dungeon, and groped through these heavy-browed hills, these color-dreams, through even the homely kind faces on the street, to find the God that lay behind.  So the light showed her the world, and, making its beauty and warmth divine and near to her, the warmth and beauty became real in her, found their homely shadows in her daily life.  So it showed her, too, through her vague childish knowledge, the Master in whom she believed,—­showed Him to her in everything that lived, more real than all beside.  The waiting earth, the prophetic sky, the coarsest or fairest atom that she touched was but a part of Him, something sent to tell of Him,—­she dimly felt; though, as I said, she had no words for such a thought.  Yet even more real than this.  There was no pain nor temptation down in those dark cellars where she went that He had not borne,—­not one.  Nor was there the least pleasure came to her or the others, not even a cheerful fire, or kind words, or a warm, hearty laugh, that she did not know He sent it and was glad to do it.  She knew that well!  So it was that He took part in her humble daily life, and became more real to her day by day.  Very homely shadows her life gave of His light, for it was His:  homely, because of her poor way of living, and of the depth to which the heavy foot of the world had crushed her.  Yet they were there all the time, in her cheery patience, if nothing more.  To-night, for instance, how differently the surging crowd seemed to her from what it did to Knowles!  She looked down on it from her high wood-steps with an eager interest, ready with her weak, timid laugh to answer every friendly call from below.  She had no power to see them as types of great classes; they were just so many living people, whom she knew, and who, most of them, had been kind to her.  Whatever good there was in the vilest face, (and there was always something,) she was sure to see it.  The light made her poor eyes strong for that.

She liked to sit there in the evenings, being alone, yet never growing lonesome; there was so much that was pleasant to watch and listen to, as the cool brown twilight came on.  If, as Knowles thought, the world was a dreary discord, she knew nothing of it.  People were going from their work now,—­they had time to talk and joke by the way,—­stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here and there a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart the gray boulder-paved street.  From the houses near you could catch a faint smell of supper:  very friendly people those were in these houses; she knew them all well.  The children came out with their faces washed, to play, now the sun was down:  the oldest of them generally came to sit with her and hear a story.