lt your
dependence on him to keep it? Have you not blindly idolized the creature
and forgotten Him who gave it?" said Mr. Sewell.

Moses was silent a moment.

"I cannot believe there is a God," he said. "Since this fear came on me
I have prayed,--yes, and humbled myself; for I know I have not always
been what I ought. I promised if he would grant me this one thing, I
would seek him in future; but it did no good,--it's of no use to pray. I
would have been good in this way, if she might be spared, and I cannot
in any other."

"My son, our Lord and Master will have no such conditions from us," said
Mr. Sewell. "We must submit unconditionally. _She_ has done it, and her
peace is as firm as the everlasting hills. God's will is a great current
that flows in spite of us; if we go with it, it carries us to endless
rest,--if we resist, we only wear our lives out in useless struggles."

Moses stood a moment in silence, and then, turning away without a word,
hurried from the house. He strode along the high rocky bluff, through
tangled junipers and pine thickets, till he came above the rocky cove
which had been his favorite retreat on so many occasions. He swung
himself down over the cliffs into the grotto, where, shut in by the high
tide, he felt himself alone. There he had read Mr. Sewell's letter, and
dreamed vain dreams of wealth and worldly success, now all to him so
void. He felt to-day, as he sat there and watched the ships go by, how
utterly nothing all the wealth in the world was, in the loss of that one
heart. Unconsciously, even to himself, sorrow was doing her ennobling
ministry within him, melting off in her fierce fires trivial ambitions
and low desires, and making him feel the sole worth and value of love.
That which in other days had seemed only as one good thing among many
now seemed the _only_ thing in life. And he who has learned the
paramount value of love has taken one step from an earthly to a
spiritual existence.

But as he lay there on the pebbly shore, hour after hour glided by, his
whole past life lived itself over to his eye; he saw a thousand actions,
he heard a thousand words, whose beauty and significance never came to
him till now. And alas! he saw so many when, on his part, the responsive
word that should have been spoken, and the deed that should have been
done, was forever wanting. He had all his life carried within him a
vague consciousness that he had not been to Mara what he should have
be