Lord is round about His people." "Ask and receive, that your joy
may be full." And sometimes he sang Dolly's favourite chorus, repeating
in queer, old, trembling strains,--

"His loving-kindness, oh, how good!"

But he said little besides. Even Dolly spoke more than he that day, and
with great pains drew out John Morely to tell how his prospects were
brightening, and how since the first of May he had been foreman among
his fellow-workmen, and how if things went moderately well with him he
should have a better home than the little log-house for his wife and
children before many months were over.

"Not just yet, however," he said, looking with pleased eyes at the
brown, healthy faces of the little lads. "No place I could put them in
could make up to them for these open fields and this pure air. I think,
Alice, they will be better here for a time."

As for Alice, it did not seem to her that there was anything left for
her to desire. Her heart was rejoicing over her husband with more than
bridal joy,--her husband who had been "lost, and was found." On this
first day of his coming home she suffered no trembling to mingle with
it. She would not distrust the love which had "set her foot upon a
rock, and put a new song in her mouth." "Mighty to save" should His
name be to her and hers henceforth. The clouds might return again, but
there were none in her sky to-day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things went well with the Morelys after this. How it all came about,
cannot be told here; but when the grand cut-stone piers of the new
bridge were completed, it was John Morely who built the bridge itself,--
that is, he had the charge of building it, under the contractor to whom
the work had been committed,--and it was built so quickly and so well
that he never needed to go away from Littleton to seek employment again.

The little Morelys have come to think of the days before that pleasant
May-time as of a troubled dream. The first fall of the snow-flakes
brings a shadow to Sophy's face still; but even Sophy has come to have
only a vague belief in the troubles of that time. The little ones are
never weary of hearing the story of that terrible winter storm: but
Sophy never tells them--hardly acknowledges to herself, indeed--that
there was something in those days harder to bear than hunger, or cold,
or even the dread of the drifting snow.

If after that first bright day o