And she stirred the embers and added another stick; and then with soft step she went back to the little chair and touched her lips for just one second to the mother's cheek, then slipped out and left her.
Only a few moments Mrs. Morgan sat, as if spell-bound, gazing into the glow that sprang up on the hearth. Then she roused suddenly, and went over to the door and turned the key in the lock; but instead of going toward the bed, she went back to the little chair and bowed before it on her knees.
Already had this woman, with her first words of actual self-surrender, felt a touch of the mighty Hand that leaves its impress on the heart. She could not say now, what she had fifteen minutes before, "I cannot love him; I feel as though I had no love for anybody." She did not understand what to name the strange new feelings that were surging through her heart. Thus much she could say, what she never in her life had been able to say before, "I want to pray." And so she dropped on her knees, and the old, and ever new, and continually repeated miracle of transformation went on. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." Why do not the honest unbelievers apply the test of the Lord's own promising?
"What is the matter?" Dorothy asked, in tones half-startled and wholly wondering, as Louise came once more to the little bedroom.
"Nothing. Why?" Louise asked, smiling as she took her station beside the pale little face on the pillow.
"I don't know; you look—I hardly know how—a little as though you had seen an angel."
"Perhaps I have." This with a glad light in her eyes and a bright, reassuring smile.
Then came the father to look in on his sleeping baby, and to ask of Dorothy in a half whisper,—
"Where is your mother?"
"I don't know," said Dorothy, turning inquiring eyes on Louise, who answered,—