is far better able to carry himself. I
don't wonder that you want to go even to the church, to be out of the
reach of trouble for a while."

Christie laughed a little--she could not help it--at nurse's energy.

"I am afraid it _is_ partly for the quiet that I want to go," said she,
looking grave enough for a minute.

And she did go, after all, though the weather was so forbidding.

Christie's first thought, when she entered the church, was that their
hall-clock had gone wrong and made her late; for already there was
scarcely a vacant seat, and it was not without difficulty that she found
her way to the place she was accustomed to occupy. There were strangers
in the pew, and strangers before her and around her; and with a shy and
wondering feeling Christie took up her hymn-book.

The great multitude that filled the seats and thronged the aisles were
waiting impatiently to hear the sound of a voice hitherto unheard among
them. Christie sent now and then a curious glance over the crowded
seats and aisles, and up to the galleries, from which so many grave,
attentive faces looked down; but even when the stillness which followed
the hum and buzz of the coming in of the congregation was broken by the
clear, grave tones of a stranger's voice, it never occurred to her that
it was the voice of one whose eloquence had gathered and held many a
multitude before. In a little while she forgot the crowd and everything
else. At first she strained her short-sighted eyes in the direction of
the voice, eagerly but vainly. But this soon ceased; and by the time
the singing and the prayers were over, she only listened.

To many in the house that day, the word spoken by God's servant was as
"a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well
on an instrument." To many it was a stumbling-block, and to many more
foolishness. But to the weary child, who sat there with her head bowed
down, and her face hidden in her hands, it was "Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God unto salvation." She forgot the time, the place,
and the gathered multitude. She forgot her own weakness and weariness.
She forgot even the speaker in the words he spoke. In a little while
she grew unconscious of the tears she had tried to hide, and her hands
fell down on her lap, and her wet cheeks and smiling lips were turned
towards the face that her dim eyes failed to see.

I cannot tell what were the words that so moved her. It was n