of the child,--sixteen
days exactly since she had written to Sir Philip Errington, informing
him of his wife's danger--and the danger was not yet past. Thinking over
all that had happened, and the apparent hopelessness of the case, she
suddenly took a strange idea into her head. Retiring to a distant
corner, she dropped on her knees.

"O Lord, God Almighty!" she said in a fierce whisper, "Behold, I have
been Thy servant until now! I have wrestled with Thee in prayer till I
am past all patience! If Thou wilt not hear my petition, why callest
Thou Thyself good? Is it good to crush the already fallen? Is it good to
have no mercy on the sorrowful? Wilt Thou condemn the innocent without
reason? If so, thou art not the Holy One I imagined! Send forth Thy
power now--now, while there is time! Rescue her that is lying under the
shadow of death--for how has she offended Thee that she should die?
Delay no longer, or how shall I put my trust in Thee? Send help speedily
from Thine everlasting habitations--or, behold! I do forsake Thee--and
my soul shall seek elsewhere for Eternal Justice!"

As she finished this extraordinary, half-threatening, and entirely
blasphemous petition, the boisterous gale roared wildly round the house
joining in chorus with the stormy dash of waves upon the coast--a chorus
that seemed to Ulrika's ears like the sound of fiendish and derisive
laughter.

She stood listening,--a trifle scared--yet with a sort of fanatical
defiance written on her face, and she waited in sullen patience
evidently expecting an immediate answer to her outrageous prayer. She
felt somewhat like a demagogue of the people, who boldly menaces an
all-powerful sovereign, even while in dread of instant execution. There
was a sharp patter of sleet on the window,--she glanced nervously at
Thelma, who, perfectly still on her couch, looked more like a white,
recumbent statue than a living woman. The wind shook the doors, and
whistled shrilly through the crevices,--then, as though tired of its own
wrath, surged away in hoarse murmurs over the tops of the creaking pines
towards the Fjord, and there was a short, impressive silence.

Ulrika still waited--almost holding her breath in expectation of some
divine manifestation. The brief stillness grew unbearable.. . . Hush!
What was that! Jingle--jangle--jingle--jangle!--Bells! Sledge bells
tinkling musically and merrily--and approaching swiftly, nearer--nearer!
Now the sharp trotting roofs on t