It was a message of love and admiration, and though it contained no subtleties, it came from one who was in jail, and she had been taught to regard people in jail as lost souls, aliens with whom it was dangerous to hold any intercourse, save in prayer and Scripture.

The handsome boy with the sad face had appealed to her very deeply, and she bore him in her thoughts a great deal; but now he came in a new guise--as a lover, bold, outspoken, and persuasive.
"What shall I do?
Shall I tell Aunt Lida ?" she asked herself, and ended by kneeling down and praying to Jesus to give the young man a new heart.
In this fashion the courtship went on.

No one knew of it but Jack, for Mary could not bring herself to confide in anyone, not even her mother, it all seemed too strange and beautiful.

It was God's grace working through her, and her devoutness was not without its human mixture of girlish pride and exaltation.

She worshiped him in her natural moments, and in her moments of religious fervor she prayed for him with impersonal anguish as for a lost soul.