"I know yer does not want 'em, Joe; but it does me good, an' I shall tell the Lord when I gets to heaven how good you've been."

Joe could not reply, and Nelly closed her eyes, and whispered again to herself, as she had often done,

"Seaward fast the tide is gliding,
Shores in sunlight stretch away."

Then after awhile she spoke again, without opening her eyes.

"You'll not be long afore you comes too, will yer, Joe?"

"Perhaps the Lord will let me look at you through the gate," sobbed Joe; "but I'm afeard He won't let sich as me in."

"Oh, yes, Joe," she said, opening her eyes with such a pained look. "Does you think the Lord does not love yer as much as I do? An' won't He be as glad to see yer as I shall?"

"It does look reasonable like, my purty," said Joe; "but, oh, I'm so afeard."

"'Who-so-ever,'" whispered Nelly, and again closed her eyes, while the troubled expression passed away, and the smile that Joe loved to see came back and lit up her pure spirituelle face with a wonderful beauty. And as Joe watched the smile lingering about her mouth as if loth to depart, he felt somehow as if that child had been sent of God to teach him the truth, and to lighten the burden of his dreary life by giving him a hope of heaven.

"'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,'" he muttered to himself.

"Yes," said the nurse, coming softly to his side, "out of the mouths of babes He perfects praise."

Joe looked up in surprise. "Do you think the bairn is right?" he stammered out.

"I'm sure of it," she replied.

"But what about the elect?" said Joe, in a tone of voice that proclaimed how deeply he was agitated.

"I think the elect are 'whosoever will,'" she replied.

"So Nelly thinks," he said, and shook his head sadly, as if such news were too good to be true.

The nurse, besides being a kind motherly woman who dearly loved children, was also a person of strong common sense, and hence she saw Joe's difficulty in a moment.

"You have no children of your own, I suppose," she said.

"I had a son once," said Joe. "I hope he's still living."

"You do not love him, of course?"

In a moment Joe was on his feet.

"Love him!" said Joe, trembling from head to foot. "I'd lie down an' die for him this blessed moment if it would do him good."

"Ah! he has been a very good son, I expect," said the nurse.

Joe sat down again, and hid his face in his hands. After awhile he looked up and said with evident emotion,

"No, he was what people would call a bad son—a very bad 'un."

"Then if he were to come home again, you certainly would close the door against him?"