to ease my heart."

"What can I do?" Asked Mabel of herself--"What can I say? My heart seems
frozen, and my lips powerless to tell her what she is dying to hear. How
can I tell her what I have never experienced? How can I comfort her with
words that have never comforted me?"

She laid her head down on the torn coverlet, and prayed for strength and
wisdom--but no strength--no wisdom seemed to come--the Heavens seemed as
brass above her--she felt nothing but a dreary blank.

And yet the woman was dying, she must do something.

For a brief moment--like a flash--she pictured herself in the dying
woman's place, and felt the horror of being there without hope. With a
convulsive shudder she rose and sitting down by the bedside, she took
the woman's thin wasted hand in hers, and asked her if indeed she had no
hope.

"Hope!" she repeated. "I read in that book--he called it the word of
God--that the wages of sin is death. The priest said it was only
purgatory, but I know more than he thinks I do--and I know what death
that means--No, I have no hope. I know what a sinner I have been, and I
know what the wages of sin are."

"But," said Mabel, gently, "we are all sinners. We cannot--even the best
of us--hope for anything but the wages of sin, except through the death
of Christ, who died to save sinners--even the chief."

"O, you know nothing of sin," said the woman in an agonised voice. "Here
it has not been so bad, but if you had seen the place we came from you
might know something of it." And the remembrance seemed to completely
overcome her, for she lay moaning and crying in a perfect agony of
despair.

Mabel talked and argued, but felt she was not making any impression.
Finally she rose and said, speaking in a hurried whisper, "I spoke to
you of hope--of hope that I myself know not. I am in as great darkness
as you, and therefore I cannot give you the help you need."

The woman stared at the girl in a strange, uncomprehending sort of way,
but she was by this time too weak to make any comment.

"But," continued Mabel, "I know of one who has _felt_ the power of
salvation, may I bring her to you?"

She nodded assent, and Mabel hastened away.

It was now nearly ten o'clock, but she felt that the patient would not
see the light of day, and that every consideration must give way before
the desperate nature of this case. She almost felt inclined to fetch Mr.
Chadwell, instead of disturbing Minnie at this unseasonable hour