The singing ended at last, and the pale preacher began his sermon.  But Meg did not care for that; she could not understand it.  She crouched down in the corner of the pew, her hood drawn far over her face, repeating to herself now and then, mechanically as it seemed, the words of the chant.

“Wounded—­for our transgressions; and bruised,”—­muttering, after a while,—­“Yet we hid our faces.”  Bruised and wounded!  The sound of the words attracted her; she said them over and over.  She knew who He was.  Many years ago she had heard of him; it was a great while since then; she had almost forgotten it.  Was it true?  And was he perhaps,—­was there a little chance it meant, he was bruised for her,—­for her?  She began to wonder dimly, still muttering the sorrowful words down in her corner, where no one could hear her.

I wonder if He heard them.  Do you think he did?  For when the sermon was ended, and the choir sang again,—­still of him, and how he called the heavy-laden, and how he kept his own rest for them, she said,—­for was she not very weary and heavy-laden with her sins?—­still crouching down in her corner, “That’s me.  I guess it is.  I’ll find out.”

She fixed her eyes upon the preacher, thinking, in her stunted, childish way, that he knew so much, so many things she did not understand, that surely he could tell her,—­she should like to have it to think about; she would ask him.  She rose instinctively with the audience to receive his blessing, then waited in her hooded cloak, like some dark and evil thing, among the brilliant crowd.  The door opening, as they began to pass out by her, swept in such a chill of air as brought back a spasm of coughing.  She stood quivering under it, her face livid with the pain.  The crowd began to look at her curiously, to nod and whisper among themselves.

The sexton stepped up nervously; he knew who she was.  “Meg, you’d better go.  What are you standing here for?”

She flung him a look out of her hard, defiant eyes; she made no answer.  A child, clinging to her mother’s hand, looked up as she went by, pity and fear in her great wondering eyes.  “Mother, see that poor woman; she’s hungry or cold!”

The little one put her hand over the slip, pulling at Meg’s cloak, “What’s the matter with you?  Why don’t you go home?”

“Bertha, child, are you crazy?” Her mother caught her quickly away.  “Don’t touch that woman!”

Meg heard it.

Standing, a moment after, just at the edge of the aisle, a lady, clad in velvet, brushed against her, then gathered her costly garments with a hand ringed and dazzling with diamonds, shrinking as if she had touched some accursed thing, and sweeping by.

Meg’s eyes froze at that.  This was the sanctuary, these the worshippers of Him who was bruised.  His message could not be for her.  It would be of no use to find out about him; of no use to tell him how she loathed herself and her life; that she wanted to know about that Rest, and about that heavy-laden one.  His followers would not brook the very flutter of her dress against their pure garments.  They were like him; he could have nothing to say to such as she.