ou have taught me?--They say one should at the
end of the year, reckon up all the blessings it has brought,--but I
know not where to begin, nor how to recount them. This year!--it has
been like the shield in the old fable,--it seemed to me of iron to look
forward to--so cold and dark,--and it has been all gold!"

"Did it look so?" she said with quick eyes of sympathy.

"Yes, little Sunbeam, it looked so; and there were enough earthly
reasons why it should. But unbelief has had a rebuke for once;--if I
know myself, I am ready now to go forward without a question!"

Over what Hill Difficulty did that future road lie?--He did not
explain, and the next words came with a different tone,--one that
almost put the other out of Faith's head. "My little Sunbeam, do you
keep warm?"

"Yes"--she said with a somewhat wistful look that came from a sunbeam
determined upon doing its very best of shining, for him. But she was
silent again for a minute. "There are plenty of sunbeams abroad to-day,
Endecott," she said then with rare sweetness of tone, that touched but
did not press upon his tone of a few minutes ago.

"Dear Faith," he said looking at her, and answering the wistfulness and
the smile and the voice all in one,--"do you know I can never find
words that just suit me for you?--And do you know that I think there
was never such a New Year's day heard of?--it is all sunshine! Just
look how the light is breaking out there upon the ice, and touching the
waves, and shining through that one little cloud,--and guess how I feel
it in my heart. Do you know how much work of this sort, and of every
sort, you and I shall have to do together, little child, if we live?"

It was a look of beauty that answered,--so full in its happiness, so
blushing and shy; but Faith's words were as simple as they were earnest.

"I wish it. There can't be too much."

Their course now became rather irregular; crossing about from one spot
to another, and through a part of the country where Faith had never
been. Here was a sort of shore population,--people living upon rocks
and sand rent free, or almost that; and supporting themselves otherwise
as best they might. A scattered, loose-built hamlet, perching along the
icy shore, and with its wild winds to rock the children to sleep, and
the music of the waves for a lullaby. But the children throve with such
nursing, if one might judge by the numbers that tumbled in the snow and
clustered on the doorsteps; and