oubt."

David laughed, and blushed with pleasure at his mother's words.

"I am glad that you think so--I mean that I have been a comfort. But as
for the self-denial, I don't believe any of the boys have had a better
time than I have had this winter. If papa were only well! But he is
better now, mamma?"

"Yes; I hope so. If it were May instead of January, I should not be
afraid."

"Have you been afraid, mamma? Are you afraid?" asked David, startled.

"No--not really afraid, only anxious, and, indeed, I am becoming less so
every day."

And there seemed less cause. Wrapped in his wonderful coat of fur and
driven by David, the minister went here and there among his people, just
as usual, and had a great deal of satisfaction in it, and was not more
tired at such times than he had often been before. He preached on
Sunday always at the village, and generally at his other stations as
well, and David might well say these were happy days.

Yes, they were happy days, and long to be remembered, because of the
sorrowful days that came after them. Not but that the sorrowful days
were happy days, too, in one sense; at least, they were days which
neither David nor his mother would be willing ever to forget.

Young people do not like to hear of sorrowful days, and sometimes think
and say, that at least all such should be left out of books. I should
say so, too, if they could also be kept out of one's life, but sorrowful
days will not be kept away by trying to forget them. And besides, life
itself would not be better by their being left out, for out of such have
come, to many a one, the best and most enduring of blessings. It does
not need any words of mine to prove that God does not send them in anger
to his people, but in love. We have His own word for that, repeated
again and again. And if we did but know it, there are many days to
which we look forward--which we hail with joyful welcome, of which we
have more cause to be afraid, than of the days of trouble that are sent
us by God.

CHAPTER SIX.

February came in with wind and rain--a sudden thaw, levelling the great
drifts, and sending down through all the hollows swift rushes of
snow-water to cover the ice on the river--to break it up in some places,
to fill the channel full till all the meadows above the millpond were
quite overflowed. It did not last long. It cleared the third night,
and so sudden and sharp was the coming of the cold, that not a murm