ing, for she was
afraid that her words would both anger and trouble the young man.
But David's eyes were full of happy tears, and there was a tender
smile round his mouth. He was thinking of the glad surprises that
Nanna must have had--she who belonged to the God of compassions.
After all her shuddering questions and lamentable doubts and cruel
pain, the everlasting arms under her; Vala and her beloved dead to
comfort her; ineffable peace; unclouded joy; the night past; the
last tear wiped away! At that moment he felt that it was too late to
weep for Nanna; indeed, he smiled like one full of blessed thought.
And Christine, a little irritated by the unexpected mood, did not
further try to smooth over the hard facts of the lonely woman's
death-bed.

"The minister was angry with her, and he said God was angry. And
Nanna said, well, then, she knew that he did not care about her
perishing; it was all one to him. A little happiness would have
saved her, and he refused her the smallest joy; and she did not
see how crushing the poor and broken-hearted in the dust increased
his glory. The minister told her she was resisting God, and she said,
no; that was not possible. God was her master, and he smote her,
and perhaps had the right to do so; but she was not his child: no
father would treat a child so hardly as he had treated her. She
was a slave, and must submit, and weep and die at the corner of the
highway. And, to be sure, the minister did not think of her pain
and her woman's heart,--what men do?--and he thought it right to
speak hard words to her. And then Nanna said she wished they would
all leave her alone with her sorrow, and so they did."

Then, suddenly and swiftly as a flash of light, a word came to David.
His heart burned, and his tongue was loosened, and then and there
he preached to the old man and the three women the unsearchable
riches of the cross of Christ. He glorified God because Nanna had
learned Christ at the radiant feet of Christ, in the joy and love of
the redeemed. He took his Bible from his pocket, and repeated all
the blessed words he had marked and learned. Until the midnight
moon climbed cold and bright to the zenith he spoke. And old Magnus
Thorson stood up, leaning on his staff, full of holy wonder, and
the women softly sobbed and prayed at his feet. And when they parted
there was in every heart a confident acceptance of David's closing
words:

"Whoever rests, however feebly, on the eternal m