faith: if the night hideth not from him, neither does the darkness of
fear!

It began to thunder, first with a low distant muttering roll, then with
a loud and near bellowing. Was it God coming to her? Some are strangely
terrified at thunder; Arctura had the child's feeling that it was God
that thundered: it comforted her as with the assurance that God was
near. As she lay and heard the great organ of the heavens, its voice
seemed to grow articulate; God was calling to her, and saying, "Here I
am, my child! be not afraid!"

Then she began to reason with herself that the worst that could happen
to her was to lie there till she died of hunger, and that could not be
so very bad! And therewith across the muttering thunder came a wail of
the ghost-music. She started: had she not heard it a hundred times
before, as she lay there in the dark alone? Was she only now for the
first time waking up to it--she, the lady they had shut up there to
die--where she had lain for ages, with every now and then that sound of
the angels singing, far above her in the blue sky?

She was beginning to wander. She reasoned with herself, and dismissed
the fancy; but it came and came again, mingled with real memories,
mostly of the roof, and Donal.

By and by she fell asleep, and woke in a terror which seemed to have
been growing in her sleep. She sat up, and stared into the dark. >From
where stood the altar, seemed to rise and approach her a form of deeper
darkness. She heard nothing, saw nothing, but something was there. It
came nearer. It was but a fancy; she knew it; but the fancy assumed to
be: the moment she gave way, and acknowledged it, that moment it would
have the reality it had been waiting for, and clasp her in its
skeleton-arms! She cried aloud, but it only came nearer; it was about
to seize her!

A sudden, divine change!--her fear was gone, and in its place a sense
of absolute safety: there was nothing in all the universe to be afraid
of! It was a night of June, with roses, roses everywhere! Glory be to
the Father! But how was it? Had he sent her mother to think her full of
roses? Why her mother? God himself is the heart of every rose that ever
bloomed! She would have sung aloud for joy, but no voice came; she
could not utter a sound. What a thing this would be to tell Donal
Grant! This poor woman cried, and God heard her, and saved her out of
all her distresses! The father had come to his child! The cry had gone
from her heart