benefits to her. As her wistful glance strayed during the opening hymn
to the faces of her scholars, she could not help wondering what
influence the remembrance of what she had tried to teach them would
exert on their future lives.

As her class had been much diminished by recent changes, and in view
of her approaching departure the blanks had not been filled up, it
consisted on this Sunday of only three girls, of ages varying from
twelve to fourteen, but differing much in appearance, and still more
widely in character and in the circumstances of their lives.

Close to Miss Preston, and watching every look of the teacher she
loved and grieved at losing, sat Lucy Raymond, the minister's
motherless daughter, a slight, delicate-looking girl, with dark hair
and bright grey eyes, full of energy and thought, but possessing a
good deal of self-will and love of approbation,--dangerous elements of
character unless modified and restrained by divine grace.

Next to her sat fair, plump, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired Bessie Ford,
from the Mill Bank Farm--an amiable, kind-hearted little damsel, and a
favourite with all her companions, but careless and thoughtless, with
a want of steadiness and moral principle which made her teacher long
to see the taking root of the good seed, whose development might
supply what was lacking.

Very different from both seemed the third member of the class--a
forlorn-looking child, who sat shyly apart from the others, shrinking
from proximity with their neat, tasteful summer attire, as if she felt
the contrast between her own dress and appearance and that of her
school-fellows. Poor Nelly Connor's dingy straw hat and tattered