the
down-lined boudoirs where happy birds nestled; the gray stone arches of
the bridge in the valley below, the groups of cattle couched on the
rocky hillside, up which the pine forest marched like ranks of giants.

On sultry afternoons she watched lengthening tree-shadows creep across
the reddish-brown carpeting of straw, and in the long nights when
sleeplessness betrayed her into the clutches of torturing
retrospection, she waited and longed for the pearly lustre that paved
the east for the rosy feet of dawn; listened to the beating of Nature's
heart in the solemn roar of the Falls two miles away, in the strophe
and anti-strophe of winds quivering through pine tops, the startled cry
of birds dozing in cedar thickets, the shrill droning of crickets, the
monotonous recrimination of katydids, the peculiar, querulous call of a
family of flying squirrels housed in the cleft of an old magnolia, the
Gregorian chant of frogs cradled in the sedge and ferns, where the
river lapped and gurgled.

Humanity had turned its back upon her; but the sinless world of
creation, with all its glorious chords of beautiful color, and the
soothing witchery of the solemn voices of the night, ministered
abundantly to eye and ear. She had hoped and prayed to die; God denied
her petition; and sent, instead of His Angel of Death, two to comfort
her, the Angel of Health and the Angel of Resignation; whereby she
understood, that she had not yet earned surcease from suffering, but
was needed for future work in the Master's vineyard.

If live she must, through the five years of piacular sacrifice, why
vitiate its efficacy by rebellious repining, that seemed an affront to
the divine arbiter of human destinies? She could not escape the cross;
and bitterness of heart might jeopardize the crown. Beggared by time,
could she afford to risk the eternal heritage? The deepest conviction
of her soul was, "Behind fate, stands God"; hidden for a season, deaf
and blind and mute, it seemed, but always surely there; waiting His own
appointed season of rescue, and of recompense. So strong was her faith
in His overruling wisdom and mercy, that her soul found rest, through
perpetual prayer for patience; and as weeks slipped into months, and
season followed season, she realized that though no roses of happiness
could ever bloom along her arid path, the lilies of peace kissed her
tired feet.

Somewhere in the wicked world, Bertie was astray; and perhaps God has
kept