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"She is my lodger, Sir, and has been for the last six weeks."

"What is her name?" inquired Mr. Lacy.

"Mrs. Rodney, Sir."

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Has she no friends that you know of? How came she to hear of your lodgings?"

"Why, she stopped (on a Monday, I think it was) at the 'Rose,' and she asked Mr. Chapman if he could tell her of a quiet kind of respectable lodging in the town; now, Mr. Chapman is always willing to do one a good turn. It was him, Sir, that sent Johnny back to Ashby, on Tuesday last, in a return post-chaise, after he had sprained his ancle. A very good man, and a neighbourly, is Mr. Chapman; and, as I was saying, he likes to do one a good turn; so that when the lady asked for decent respectable lodgings, he said he knew of the very thing as would suit her; and sure enough, the next morning she came to see the rooms, and took them at once; and nothing would serve her but to pay down at once the rent for six months; and when I made so free as to say she had better not, for fear of changing her mind about them, she grew quite savage like; for all that she is a gentle-looking creature, and said as violent as could be, 'It must be so take the money.' Well, thought I to myself, may be she fancies I don't like her for a lodger; so I just said, in an easy kind of manner, 'Well, Ma'am, and I hope, when the six months are past, that you may take them on for another halfyear.' But 'No,' says she; 'six months will do,' which, to be sure, was a natural thing enough for her to say; but I take it, that if you had been there, Sir, and had heard her say it, you would not have thought it quite natural either."

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"Is this lady whom you are speaking of in deep mourning? and does she occasionally attend the cathedral service?"

"She does, Sir; and is always dressed in black. She sits near the pillar where Mrs. Jones used to sit, poor soul, when she was allive."

"I have remarked her; she does indeed look both ill and unhappy. Do you know anything of her history?"

"Not a word, Sir; she wears a wedding-ring, but her clothes are marked with an E. and an M., for all that she calls herself Mrs. Rodney."

"Does she ever enter into conversation with you?'

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"Sometimes, a little. Last week, Joe Irving, the undergardener at Clomley lodge, brought me, as a present, a large nosegay of dahlias and china-asters. I carried them upstairs, and while Mrs. Rodney was in church, I put them into jars, on the table, and on the chimney-piece, and very bright and pretty they looked. So when she came in, she noticed them and thanked me, and spoke quite cheerful. As she was standing a-talking to me about them, an insect ran out from between the leaves, and I tried to kill it, but she caught my hand and stopped me; and her hand, Sir! — why it was more like one of those bits of hot coal there, than the little white soft thing it looked like, and when I looked at her face, there was a bright fever spot on each cheek, and her lips were as white as could be.

"You are very ill, Ma'am,' says I to her; 'your hand is burning-hot.' She put it to her forehead and 'it does not feel hot to me,' says she, and walks away to the window and opens it, for all that it was almost as cold and raw as to-night. But, now, and that's what I'm come about, Sir, she has taken to her bed, and is in a very bad way indeed, I take it."

"What! and has not she seen the doctor?"

"No, indeed, Mr. Lacy; she won't as much as let him come into the house. When she found herself so ill, that she could not do for herself, she sent me to get one of the hospital nurses; and as Mary Evans was to be had, the girl that you was so good to last year when she broke her arm, I got her to come, and she has been with her these two days."

"Has she never spoken of seeing a clergyman?"

"Why, to say the truth, Sir, I made so bold as to ask her on it; it was yesterday when Mary Evans and I had been a-begging of her to let us fetch the doctor. 'No, no,' says she, 'he can do me no good;' and she fell to crying, which I had not seen her do before. 'Well, Ma'am,' says I, 'if he can do you no good, I know some one that would.' 'And who is that?' says she, sitting up in her bed, and looking hard at me. 'Mr. Lacy, Ma'am,' I said, 'the clergyman that read prayers last Sunday afternoon.' She laid down again, disappointed like, and I went on to say how you was quite a saint and a martyr, and a luminary of the church, as Johnny's schoolmaster says..."

"Hush, hush, my good Mrs. Denley; take care how you apply, or rather misapply, such names as those. But did Mrs. Rodney decline seeing me, or any other clergy

man?"

