soul was almost in hell already, for hell is despair, and Etienne
was very nearly despairing at that moment. Only one way out remained,
the way of prayer, the little mossy pathway that he used to tread when
he was a child, but that he had not trodden, now, for many years.
Tangled, mossy, and overgrown that path was now, but it still led out
from the dark wood of life where Etienne had almost lost his way and
his hope.

Etienne took that way. With his whole heart he prayed for mercy and
for deliverance from the sin and horror that oppressed him. When no
answer came at once he did not stop praying, but continued day and
night, praying, praying for mercy. Perhaps he scarcely knew to whom
his prayer was addressed; but it was none the less a real prayer.

He expected that the answer to it would come in some startling form
that he could recognise the first minute and say: 'There! Now God is
answering my prayer!'

Instead, the answer came far more simply than he had expected. God
often seems to choose to answer prayers in such a gentle, natural
fashion, that His children need to watch very carefully lest they take
His most radiant messengers, His most wonderful messages, almost as a
matter of course. Only if they recognise God's Love in all that comes,
planning how things shall happen, they can see His hand arranging even
the tiniest details of their lives, fitting them all in, and making
things work out right. Then they understand how truly wonderful His
answers are.

The answer to Etienne's prayer came through nothing more extraordinary
than that same old folio book which he had borrowed from his friend
Miss Corsa, and had put away, thinking it too dull to translate. He
took it out again, and opened upon a part called 'No Cross, No Crown.'
'I proceeded,' he says, 'to read it with the help of my dictionary,
having to look for the meaning of nearly every word.'

When he had finished, he read it straight through again. 'I had never
met with anything of the kind before,' and all the time he was reading
the Voice inside his heart kept on saying, 'Yes, Yes, Yes, that is
true!'

'I now withdrew from company, and spent most of my time in retirement,
and in silent waiting upon God. I began to read the Bible, with the
aid of my dictionary, for I had none then in French. I was much of a
stranger to the inspired records. I had not even seen them before that
I remember; what I had heard of any part of their contents, was only
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