Get to bed, I say, or I'll pull you up ?" Grace obeyed uncomplaining, but utterly shocked; though she was not unacquainted with those frightful fits of morose unbelief, even of fierce blasphemy, to which the excitable West-country mind is liable, after having been over-strained by superstitious self-inspection, and by the desperate attempt to prove itself right and safe from frames and feelings, while fact and conscience proclaim it wrong.
The West-country people are apt to attribute these paroxysms to the possession of a devil; and so did Grace that night.
Trembling with terror and loving pity, she lay down, and began to pray afresh for that poor wild mother.
At last the fear crossed her that her mother might make away with herself.

But a few years before, another class-leader in Aberalva had attempted to do so, and had all but succeeded.

The thought was intolerable.

She must go to her; face reproaches, blows, anything.

She rose from her bed, and went to the door.