which
He prayed in that hour when the great drops of blood ran down his face
like sweat? We know that God heard Him, although no answer came to Him
through the dread silence of that night. God's times are not our times.
I have lived eighty-and-one years, and never yet have I known an earnest
prayer fall to the ground unheeded. In an unknown way, and when no one
looked for it, may be, the answer came; a fuller, more satisfying answer
than heart could conceive of, although it might be different to what was
expected. Sister, you are going where in His light you will see light;
you will learn there that in very faithfulness He has afflicted you!"

"Go on--you strengthen me," said she.

After David Hughes left that day, Eleanor was calm as one already dead,
and past mortal strife. Nest was awed by the change. No more passionate
weeping--no more sorrow in the voice; though it was low and weak, it
sounded with a sweet composure. Her last look was a smile; her last word
a blessing.

Nest, tearless, streeked the poor worn body. She laid a plate with salt
upon it on the breast, and lighted candles for the head and feet. It was
an old Welsh custom; but when David Hughes came in, the sight carried
him back to the time when he had seen the chapels in some old Catholic
cathedral. Nest sat gazing on the dead with dry, hot eyes.

"She is dead," said David, solemnly, "she died in Christ. Let us bless
God, my child. He giveth and He taketh away!"

"She is dead," said Nest, "my mother is dead. No one loves me now."

She spoke as if she were thinking aloud, for she did not look at David,
or ask him to be seated.

"No one loves you now? No human creature, you mean. You are not yet fit
to be spoken to concerning God's infinite love. I, like you, will speak
of love for human creatures. I tell you, if no one loves you, it is time
for you to begin to love." He spoke almost severely (if David Hughes
ever did); for, to tell the truth, he was repelled by her hard rejection
of her mother's tenderness, about which the neighbors had told him.

"Begin to love!" said she, her eyes flashing. "Have I not loved? Old
man, you are dim and worn-out. You do not remember what love is." She
spoke with a scornful kind of pitying endurance. "I will tell you how I
have loved, by telling you the change it has wrought in me. I was once
the beautiful Nest Gwynn; I am now a cripple, a poor, wan-faced cripple,
old before my time. That is a change; at least peop