"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here,
wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry
came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something
going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr.
Moggridge did so love anything that was alive.

Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he
would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At
the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this
young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of
surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of
the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic
wandering minstrel existence had brought her to.

Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very
young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to
fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself
twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the
nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for
wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and
her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her
features for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of light
could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic
eyes would shine through the cold closed lids.

Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a
dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time
she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for
that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little