Thus did our hero try his hand at missionary work, but his heart sadly misgave him when he contemplated what there was to do, and the means to do it with. Was it thus, he sighed, St. Paul taught the people of old Greece and Rome? Was it thus in olden time, whole nations were converted to the Saviour? Why would not the people hear the preacher? Why did the masses of London refuse the message of the Bible? Why so little good from so much effort?

And, day by day, he grew more anxious to see men brought under the power of what he considered to be the truth of God; little encouragement did he gain, and he feared it was because he was too proud to descend to more vulgar means of getting at the people. If the people would not go to the preacher, the preacher must go to them, it was argued. So out into the streets he went, in the lanes and alleys of the City, with Bible in hand, to read to those who could not read for themselves, and to explain to those who were unlettered. We laugh at the despised openair preacher, but to a young man of Henry Pattison's composition it required no little heroism to brave the jeers and taunts of the passers-by as he tried to collect an audience from the streets.

It is very well to stand up and preach to people who have confessedly come to hear you; it is another matter to stand up at a street corner, and beginning to talk to the houses and flag-stones, wait till your ludicrous attitude attract the loungers and inquisitive. Of course many do this merely to get a certain notoriety and honour, others for the pure love of the melody of their own voice, but there is a class who, actuated by sincere endeavours to do good, subject themselves to a real penance to effect their end.

Daring enough on one occasion to preach in a court

tenanted by Irish people, he got very roughly handled for his pains, and narrowly escaped a broken head, by beating a curiously hasty retreat; but this did not deter him from his out-door efforts, though it made him more careful in the selection of his sphere of labour.

For two years he continued to work amongst the poor of London in this manner, ever impelled by a still stronger desire to extend the kingdom of the Friend of Sinners, yet constantly confronted by the fact that he and his companions had the wrong tools to work with; that they lacked the means of stemming the torrent of infidelity and indifferentism that was carrying away the people, and were powerless to retain any permanent hold even on those who professed to have been benefited by their instruction.

Still he prayed, and worked, and besought God to lead him right. He withheld his hand from nothing that held out the least hope of achieving good. With missionaries at the theatres on Sundays, and hired rooms on weekdays, whenever he could snatch an hour or two from his hospital work, he was there to help.

About the close of the second year of these engagements, the news reached him that his good mother had suddenly died-died, too, without the son of her heart near her. There was no time to send for him, and his sister Lucy alone was with her when she yielded up her soul.

He instantly set off for Merlington, on receipt of the news. The shock was terrible to him, for it was for his mother he had toiled at his profession; and now, with the prize almost seized, his hopes of in some measure repaying her devotion, were dashed to the ground, and though his sister Lucy was left, he felt as one destitute, with an aimless life.

The little home was broken up, the household goods disposed of, and Lucy came to London, to be with her brother, for he was now her only protector. They were not left without means, for the widow's income, which came to them, would suffice to keep them with economy, and the time would soon arrive when Henry would be earning his living. So they took apartments, and Lucy kept her brother's house, and exercised, not before it was necessary, a watchful supervision over him, lest with too much work he should injure his constitution. For his missionary efforts, as they did not interfere with his studies at the hospital, occupied the time that in other young men was given to the recreation all reading men require.

Henry soon came to see that it was his mission to spend his strength and efforts, and find his joy and recreation in "being about his Father's business." He sighed to be a missionary after the Apostolic sort, and daily prayed to be shown what it was he needed to make him one. He was heard, but the answer was delayed till he should be shown who were not the Apostles' successors-thus mysterious are the ways of God.

CHAPTER XII.

LUCY PATTISON.

OUR sketches have not led us much hitherto into the company of Henry's sister; it will now be necessary that the reader should know something about her. Lucy was tall and fair as the Saxon maids of ancient

story, slender and full of grace, with face so bright, and expression so open and winning, that to see her was to love her. Nature had been very kind to Lucy Pattison. Graces of mind and body had been bestowed with no niggard hand, and to crown all, she was good and kind as she was beautiful and clever. Not that she ever said much about religion, not that she garnished all her sentences with a sprig of Scripture, or flavoured all her discourse with a spice of theology. She was not a Sunday-school teacher, but many a little street child learnt lessons at Lucy's knee, though the instruction was not confined to Sunday; she never went to Dorcas meetings, though many a shivering woman or half-clothed babe was the warmer for Lucy's needle; she never sallied forth with a quiver full of arrows in the shape of severe tracts, yet many a one was the better for having talked to her; she had no tickets for soup, no orders for bread, and no Bibles to give away, yet somehow or other, poor starving people blessed Lucy Pattison, and children put her in their prayers when they said "Pray God bless mother and father, and John and Mary."

Her name was never to be seen in the chapel subscription lists either to the "Hullabaloo Indian Mission " or the "Ebenezer Defamation Society," yet the world was all the better for her living in it, though nobody knew anything of her good deeds, save the recording angel, who often made a good note about her. If you had asked the Rev. Albert James, B.A., to give you his private opinion about the young lady, he would probably have told you "that it did not appear to him that the young person had any of the marks of grace about her; she might be amiable, but so were many who were still on the

side of Satan; he had never been able to induce her to join the church, and he feared she was yet in her sins, and of the multitude who go down into the pit." It is probable that all the deacons and their wives would have endorsed this sentiment, for if Lucy had any Ebenezer piety at all, it was certainly not manifested after their fashion, and neither her talk nor demeanour gave evidence to their minds of the religion, which they supposed dwelt nowhere if not in the tongue.

She was intensely religious, but the secret chamber of her thoughts was open to none but God, who in that paradise of purity and love often communed at eventide, as He did with our first parents before the fall. Ay, her fair soul was pure as the bosom of the lily, or song of lark that sings at heaven's gate. For goodness is not dead yet, as some will have it; the waste howling wilderness hath here and there an oasis of rich beauty, but it is out of their track, and they only believe in the dry sand their own hard feet tread. We incline to think the world is much better than these gloomy puritans would have it. Vice walks abroad and arrests attention by its ugliness, but sweet innocence and virtue like best to hide from the rude gaze of the vain multitude.

Humility is ever the companion of true goodness, and she draws her sister graces out of the beaten path where men go, and they dwell together unnoticed by those who seek them not, and oft unheeded by all but God. The fairest flowers are not found by the highway side, but down in the wooded slopes, and under the shadow of the rocks of the watered valley.

Observation and talk are ever antagonistic to the growth of the deeper feelings of the heart. Devotion and love must be matured under cover, they are plants