and favored life; the dawning of a hope that has not yet
lost its power

"to tame
The haughty brow, to curb the unchastened eye,
And shape to deeds of good each wavering aim."

CHAPTER XX.

THE HOUR OF DAWN.

Slowly light came, the thinnest dawn,
Not sunshine, to my night;
A new, more spiritual thing,
An advent of pure light.

All grief has its limits, all chastenings their pause;
Thy love and our weakness are sorrow's two laws.

The winter that followed seemed very long and uneventful. After Sister
Madeline went away, my days settled themselves into the routine in which
they continued to revolve for many months. I was as lonely as formerly,
save for the companionship of well-chosen books, and for the direction
of another mind, which I felt to be the truest support and guidance. I
was taught to bend to my uncle's wishes, and to give up constant
church-going, and visiting among the poor, which would have been such a
resource and occupation to me. And so my life, outwardly, was very
little changed from former years--years that I had found almost
insupportable, without any sorrow; and yet, strange to say, I was
not unhappy.

My hours were full of little duties, little rules. (I suppose my heart
was in them, or I should have found them irksome.) Above all, I was not
permitted to brood over the past: I was taught to feel that every
thought of it indulged, was a sin, and to be accounted for as such: I
could only remember the one for whom I mourned, on my knees, in my
prayers. This checked, as nothing else could have done, the morbid
tendency of grief, in a lonely, unoccupied, undisciplined mind. I was
thoroughly obedient, and bent myself with all simplicity to follow the
instructions given me. Sometimes they seemed very irrelevant and
useless, but I never rebelled against any, even one that seemed as hard
to flesh and blood as this. And I have, sooner or later, seen the wisdom
of them all, as I have worked out the problem of my correction.

Obedient as I was, though, and simple as the routine of my life
continued, sometimes there came crises that were beyond my strength.

I can remember one; it was a furious storm--a day that nailed one in the
house. There was something in the rage without that disturbed me; I
wandered about the house, and found myself unable to settle to any task.
Some one to speak to! Oh, it was so dreary to be