wed. Ah! God lets
strange woes into this world of His! I cannot tell you, if I would, what
I saw there! Pestilence--death--corruption!

"In the midst of all, among the gentle sisters of charity, I found a New
England woman--a nurse--her whom I met yesterday. She came to me on my
inquiry for Mr. Waldo. He was dead. Miriam had already sickened--was
past hope. I could not see her. It was against the rule. She would not
know me.

"I only remember that I refused to be sent away. I think my brain reeled
with the weariness of sleepless nights and horror of the shock.

"I cannot dwell upon the story. It was ended quickly. When I struggled
back, painfully, to life, from the disease that struck me down, there
were strange faces round me, and none could even tell me of her last
hours. The nurse--Miss Sampson--had been smitten--was dying.

"They sent me to a hospital for convalescents. Weeks after, I came out,
feeble and hopeless, into my lonely life!

"Since then, God, who had taken from me the object I had set for myself,
has filled its room with His own work. And, doing it, He has not denied
me to find many a chastened joy.

"Dear young friend!" said he, with a tender, lingering emphasis--it was
all he could say then--all they had left him to say, if he would--"I
have told you this, because you have come nearer into my sympathies than
any in all these years that have been my years of strangerhood and
sorrow! You have made me think, in your fresh, maidenly life, and your
soul earnestness, of Miriam!

"When your way broadens out into busy sunshine, and mine lies otherwise,
do not forget me!"

A solemn baptism of mingled grief and joy seemed to touch the soul of
Faith. One hand covered her face, that was bowed down, weeping. The
other lay in her companion's, who had taken it as he uttered these last
words. So it rested a moment, and then its fellow came to it, and,
between the two, held Roger Armstrong's reverently, while the fair,
tearful face lifted itself to his.

"I do thank you so!" And that was all.

Faith was his "dear, young friend!" How the words in which her mother
limited his thoughts of her to commonplace, widened, when she spoke them
to herself, into a great beatitude! She never thought of more--scarcely
whether more could be. This great, noble, purified, God-loving soul that
stood between her and heaven, like the mountain peak, bathing its head
in clouds, and drawing lightnings down, leaned over her, and b