WORK FOR A CHARITY. Well worked, quaint looking mantelpiece border, olive felt, 15s. Work designed, commenced or finished, any sort, to order. Pair of Church bookmarkers begun, 78., including materials and small frame. For a charity. Miss C. YONGE, Hempstead Rectory, Stalham, Norwich. "CHURCHMAN'S COMPANION COT." SIR,-Would you kindly acknowledge 13s. 6d. from the little children, Winston Sunday School; 10s., E. Reid; 5s. from her sister? For our "Free Churchman's Companion Cot" day by day we grow more anxious for funds to come in to enable us to take a poor boy from the hospital directly the Home opens. I saw him a few days ago, suffering from diseased bone, but his face brightened when we spoke of the hope of getting him to the seaside and the chance of ultimate recovery coming to him through the readers of the Churchman's Companion. -Yours, &c., MARY BEWICKE BEWICKE, Coulby Manor, Middlesbro'. DORCAS SOCIETY. Mrs. HARDY (Mitcham Road, Streatham) sincerely thanks the twenty kind friends who have joined her Work So ciety as the result of her appeal in the January number of the Churchman's Companion. Her list is now full, but gifts of money, old clothing, and scraps of material are much wanted, as the destitution in the Holborn district is very great. (This clothing is for the destitute poor in S. Alban's parish, Holborn, and is distributed by the Clewer Sisters working there.) WORK FOR THE POOR. SIR,-Will any one kindly send me odds and ends of wool to knit into cuffs, &c., some to be given away at Christmas, and some to be sold for Church Restoration Fund? Address, Miss PorTER, Ongar, Essex. BOOKS WANTED. Wanted Ffoulkes' "Ecclesiastical Manual" or Crake's "Church History." Books in exchange. Address, J. C., Southgate Lodge, Church Handley, Chesterfield, Derbyshire. THE CHURCHMAN'S COMPANION. SIR,-Do you think that any subscriber to the Churchman's Companion would kindly send me a copy each month when read to lend in our country parish -Yours, &c., C. M. S. Notices to Correspondents. Editha. It is the custom for devout persons to bow towards the altar on entering and leaving the church, as a token of reverence for the place which is sanctified by the special Presence of the LORD in the Holy Eucharist. Registrar O. G. A. We are much obliged for the interesting papers you have sent us, but the subject is not one which enters into the scope of our periodical. M. C. C. We regret to be unable to use your poems, but we have more on our hands already than we can find room for. Accepted: "In Sanctuary." 'Casting the Net" has not been published separately. "Is this what is called summer in England ?" said Frances to her parents, as she looked out from the window of the railway carriage in which they were rapidly approaching M Station and their future home. The rain was pouring down with steady persistence from a dark sky covered with leaden-hued clouds, behind which it was scarcely possible to believe that the sun could be hidden; and a wind, bleak and cold as that which might be appropriate to December rather than the month of July which the kalendar stated it to be, went shrieking past them as they whirled on through the gloom. "It is not a very cheerful welcome to our own country certainly," said Mr. Amherst, while the train drew up within the Station, "but I can see that we are going to have a better one here. There is Thorold waiting for us on the platform." In another moment the carriage door was opened for them by a gentleman, with whom he shook hands warmly, and Frances turned anxiously to look at the unknown cousin against whom she felt so strong a prejudice. She did not think his appearance prepossessing: he seemed to be about five and thirty years of age, of average height, and with a powerful, strongly built frame. He stooped considerably, so that his brown eyes, the best feature in his somewhat heavy countenance, were more or less hidden under the bushy eyebrows which overhung them. His thick dark hair, uncovered as he raised his hat in greeting, grew low on his broad forehead, and Frances mentally characterized him as looking altogether like a "shaggy brown bear." He seemed to be indeed a man of few words, for his welcome to his uncle and aunt, though kindly, was of the briefest, and when they introduced Frances to him as the child he remembered, he merely shook hands with her in silence. He had a hired carriage waiting for them, and soon they were all on their way together to their final destination in his house. Frances sat by his side looking out drearily on the wet streets covered with black mud, where nothing was to be seen but umbrellas, or the miserable dripping figures of those who were too poor to possess any. "How dismal it all is," she said involuntarily, and Thorold gave quick glance towards her, but did not speak. "The weather is very unfavourable no doubt, my dear," said her father, "but we shall soon be sheltered from it in your kind cousin's house." "I hope you will be able to be comfortable in it," said Thorold. "Do you remember Mrs. Barnett ?" he added to his aunt. "Your old nurse, who was so devoted to you? Oh yes! you were in her arms the first time I ever saw you, when she brought you home a poor little orphan from Hong Kong, and she lived in our house till you went to school. I recollect I was sorry to be obliged to part with her then for her own sake, as you had so completely taken the place of the child she lost in China just after the death of her husband, but we had really no use for her when you were out of the nursery, and I believe she got a situation elsewhere." "Yes, she was much valued in the family where she went, but she gave