ng under the table?" said Alison, in a fretful
tone. She felt too unhappy to be civil to anyone.

"I have got spirit, too, and I'm not ashamed," said David suddenly.
"It's a bit o' stuff I'm feather-stitching; there--I am learning the
stitch."

"Well!" said Alison; "you, a boy?"

"Yes, I--a boy," he replied, looking her full between the eyes.

There was something in the fearless glance of his gray eyes that caused
her to lower her own--ashamed.

"Dave's the blessing of my life," said Mrs. Reed; "he has learned the
stitch, and though he do it slow, he do it true and beautiful. It
shan't never now die out of the fam'ly."

CHAPTER VIII.

Grannie felt that matters had arrived at a crisis. Whatever the
doctors chose to call the suffering which she endured, her right hand
was fast becoming useless. It was with her right hand that she
supported her family; if it failed her, therefore, her livelihood was
cut off. She was a brave little woman; never in all her long life had
she feared to look the truth in the face. She looked at it now quietly
and soberly. Night after night she gazed at it as she lay in her tiny
bed in her tiny bedroom, with a grandchild fast asleep at each side of
her. She lay motionless then, in too great pain to sleep, and with the
future staring at her.

To-night she went to bed as usual. There was no manner of use in
sitting up burning lamps and fire; it was far cheaper to lie down in
the dark in bed. She lay down and gazed straight out into the deep
shadows which filled the little room. It was a moonlight night, and
some of the moon's rays pierced through the tiny window, but most of
the room lay in shadow, and it was toward the shadow Grannie turned her
eyes.

"It's all true," she said to herself, "there aint no manner of use in
denying it, or turning my face from it--it's true--it's the will o' the
Lord. My mother said to me--her as was a Simpson and married a
Phipps--she said when my father died, 'Patty, it's the will o' the
Lord.' I didn't like, somehow, to hear her say it--the will o' the
Lord seemed so masterful like, so crushing like, so cruel. And now the
will o' the Lord has come to me. It wor the Lord's will to bless me
all my life hitherto, but now it is his will to make things sore dark.
Somehow I can't trust and I can't hope, for there's nothing to hope
for, and there are the children, four of 'em unable to earn their
bread. Harry must make shift to do somethi