ied that her
strength and courage were quite spent.

And worse than all, there were times when home-sickness, that could not
be resisted or reasoned away, assailed her. Almost always it was at
night--in the evenings, now growing so long, when no sound save the
gentle breathing of the sleeping children broke the reigning silence.
It was not so bad at such times, however, for she could then let her
weary head fall, and weep a part of her troubles away. But sometimes in
broad daylight, when in her walks with the children she crushed beneath
her feet the dead leaves of the trees, while the autumn wind sighed
drearily through their bare boughs, a pang of bitter loneliness smote
her. Among the crowds she met she was always fancying familiar faces.
More than once she sprang forward with a cry to grasp the hand of one
who looked on her with the unheeding eyes of a stranger. If at such a
time any one had come to her with a message from Effie, saying, "Come
home," she would probably have gone at all hazards--so dreary and lonely
her life seemed to her.

It was not so with Annie. She made friends easily. She and Christie
went to church; and but few Sabbaths passed before they met many who
nodded and smiled to her bright-faced sister. But Christie was shy and
quiet, and shrank from the notice of strangers; and up to the very last
time that she passed through them, the busy streets of the city seemed a
lonely place to her.

Christie never quite forgot the remedy tried for the first time beneath
the boughs of the birch-tree by the brook. There were hours when it
seemed to her now, as it seemed to her then, a cure for all the ills of
life, a help in every time of need. There were times when, having
nowhere else to go, she carried her burden to Effie's chief Friend, and
strove to cast it from her at His feet. She did not always succeed.
Many a time she lay down in the dark, beside little Harry, altogether
uncomforted. It seemed to her that nothing could help her but going
home again. But it was only now and then, at rare intervals, that it
seemed possible for her to go. Almost always she said to herself, "I
canna go home. I must stay a little while, at least." Sometimes she
said it with tears and a sorrowful heart, but almost always she had
courage to say it with firmness.

But now she was beginning to feel herself wrong in coming; or, rather,
she began to see that her motive in coming was wrong. It was less to
hel