up her place and came to me so soon as I left college, and has been with me ever since. She is my housekeeper and factotum now, and I look to her mainly for ensuring your comfort." "I shall be very glad to see her again," said Mrs. Amherst. “I was always very sorry for her; she seemed so friendless in England, as her father had taken her to China when she was quite young, and I think she had only one year of married life before she lost both her husband and her baby; but surely she must be very old now.” "She is considerably past seventy, but very active and energetic still. She seems to me to do much more work than the young has under her orders," said Thorold. "This is your future home,” he woman she added as the carriage stopped at the door of a small house standing within its own little garden, in what seemed to be a somewhat humble suburb of the great manufacturing town. They alighted and entered a narrow hall, where they were met by the person of whom they had been speaking a tall fine looking old woman with a pleasant intelligent face and snow-white hair, drawn back under the widow's cap which she still wore for the young husband she had lost so many years before. She met Mr. and Mrs. Amherst with a simple respectful greeting, and then turned to look at Frances as Mrs. Amherst said, "This is my daughter, whom you have never seen any more than my Claud—it is only my poor lost elder sons whom you can remember." Mrs. Barnett merely answered with expressing a hope that the young lady would be happy there. "And I hope I shall not be very troublesome to you," said Frances with the sweet musical intonation which always attracted new acquaintances to her at once. The old housekeeper smiled at her kindly then, though there was a shade of sadness over her face, and a certain reticence in her manner which the girl's keenly sympathetic nature detected very quickly. Mrs. Amherst was taken to her room at once that she might rest before tea, and then Mrs. Barnett took Frances to that which had been assigned to her. It was small and simply arranged, but with many little additions to the furniture, which were evidently new and specially adapted to a lady's requirements. There were no ornaments excepting a few choice engravings of sacred subjects, all of which were of a nature to suit Francie's taste remarkably well; she walked to the window and looked out on a view which was certainly not very seductive-pouring rain still-dingy commonplace houses and wet streets-only one object at no very great distance relieved the scene from its dull monotony, which looked to Frances like a large handsome church, but Mrs. Barnett told her it was the Cathedral, where there was daily choral service. "Is the music good?" asked Miss Amherst, "it will be a great pleasure to me if it is." "I am no judge of that," said Mrs. Barnett simply, "but it is very sweet and pleasant to my thinking; my dear master gives me leave to go there every day, and I love to hear the beautiful psalms and anthems." Mrs. Barnett was a somewhat remarkable instance of a person withnot much education or intellect, who had been trained in the highest and purest principles of religion, not by any individual teacher, but by the Church Herself. In her youth she had learnt to read and write, and to say her prayers, which she prefaced by one verse of a hymn that contained the sum total of her knowledge of theology, and was as follows: "Little children, pray be wise, and upon this level she remained, till after leaving the Amhersts' she went to live with a family who had the happiness of attending a church where the Catholic Faith was carefully shown forth in all its fulness, by appropriate and frequent services. The whole household were expected to join in them, and without any instruction personally given to her, Mrs. Barnett was so taught and trained by them as to have become an intelligent, devout, and steadfast churchwoman. The manner in which Christmas was kept, taught her the doctrine of the Incarnation as she had never understood it before; the solemn observances of the Great Day of Sacrifice brought home to her the nature of the Atonement and its value to herself; with Easter Day she learnt the glorious hope of the Resurrection for the dear ones whom she "had loved and lost awhile;" with Whitsuntide she learnt her absolute dependence on the HOLY SPIRIT for her participation in the Life of CHRIST; and His Being as GOD in unity with the FATHER and the SON was made known to her in the Festival of Trinity. Her attendance on the Saints' days services caused her to take a great interest in the history of those who were then commemorated, and her mistress made her a present of a copy of "Lives of the Saints" in several volumes, which from that time forward formed her only study along with her Bible and Prayer Book. It was the custom in that church for the whole congregation to remain during the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and from being a silent witness Mrs. Barnett soon came to be a devout participator in the Lifegiving Sacrament, after having received the sevenfold gifts of Confirmation on the first occasion when she could obtain them. The result of this most simple and effective training was to make the humble uncultured woman a shining Light of pure implicit faith and practical holiness, such as is not often seen, at least among the lower orders, in these days of rebuke and blasphemy. As yet however Frances Amherst knew nothing of her value, and was glad to be left alone when the housekeeper said she must go to prepare their tea. A little later the Amhersts and Thorold met for this meal in a room |