"Do you feel no load upon your conscience?" I enquired.

"Bless the good man's heart!" she answered, "why, what cares have I? If
I can hear his friendly voice, and know he is not heavy-burthened, I am
happy. Brother is all to me. Though now and then I'm not well pleased if
the young children keep away who play about me sometimes, as if they did
not need a playfellow more gay than poor blind Margaret."

"Have you no fear of death?" said I.

"Why should I have?" she answered quietly; "I never injured another in
my life."

"Can that take off the sting?" I asked.

"And I have tried," continued she, "as far as I was able, to please the
God who made me."

"Did you never think yourself the vilest of the vile?"

"Bless you! never, sir. How could I? If I had been, you may be sure Mr
Clayton and the visiting ladies would never have been so kind to me and
Thomas as they have--and how could we expect it? I was only thinking,
sir, before you came up, that if I had been wicked when I was young, I
would never have been so easy under blindness. Now, it doesn't give me
one unquiet hour."

"Margaret, I would you were more anxious."

"It wouldn't do, sir, for the blind to be anxious," she replied. "They