any worse! Feel under the mattress and you'll find money enough to
last three or four years. It's all she'll ever get, for she hasn't a
soul now to look to for help. That's the way we human beings arrange
things,--we, or the Lord, or the Evil One, or whoever it is; we bring
a puzzle into the world, and then leave it for other people to work
out--if they can! Who'll work out this one? Who'll work out this
one? Perhaps she'll die before the money's gone; let's hope for the
best.'

'Don't take on like that!' said Mr. Grubb despairingly,--'don't!
Pray for resignation, can't you?'

'Pray!' she exclaimed scornfully. 'Thank goodness, I've got enough
self-respect left not to pray!--Yes, I must pray, I MUST . . . Oh,
God! I do not ask forgiveness for him or for myself; I only beg
that, in some way I cannot see, we may be punished, and she spared!'

And when the stricken soul had fled from her frail body, they who
came to prepare her for the grave looked at her face and found it
shining with hope.

It was thus that poor little Alisa Bennett assumed maternal
responsibilities at the age of ten, and gained her sobriquet of 'Marm
Lisa.' She grew more human, more tractable, under Mr. Grubb's
fostering care; but that blessed martyr had now been dead two years,
and she began to wear her former vacuous look, and to slip back into
the past that was still more dreadful than the present.

It seemed to Mrs. Grubb more than strange that she, with her desire
for freedom, should be held to earth by three children not flesh of