s yet. In the gray sky over the gray land the morning-star,
alone and splendid, kept watch in the east.

She sat down and leaned her brow against the pane. She did not know that
it was aching. She did not know that she was cold, exhausted; so
exhausted that the morning-star in the outer heaven and the morning-star
in her soul were to her the same. They stooped together, they merged
into one great light, heralding a perfect day presently to be.

The night was over, and that other long night of travail and patience
and faith, and strong rowing in darkness against the stream, was over,
too, at last--at last. _The book was finished_.

The tears fell slowly from Hester's eyes on to her clasped hands, those
blessed tears which no human hand shall ever intervene to wipe away.

To some of us Christ comes in the dawn of the spiritual life walking
upon the troubled waves of art. And we recognize Him, and would fain go
to meet Him. But our companions and our own fears dissuade us. They say
it is only a spirit, and that Christ does not walk on water, that the
land whither we are rowing is the place He has Himself appointed for us
to meet Him. So our little faith keeps us in the boat, or fails us in
the waves of that windswept sea.

It seemed to Hester as if once, long ago, shrinking and shivering, she
had stood in despair upon the shore of a great sea, and had heard a
voice from the other side say, "Come over." She had stopped her ears;
she had tried not to go. She had shrunk back a hundred times from the
cold touch of the water that each time she essayed let her trembling
foot through it. And now, after an interminable interval, after she had
trusted and doubted, had fallen and been sustained, had met the wind and
the rain, after she had sunk in despair and risen again, she knew not
how, now at length a great wave--the last--had cast her up half drowned
upon the shore. A miracle had happened. She had reached the other side,
and was lying in a great peace after the storm upon the solemn shore
under a great white star.

Hester sat motionless. The star paled and paled before the coming of a
greater than he. Across the pause which God has set 'twixt night and day
came the first word of the robin. It reached Hester's ear as from
another world--a world that had been left behind. The fragmentary notes
floated up to her from an immeasurable distance, like scattered bubbles
through deep water.

The day was coming. God's creatures of