s mother, pale and anxious as she looked before her death,--purses,
money, prisons, and judgment-halls,--all came up in disjointed medley
together. Beads of sweat standing upon his brow showed how great was
the suffering, which still increased until, with a start, he awoke.

Oh, what a relief it was to find all only a dream! The piece of candle
left by Mrs. Walters had long since burned out; but the room was not
dark, for the bright moon poured in her soft rays, and through the
little window he saw the stars, looking calm, as though they were the
eyes of angels keeping watch over the slumbering earth. He knew not
the hour, but, dreading to fall asleep again, endeavoured to keep
himself awake by recalling those events which his sickness had made
him partially forget. The purse, the temptation to keep the money, the
resolution to do right, and the dread of being obliged to yield to Jem
Taylor's persuasions, were the agitating subjects that occupied him.

The city clock chimed twelve, the watchman called out the last hour of
the year 1830, and the interruption was grateful and salutary. With
that mysterious quickness of which mind only is capable, he was
dwelling on some long-closed pages of the past, painfully but
profitably associated with the close of the old year and beginning of
the new. Their pleasant cottage at M----; the sad event which, on the
last New-Year spent there, had impressed his soul too vividly ever to
be forgotten; all that his mother had told him of that pious father,
of whom he would have remembered but little, but that his lifeless
image was so strongly associated with New-Year's day; her impressive
admonition on the last anniversary of his death, before her own, when
she had entreated him to depart not from the God of his father, but to
walk so as to be able to claim the promise vouchsafed to the children
of the righteous,--now came up before him, and the memory brought both
comfort and strength, admonishing, too, where help, in such weakness
as he felt his to be, was only surely to be found.

Our little shoemaker well knew where to apply for such strength as he
needed. He knew that the Saviour said, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father in my name, he will give it to you; ask, and ye shall receive,
that your joy may be full;" and he prayed that he might be able to
resist the power of the tempter; and, in the assurance that the prayer
would be heard, his soul grew calm, and he at length sunk into a q