way, either by talking to or at them. Human nature is perverse, and turns instinctively from what is too much pressed upon it. Act out your faith, live it; let your light so shine.' The man or woman who is just, true, pure, generous, kindly, and a professed follower of Christ, is the best of all preachers and teachers."

So Happy went home (for the afternoon was far advanced, and her walk to the "court end" of the village was long) neither encouraged much nor discouraged at all; but on the whole glad that a part of her duty was done, and that it had not been too formidable. She found little Gay at the door to meet her, for her mother had gone away on a picnic, and would not be home till late. It rested Happy to have the tender arms clasped about her neck, and the soft small cheek laid against hers.

"I'se glad you tamed, Happy. I was 'fraid on the stairs. I loves you.'

"And I love you, darling," said the girl, as she gave back warmly the child's fond kiss.

CHAPTER VI.

LONG before Happy began her class in Sundayschool she had begun teaching, though with but one unconscious scholar,-little Gay. To her she had preached the gospel with all the earnestness of youthful faith; and Christ was as real a personage to little Gay as Happy herself, only that she did not see him; and many a sudden thrill the child had sent to her father's heart by her constant allusions to the things of another world, a world which seemed as familiar to her thought as that she lived in. With an instinct of reverence Happy had taught her, by much patient trial, to speak the name of the Lord distinctly and slowly: and when her father or her mother would say "Gay is a good girl to-day," she answered often:

"I's glad. Jesus Christ likes to have Gay dood." "How do you know?" asked her mother, one day, half irritated by the child's frequent reference to him whom she herself would not acknowledge as Master.

"Bibel says so," answered Gay, with serene satisfaction, for this was Happy's answer to all her own baby questioning.

A child may be taken to-day into the Lord's arms and blessed, even as when he walked on earth; and Happy could not but hope he had spoken to her little darling, baby as she was, for she seemed daily to grow more loving, more gentle, and more obedient. Her very delicate organization perhaps kept her from the ordinary temptations of children; poor food, insufficient clothing, weak lungs, the result of neglected colds and careless exposure, all helped extinguish her animal spirits, and want of fresh air made her languid and dull. Happy did not know how delicate the child really was; and Mrs. Dodd saw her so little that her more experienced eye did not detect the rapid progress of this poor baby toward a better home. This very night that Happy found her waiting on the stairs, Gay was seized with a sudden fever: she woke several times in the night with sharp outcry, and Mrs. Dodd gave her some simple remedy she had, but without avail. By daybreak she was decidedly ill, and as her mother had not yet returned, having found her sister at the picnic, who had persuaded her to stay all night at her house, Mrs. Dodd woke the father and sent him for the doctor.

Mr. Packard had been half drunk the night before,

as he often was; but though he woke trembling and irritable, the shock sobered him, for if he had loved. anything on earth beside himself that thing was little Gay. In half an hour he had brought Dr. Sands to the child's bedside, and altogether unnerved, and unable to see her suffer, had driven over to Scranton to fetch her mother, in the doctor's gig. It was a case of diptheria, Dr. Sands said, a disease that, like a coward, steals first and most fiercely upon the feeblest victims. Gay's trouble was short, for she offered no resistance. Happy nursed her like a mother: she could not give her little darling into Mrs. Dodd's hands. After some hours of evident suffering the child looked up into Happy's face and smiled.

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"O Doctor! she is better," the girl cried out, with a look of vivid joy on her pale face. Tears stood in Mrs. Dodd's eyes, and the doctor's kind voice trembled a little as he said: "No, my dear; she is dying."

Happy recoiled as from some dreadful blow: then sudden courage possessed her, and she bent over little Gay, and said softly that baby-prayer, hallowed by so many childish lips for so many years, "Now I lay me down to sleep." She said it clearly and slowly, and the child evidently heard, for she tried to lift her little hands to fold them, but she could not; but when Happy had finished she looked at her with a solemn brightness in her eyes.

"Good-bye, little Gay," said Happy; and in a hoarse whisper the child said: "Dood-bye," and was gone out of time forever. Mrs. Dodd's voice broke the mortal silence, with "Suffer little children. to come unto me, and forbid them not "—

She had no time to finish the text, for the door opened and Mrs. Packard rushed in. Weak, selfish, faulty, and a careless mother, yet she was a mother, and her child lay dead before her; and with the sudden passion of a weak, undisciplined nature in its first grief, she raved and wept and stormed, till Happy felt as if the heavenly calm of the dead baby was profaned. Her husband stood by the bedside, all unconscious except of that tiny sleeper. He could not control his wife at any time; he did not try now. The doctor went out at once; he was in great haste, and had only waited for his gig, to go to the other end of the town to a dying patient. Mrs. Dodd did not say anything: she did not know what to say, in fact; for with her quick capacity of sympathy she felt every throb of that mother's wretched heart, and lived over again the dying of her three lost children. But Happy could not bear it long; she stepped up to Mrs. Packard's side, and laid her hand tenderly on her hot forehead.

"Don't, dear!" she said softly; "Jesus Christ has taken Gay home: she is all safe. Don't cry, please!"