a libel on her fifty-five years and girlish
step. Nobody in Lindsay ever felt very well acquainted with Mrs.
Falconer, in spite of the fact that she had lived among them forty
years. She kept between her and her world a fine, baffling reserve
which no one had ever been able to penetrate. It was known that she
had had a bitter sorrow in her life, but she never made any reference
to it, and most people in Lindsay had forgotten it. Some foolish ones
even supposed that Mrs. Falconer had forgotten it.

"Well, I do not know what on earth is to be done with Camilla Clark,"
said Miss Bailey, with a prodigious sigh. "I suppose that we will
simply have to trust the whole matter to Providence."

Miss Bailey's tone and sigh really seemed to intimate to the world at
large that Providence was a last resort and a very dubious one. Not
that Miss Bailey meant anything of the sort; her faith was as
substantial as her works, which were many and praiseworthy and
seasonable.

The case of Camilla Clark was agitating the Ladies' Aid of one of the
Lindsay churches. They had talked about it through the whole of that
afternoon session while they sewed for their missionary box--talked
about it, and come to no conclusion.

In the preceding spring James Clark, one of the hands in the lumber
mill at Lindsay, had been killed in an accident. The shock had proved
nearly fatal to his young wife. The next day Camilla Clark's baby was
born dead, and the poor mother hovered for weeks between life and
death. Slowly, very slowly, life won the battle, and Camilla came back
from the valley of the shadow. But she was still an invalid, and would
be so for a long time.

The Clarks had come to Lindsay only a short time before the accident.
They were boarding at Mrs. Barry's when it happened, and Mrs. Barry
had shown every kindness and consideration to the unhappy young widow.
But now the Barrys were very soon to leave Lindsay for the West, and
the question was, what was to be done with Camilla Clark? She could
not go west; she could not even do work of any sort yet in Lindsay;
she had no relatives or friends in the world; and she was absolutely
penniless. As she and her husband had joined the church to which the
aforesaid Ladies' Aid belonged, the members thereof felt themselves
bound to take up her case and see what could be done for her.

The obvious solution was for some of them to offer her a home until
such time as she would be able to go to work. But