conceive."

Hazel looks round on the garden. How pleasant it is! Why should she leave it? Why should she concern herself with what may lie outside this home-kingdom of hers? She tries again to banish the voice, yet she knows in her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood.

Yes, it is useless; there is no escaping the truth the voice tells. So Hazel yields herself to listen as it goes on.

"I knew you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard.... This you would think a great thing! And do you not think it a greater thing that all this (and how much more than this) you can do for fairer flowers than these, flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and will love you for having loved them; flowers that have thoughts like yours, and lives like yours, and which, once saved, you save for ever? Is this only a little power? Far among the moorlands and the rocks, far in the darkness of the terrible streets, these feeble florets are lying, with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems broken; will you never go down to them, nor set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them, in their trembling, from the fierce wind?"

Engrossed with the voice, Hazel has been walking on, little heeding whither she goes, when, as its tones die away, a groan startles her. How terrible its sound; how incongruous, interrupting the soft harmonious chorus of the soaring, singing birds! So painfully near it seemed, too, it could but have been a very little distance off outside that gate which she sees before her. Her first impulse is to draw back and retire, shuddering, far into the garden. But, behold! the gate swings back of its own accord, and in the face of that fact, and with the remembrance of the words she has heard, she dare not do other than pass through the open way.

What a strange, wide world, and how dreary! A great, mad battle is raging; the grass, sloping up to the horizon, is scorched with the heat of the sun—the sun which only made a pleasant warmth in the shady garden. There is the fierce galloping of horses, and wrestling and fighting of men. Shouts and groans fill the air and drown the song of the birds. There are heaps of dying and wounded. Ah! there is one man not a stone's throw from her; his must have been the voice that reached her within her gates. How remarkable that she should have heard nothing before of all the great din. Another groan, followed by some inaudible words, causes Hazel timidly to approach the wounded man. He is evidently one of the very poorest of the "common" soldiers; and there is a look in his face which speaks the word death with a shudder in the girl's heart. A gleam lightens the agony in the man's eyes as he sees the white form and gentle face above him. He gazes steadily a moment, as though to make sure his vision is not a passing illusion; then Hazel catches the words, "Were you sent to me?"

Very quietly she tells him in whose name she comes. Then, with a long, struggling sigh of satisfaction, without a shadow of further questioning in the dying eyes or voice, he whispers—"Hope even for me in Him, then, since He sent you!"

So the low, flickering flame of life, set free, leaps up to its source; and the forsaken home rests in unbroken peace.

Saddened, and yet peaceful, too, Hazel turns slowly away from the battle-field, and walks on, not noticing whither she goes. Jarring sounds recall her, and she finds herself in a narrow valley, surrounded by noisy children and brawling women. No one seems conscious of her presence. A lot of men are lounging against the wall of a public-house. The low building is conspicuous by its being in good repair, while its neighbours are all in a shattered condition. The window-frames are painted and varnished, and the open entrance discloses a smart interior. A few doors beyond this the houses reach the climax of desolate disorder. The whole place is tumbling down; the window is broken; the battered door is off its hinges, propped up against the wall. A cripple girl is sitting on a broken box, turned upside down, immediately outside this miserable hovel. Her face is a greater shock to Hazel than any of the other wretchedness around. There is a desperation of bitterness in that set, white face, with its hollow eyes and cheeks, which is absolutely appalling. Hazel had always imagined that suffering must of necessity, by its own inherent nature, bring with it a patience which would be reflected in a sweet face. Slowly, as she scans those immovable features, full of pain, and still more full of dogged rebellion, this idea has to be abandoned. Here obviously is a human being in the midst of a noisy squalor, whose physical disease and torture is unlightened by one softening ray of hope; whose misery is too sullen and dull to rise even to the hope of putting an end to itself.

One moment and the deformed girl starts apprehensively. A sob has sounded in her ear, and some one, unlike any she has ever seen heretofore, stands beside her, taking her hand in mute, unspeakable compassion. She cowers back against the wall and drags away her hand; Hazel's purity and loveliness raises in her only a shrinking dislike and dread of contact.

It is long before the pleading, loving voice gains any hearing; but at last, before the two part, some faint expression of intelligent thought has dawned on the lame girl's brow; and in her mind a question has been raised, "Can it be that there is one who loves me and has need of me?"

The evening sunlight is falling through the birches in the beautiful garden; the air is full of fragrance and harmony; the queen is returning. Wearily she opens the gate to enter. She is filled with pain, for the many sadnesses to which she has drawn near have touched her own soul with the shadow of suffering.

Suddenly, in the chequered shade of the trees at the entrance of the garden, she stops and turns round, for a bright radiance envelops her. And, lo! there stands One, in glorious light—One in whose Divine face love is shining. Hazel bows down, her whole soul overwhelmed with reverent awe. Then her hand is taken and held with a touch which thrills her with exquisite rapture, and a voice in her ears says—

"Come, see with Me My garden."

And the air, which is filled with light, grows buoyant, and, while her hand is still clasped by the Divine Guide, she is wafted upwards.

Stretched out below, the hills and vales of the earth are one vast garden. All is indistinct at first; expanses of misty colour and tint; but by degrees the scene resolves itself into more definite form. The whole is intersected and watered with streams, more or less clear and pure, which arise and are replenished from a bright vapour, the Spirit of Life, which shines, issuing forth from an empty tomb in a rock in the East. There are banks of wild violets and primroses, and woods filled with anemones and hyacinths—myriads of beautiful flowers, reaching over all the world.

Hazel has hardly taken in anything of the wonder of the scene, when her attention is attracted by an arch of white mist above the earth, and, as it seems, but a few paces from her. Gradually this path of mist grows clear as crystal, and the colours glancing in it take shape, and form a clear, transparent picture.

A cornfield on a summer evening, filled with blossoms of poppies and corn-flowers. A wild storm sweeps over the field; the corn is broken down; the flowers are crushed beneath its weight, draggled and withered. A poppy, torn up by its roots, is whirled through the air.

A mist sweeps over the crystalline cloud, and where it grows clear again the scene is changed to a wild hill-side. Scarlet and blue