er for the moment as prodigy; I am thinking of her more as
pearl."

"Well," sighed Miss Maxwell whimsically, "prodigy or pearl, the Randall
Protective Agency may pull Rebecca in opposite directions, but
nevertheless she will follow her saint."

"That will content me," said Adam gravely.

"Particularly if the saint beckons your way." And Miss Maxwell looked
up and smiled provokingly.

Rebecca did not see her aunt Miranda till she had been at the brick
house for several days. Miranda steadily refused to have any one but
Jane in the room until her face had regained its natural look, but her
door was always ajar, and Jane fancied she liked to hear Rebecca's
quick, light step. Her mind was perfectly clear now, and, save that she
could not move, she was most of the time quite free from pain, and
alert in every nerve to all that was going on within or without the
house. "Were the windfall apples being picked up for sauce; were the
potatoes thick in the hills; was the corn tosselin' out; were they
cuttin' the upper field; were they keepin' fly-paper laid out
everywheres; were there any ants in the dairy; was the kindlin' wood
holdin' out; had the bank sent the cowpons?"

Poor Miranda Sawyer! Hovering on the verge of the great beyond,--her
body "struck" and no longer under control of her iron will,--no divine
visions floated across her tired brain; nothing but petty cares and
sordid anxieties. Not all at once can the soul talk with God, be He
ever so near. If the heavenly language never has been learned, quick as
is the spiritual sense in seizing the facts it needs, then the poor
soul must use the words and phrases it has lived on and grown into day
by day. Poor Miss Miranda!--held fast within the prison walls of her
own nature, blind in the presence of revelation because she had never
used the spiritual eye, deaf to angelic voices because she had not used
the spiritual ear.

There came a morning when she asked for Rebecca. The door was opened
into the dim sick-room, and Rebecca stood there with the sunlight
behind her, her hands full of sweet peas. Miranda's pale, sharp face,
framed in its nightcap, looked haggard on the pillow, and her body was
pitifully still under the counterpane.

"Come in," she said; "I ain't dead yet. Don't mess up the bed with them
flowers, will ye?"

"Oh, no! They're going in a glass pitcher," said Rebecca, turning to
the washstand as she tried to control her voice and stop the tears that
s