THE JEWISH GIRL. 219

the hours in question, and consequently she stayed; but this
could not go on any longer.

The teacher betook himself to her father, and exhorted him
either to remove his daughter from the school, or to consent that
Sara should become a Christian.

“T can no longer bea silent spectator of the gleaming eyes of
the child, and of her deep and earnest longing for the. words of
the Gospel,” said the teacher.

Then the father burst into tears.

“T know but little of the commandment given to my fathers,”
he said; “ but Sara’s mother was steadfast in the faith, a true
daughter of Israel, and I vowed to her as she lay dying that our *
child should never be baptized. I must keep my vow, for it is
even as a covenant with God Himself.”

’ And accordingly the little Jewish maiden quitted the Christian
school.

Years have rolled on.

In,one of the smallest provincial towns therc dwelt, as a ser-
vant m a humble household, a maiden who held the Mosaic faith.
Her hair was black as ebony, her eye dark as night, and yet full
of splendour and light, as is usual with the daughters of Israel.
It was Sara. The expression in the countenance of the now
grown-up maiden was still that of the child sitting on the school-
room bench, and listening with thoughtful eyes to the words of
the Christian teacher.

Every Sunday there pealed from the church the sounds of the
organ and the song of the congregation. The strains penetrated
into the house where the Jewish girl, industrious and faithful in
all things, stood at her work.

“Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath-day,” said a voice within
her, the voice of the Law; but her Sabbath-day was a working
day among the Christians, and that seemed unfortunate to her.
But then the thought arose in her soul: “ Doth God reckon by
days and hours?” And when this thought grew strong within
her, it seemed a comfort that on the Sunday of the Christians the
hour of prayer remained undisturbed ; and when the sound of
the organ and the songs of the congregation sounded across to
her as she stood in the kitchen at her-work, and even that place
seemed to become a sacred one to her. Then she would read in
the Old Testament, the treasure and comfort of her people, and
it was only in this one she could read ; for she kept faithfully in
the depths of. her heart the words the teacher had spoken when
she left the school, and the promise her father had given to her
dying mother, that she should never receive Christian baptism,
or deny the faith of her ancestors. The New Testament was to
be a sealed book to her; and yet she knew much of it, and the
Gospel echoed faintly among the recollections of her youth,