we
want to find Him--_there_ we may! Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the
least of these, ye have done it unto me.'" She grew eloquent--the plain,
simple-speaking woman--when something that was great and living to her
would find utterance.

"How do you mean that?" said Leslie, with a sort of abruptness, as of
one who must have definiteness, but who hurried with her asking, lest
after a minute she might not dare. "That He really knows, and thinks, of
every special thing and person,--and cares? Or only _would?_"

"I take it as He said it," said Miss Craydocke. "'All power is given me
in heaven and in earth.' 'And lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world!' He put the two together himself, dear!"

A great, warm, instant glow seemed to rush over Leslie inwardly. In the
light and quickening of it, other words shone out and declared
themselves. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide
in me." And this was the abiding! The sympathy, the interest, that found
itself side by side with his! The faith that felt his uniting presence
with all!

To this child of sixteen came a moment's glimpse of what might be,
truly, that life which is "hid with Christ in God," and which has its
blessed work with the Lord in the world,--came, with the word of a
plain, old, unconsidered woman, whom heedless girls made daily sport
of,--came, bringing with it "old and new," like a householder of the
kingdom of heaven; showing how the life and the fruit are inextricably
one,--how the growth and the withering are inevitably determined!

They reached the benches now; they saw the Josselyns busy up beyond,
with their chess-board between them, and their mending basket at their
feet; they would not go now and interrupt their game.

The seat which the sisters had chosen, because it was just a quiet
little corner for two, was a nook scooped out, as it were, in a jut of
granite; hollowed in behind and perpendicularly to a height above their
heads, and embracing a mossy little flat below, so that it seemed like a
great solid armchair into which two could get together, and a third
could not possibly intrude.

Miss Craydocke and Leslie settled themselves, and both were silent.
Presently Leslie spoke again, giving out a fragmentary link of the train
of thought that had been going on in her. "If it weren't for just one
thing!" she said, and there she stopp