"She did, Sir, and begged me not to mention it again.” "This is, indeed, a sad case: a woman young, friendless - dying, perhaps, and probably labouring under some mental affliction, and yet refusing to have recourse to the consolations of religion, and the ministry of the church," said Mr. Lacy, speaking rather to himself than to Mrs. Denley. "Have you," added he, turning to her, "any reason to suppose that this poor woman, notwithstanding her occasional attendance on the cathedral service, is a dissenter?"

"No, Sir, I think not; she has a small prayer-book, which I sometimes see lying on her table."

"Well, my dear Mrs. Denley," said Mr. Lacy, after a few moments' reflection; "we must both pray that God, of his infinite mercy, may dispose the heart of this young creature to turn to Him, and to the means of grace, which He has. Himself appointed. To-morrow, when we kneel in the house of God, rejoicing with joy unspeakable over the glory of the church triumphant, and meditating on the blessedness of that holy multitude

'Who climbed the steep ascent to Heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain,'

each in our place, we will bear in mind this suffering lamb of the fold, and pray earnestly that to her, as well as to us,

'Grace may be given, to follow in their train.'”

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"I will, Sir: I will," replied the good old woman, with tears in her eyes. "But won't you try and see her?” "I cannot force myself into her presence," answered Mr. Lacy; "but every day I will call at your house to inquire after her health, hoping and trusting that the hour will come when she will cease to shut her doors against one commissioned by our Lord, to bear words of peace to the wretched, and of pardon to the guilty. Whatever you can do to hasten that moment, I know you will do, my good friend, and so farewell to you."

"Good-night to you, and thank you kindly, Mr. Lacy; it must be a heavy heart indeed, that goes away from you no lighter than when it came to you:" and so saying, Mrs. Denley put on her cloak, took up her lanthorn, and trudged home, through the dark streets of the old town.

The next morning Mr. Lacy's thoughts were divided between the joyful contemplations which the holy festival it was ushering in was calculated to inspire, and the painful solicitude which the conversation of the preceding evening had left on his mind. In church, however, the latter feeling subsided, and gave way to that earnest calmness, and that intense devotion, which absorb for the time the cares and troubles of the soul, "like motes in light divine." When from the pulpit this aged minister dwelt in glowing words on the communion between the saints above and the saints below; on the link that unites the church militant here on earth with the church triumphant in Heaven; above all, when in terms of the deepest reverence and of the intensest love, he spoke of our Lord Jesus Christ, and prayed that he himself, and all those who joined with him in prayer that day, might each, in God's own time, enter into the fulness of his presence, and worship in his courts evermore, yea in time and in eternity, there was something so ardent in his aspirations, and yet so

chastened in his devotion, that the assembled multitude heard him with a reverence, mingled with awe; they felt as if Elijah's car of fire might bear him away from their sight; from the shelter of the sanctuary on earth to the glories of the new Jerusalem on high.

After the conclusion of the sermon, Mr. Lacy remained absorbed in earnest prayer, till the last of the worshippers had withdrawn, and the parting strain from the organ had died away on the walls of the cathedral. As he was slowly descending the aisle, he paused before the place where Mrs. Rodney had been seated some days before; as he stood musing on the account which he had heard of her from Mrs. Denley, he observed a few lines written in pencil on the column against which she had been in the habit of leaning. They were so faintly marked, and had probably been so much effaced since, that he found great difficulty in making them out. At last he succeeded in doing so, and they were as follows:

--

"My aching heart is breaking,

My burning brain is reeling,
My very soul is riven,

I feel myself forsaken.

And phantom forms of horror,

And shapeless dreams of terror,

And mocking tones of laughter,
About me seem to gather;

And death, and hell, and darkness
Are driving me to madness."

It would be difficult to describe the revulsion of feeling which Mr. Lacy experienced on reading the expression of a despair that contrasted so strikingly with the joy and the peace which had been filling his own heart. There was also something which indicated a kind of reckless helplessness in the fact of leaving that confession of mental agony to be scanned, perhaps, by indifferent eyes. It must have been done in one of those moments when the tortured heart would break if it did not in some mode or other give vent to its anguish. Mr. Lacy, after some minutes' consideration, took out of his pocket a pencil and a bit of paper, and transcribed

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