est may redeem the hay, keep heart whate'er betide;
When one door's shut I've always found another open wide.
There is a Heart, there is a Hand, we feel but cannot see
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be.'

The fact is that the milkmaid has a kind of understanding with
Providence. She is in league with the Eternal. And Providence has a
way of its own of keeping faith with trustful hearts like hers. I was
reading the other day Commander J. W. Gambier's _Links in my Life_, and
was amused at the curious inconsistency which led the author first to
sneer at Providence and then to bear striking witness to its fidelity.
As a young fellow the Commander came to Australia and worked on a
way-back station, but he had soon had enough. 'I was to try what
fortune could do for a poor man; but I believed in personal endeavour
and the recognition of it by Providence. _I did not know Providence_.'

'I did not know Providence!' sneers our young bushman.

'The cows will all come home,' says the happy milkmaid.

But on the very same page that contains the sneer Commander Gambier
tells this story. When he was leaving England the old cabman who drove
him to the station said to him, 'If you see my son Tom in Australia,
ask him to write home and tell us how he's getting on.' 'I explained,'
the Commander tells us, 'that Australia was a big country, and asked
him if he had any idea of the name of the place his son had gone to.
He had not.' As soon as Commander Gambier arrived at Newcastle, in New
South Wales, he met an exceptionally ragged ostler. As the ostler
handed him his horse, Mr. Gambier felt an irresistible though
inexplicable conviction that this was the old cabman's son. He felt
absolutely sure of it; so he said:

'Your name is Fowles, isn't it?'

He looked amazed, and seemed to think that his questioner had some
special reason for asking him, and was at first disinclined to answer.
But Mr. Gambier pressed him and said, 'Your father, the Cheltenham
cab-driver, asked me to look you up.'

He then admitted that he was the man, and Mr. Gambier urged him to
write to his father. All this on the selfsame page as the ugly sneer
about Providence!

And a dozen pages farther on I came upon a still more striking story.
Commander Gambier was very unfortunate, very homesick, and very
miserable in Australia. He could not make up his mind whether to stay
here or return to England. 'At last,' he says, 'I