means of letting in the light of the gospel to her dark
heart.

"_Armes Kind_" (poor child), she said, soothing her as tenderly as she
would have done her own blind Anna, had she been alive and in trouble,
"I understand it all, dear." (And her kind woman heart had taken it all
in.) "It is just like the little bird taken from its mother's nest, and
put into a strange one, longing to be back amongst its like again, and
content nowhere else. But, Frida, dost thou not remember that we read in
the little brown book that our Lord hath said, 'Lo, I am with you
alway'? Isn't that enough for you? No place can be very desolate, can
it, if He be there?"

In a moment after Elsie said these words, Frida raised her head and
dried her eyes.

Had she been forgetting, she asked herself, whose young servant she was?
Was it right in a child of God to be discontented with her lot, and to
forget the high privilege that God had given her in allowing her to read
His Word to the poor people in the Forest?

"I must throw off this discontented spirit," she said to herself; and
turning to Elsie she told her how sorry she was for the way in which she
had acted, adding, "But with God's help I will be better now."

Frida was no perfect character, and, truth to tell, ever since her
return from Baden-Baden, a sense of the incongruity of her circumstances
had crept upon her. The tasteful surroundings, the cultured
conversation, the musical evenings, the refinement of all around, had
enchanted the young girl, and the humble lot and homely ways of her
Forest friends had on her return to them stood out in striking
contrast. And, alas! for the time being she refused to see in all these
things the guiding hand of God. But after the day we have written of,
things went better. The girl strove to conquer her discontent, and in
God's strength she overcame, and her friends in the Forest had once more
the pleasure of seeing her bright smile and hearing her sweet voice in
song.

Johann Schmidt had fallen asleep in Jesus with the words of Holy
Scripture on his lips, blessing the "wood-cutters' pet," as he called
her, for having, through the reading of God's Word, led him to Jesus.
But though sickness had left the Forest, the severe cold and deep snow
were very trying to the health of all the dwellers in it, and the winter
nights were long and dreary.

One day in December, Wilhelm Hoerstel had business in Dringenstadt, and
on his return home he gave Frida