'We have changed places,' she says; 'that was just how I used to help you up, but I'm the bairn now.' She brings out the Testament again; it was always lying within reach; it is the lock of hair she left me when she died.

And when she has read for a long time she 'gives me a look,' as we say in the north, and I go out, to leave her alone with God.

She had been but a child when her mother died, and so she fell early into the way of saying her prayers with no earthly listener.

Often and often I have found her on her knees, but I always went softly away, closing the door.

I never heard her pray, but I know very well how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, there was not a day in God's sight between the worn woman and the little child..