present
condition and prospects. The old woman's countenance cleared up
instantly; she informed me that she had never been more comfortable in
her life; that her trade, her _honest_ trade--laying an emphasis on the
word honest--had increased of late wonderfully; that her health was
better, and, above all, that she felt no fear and horror "here," laying
her hand on her breast.

On my asking her whether she still heard voices in the night, she told me
that she frequently did; but that the present were mild voices, sweet
voices, encouraging voices, very different from the former ones; that a
voice only the night previous, had cried out about "the peace of God," in
particularly sweet accents; a sentence which she remembered to have read
in her early youth in the primer, but which she had clean forgotten till
the voice the night before brought it to her recollection.

After a pause, the old woman said to me: "I believe, dear, that it is the
blessed book you brought me which has wrought this goodly change. How
glad I am now that I can read; but oh what a difference between the book
you brought to me and the one you took away. I believe the one you
brought is written by the finger of God, and the other by--"

"Don't abuse the book," said I, "it is an excellent book for those who
can understand it; it was not exactly suited to you, and perhaps it had
been better that you had never read it--and yet, who knows? Peradventure,
if you had not read that book, you would not have been fitted for the
perusal of the one which you say is written by the finger of God;" and,
pressing my hand to my head, I fell into a deep fit of musing. "What,
after all," thought I, "if there should be more order and system in the
working of the moral world than I have thought? Does there not seem in
the present instance to be something like the working of a Divine hand? I
could not conceive why this woman, better educated than her mother,
should have been, as she certainly was, a worse character than her
mother. Yet perhaps this woman may be better and happier than her mother
ever was; perhaps she is so already--perhaps this world is not a wild,
lying dream, as I have occasionally supposed it to be."

But the thought of my own situation did not permit me to abandon myself
much longer to these musings. I started up. "Where are you going,
child?" said the woman anxiously. "I scarcely know," said I; "anywhere."
"Then stay here, child," said she;