"I have heard of your early struggles," said the judge to her in low tones. "Frank has talked to me. How you could have borne up, and done long-continued battle with them, I cannot imagine!"
"I never could have done it but for one thing," she answered: "my trust in God. Times upon times, Sir William, when the storm was beating about my head, I had no help or comfort in the wide world: I had nothing to turn to but that. I never lost my trust in God."
"And therefore God stood by you," remarked the judge.
"And therefore God stood by me, and helped me on. I wish," she added earnestly, "the whole world could learn the same great lesson that I have learnt. I have—I humbly hope I have—been enabled to teach it to my boys. I have tried to do it from their very earliest years."
"Frank shall have Maria," thought the judge to himself. "They are an admirable family. The young chaplain should have another of the girls if he liked her."
What was William thinking of, as he stood a little apart, with his serene brow and his thoughtful smile? His mind was in the past. That long past night, following the day of his entrance to Mr. Ashley's manufactory, was present to him, when he had lain down in despair, and sobbed out his bitter grief. "Bear up, my child," were the words his mother had comforted him with: "only do your duty, and trust implicitly in God." And when she had gone down, and he could get the sobs away from his heart and throat, he made the resolve to do as she had told him—at any rate, to try and do it. And he kneeled down there and then, and asked to be helped to do it. And, from that hour to this, William had never known the trust to fail. Success? Yes, they had reaped success—success in no measured degree. Be very sure that it was born of that great trust. Oh!—as Jane had just said to Sir William Leader—if the world could only learn this wonderful truth!
"Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him up, because he hath known my name."