin simply, but in a broken voice.

"I am glad she saw her good daughter before she died," said the pastor's
wife comfortingly.

"I am no good daughter!" exclaimed Karin bitterly. It was a relief to
confess her selfishness, her forgetfulness of her mother, in the midst
of her own comfortable surroundings, and her cold willingness to believe
that all was well with that old woman, who she had supposed was still in
the far north.

The pastor's wife listened in silence. She had no words of comfort to
say. Here was a case beyond her treatment. She did not kneel, but she
clasped her hands and sat quite still, while she laid Karin's sorrow and
penitence before the dear Lord Jesus, so ready to forgive, and to heal
the broken, repentant heart. When she had closed the prayer with a
fervent "Amen!" which seemed to be the sealing of her petitions to the
One strong to save, she turned to Karin and said, "I will go down and
send a person to watch her, and then you must go with me to our home;
for I have heard that you were left at the inn. You cannot be there
now." She felt that it would be best for Karin to be for a time alone.
She had brought her to the heavenly Presence, and she left her there to
commune with the pitiful Father in heaven.

CHAPTER V.

KARIN AND ELSA.

There was a new, low mound in the churchyard. Kind young hands from the
curate's had covered it with evergreen boughs, and sprinkled among them
bright flowers, so that it seemed but a slight swell in the green sweep
around it dotted with daisies.

Karin had begun a new phase in her life. She had something to love and
respect which had no taint of this present world and the worldliness
reigning therein. She had entered humbly and heartily into the simple
life at the curate's home, where she had been so lovingly welcomed.

That thin man, with the angular, loosely-built figure, with a speaking
expression of poverty about it; that man whose shabby Sunday coat had
not a button-hole that did not publicly tell of privately-done repairs
by his wife's untailor-like hand; that man whose very hair was scanty,