hip" was passed, and Margaret felt, beneath the
sharpness of her companion's criticism, the presence of a truly human
heart.

The two ladies went to church together, and the minister prayed "for our
friends." Margaret was moved by this to offer a special prayer for Miss
Martineau, which so impressed itself upon her mind that she was able to
write it down. We quote the part of it which most particularly refers to
her new friend:--

"May her path be guarded, and blessed. May her noble mind be kept
firmly poised in its native truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and
strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly shall war against its
high vocation. May each day bring to this generous seeker new riches of
true philosophy and of Divine love. And, amidst all trials, give her to
know and feel that thou, the All-sufficing, art with her, leading her on
through eternity to likeness of thyself."

The change of base which, years after this time, transformed Miss
Martineau into an enthusiastic disbeliever would certainly not have
seemed to Margaret an answer to her prayer. But as the doctrine that
"God reveals himself in many ways" was not new to her, and as her
petition includes the Eternities, we may believe that she appreciated
the sincerity of her friend's negations, and anticipated for her, as for
herself, a later vision of the Celestial City, whose brightness should
rise victorious above the mists of speculative doubt.

A serious illness intervened at this time, brought on, one might think,
by the intense action of Margaret's brain, stimulated by her manifold
and unremitting labors. For nine days and nights she suffered from
fever, accompanied by agonizing pain in her head. Her beloved mother was
at her bedside day and night. Her father, usually so reserved in
expressions of affection, was moved by the near prospect of her death
to say to her: "My dear, I have been thinking of you in the night, and I
cannot remember that you have any _faults_. You have defects, of course,
as all mortals have, but I do not know that you have a single fault."
These words were intended by him as a _viaticum_ for her, but they were
really to be a legacy of love to his favorite child.

Margaret herself anticipated death with calmness, and, in view of the
struggles and disappointments of life, with willingness. But the
threatened bolt was to fall upon a head dearer to her than her own. In
the early autumn of the same year her father, after