plead that evening. He had come to ask help for the little outcast city
children. It was before the days when School Boards were born or thought
of that this gallant-hearted man sought to move the feelings and rouse
the consciences of men on behalf of those who seemed to have no helper.
It was for aid to establish schools for those destitute children, where
they might be clothed and fed as well as educated, that he went on to
plead. Grace sat entranced, listening to the preacher, as with the
"flaming swords of living words, he fought for the poor and weak." Never
before in the course of her narrow, sheltered child-life had she, even
in imagination, been brought face to face with the manifold wants and
woes of her poorer brothers and sisters, or understood the service to
which the Son of Man summons all his faithful followers: "Is it not to
deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast
out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and
that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?"

It seemed to Grace, when the preacher had ceased, as if a new world of
loving work and of duty stretched before her; for could she not become
one of that band whom the preacher called in such thrilling words to
enroll themselves in this service of love?

When the eloquent voice paused, and the congregation began to sing
again, Grace still felt the words sounding like trumpet-notes in her
heart. How she longed to ask the minister to take her to those courts
and alleys, and to tell her in what way she might best help those
neglected ones. How many plans coursed through her eager little brain
for their succour. But the preacher had said he wanted money for their
help; a collection was to be made before they left the church.

Grace's store of pocket-money was slender, and, moreover, was not in her