rest that night, talking of what was to be done on the morrow, and fell
asleep sweetly in her little room, with its shaded light and curtained
window, and little pictures on the dim walls. All was quiet in the house:
soft breathing of the sleepers, soft murmuring of the spring wind
outside, a wintry moon very clear and full in the skies, a little town
all hushed and quiet, everything lying defenceless, unconscious, in the
safe keeping of God.

How soon she woke no one can tell. She woke and lay quite still, half
roused, half hushed, in that soft languor that attends a happy waking.
She was happy always, in the peace of a heart that was humble and
faithful and pure, but yet had been used to wake to a consciousness of
little pains and troubles, such as even to her meekness were sometimes
hard to bear. But on this morning there were none of these. She lay in a
kind of hush of happiness and ease, not caring to make any further
movement, lingering over the sweet sensation of that waking. She had no
desire to move nor to break the spell of the silence and peace. It was
still very early, she supposed, and probably it might be hours yet before
any one came to call her. It might even be that she should sleep again.
She had no wish to move, she lay at such luxurious ease and calm. But by
and by, as she came to full possession of her waking senses, it appeared
to her that there was some change in the atmosphere, in the scene. There
began to steal into the air about her, the soft dawn as of a summer
morning, the lovely blueness of the first opening of daylight before the
sun. It could not be the light of the moon, which she had seen before she
went to bed; and all was so still, that it could not be the bustling,
wintry day which comes at that time of the year late, to find the world
awake before it. This was different; it was like the summer dawn, a soft
suffusion of light growing every moment. And by and by it occurred to
her that she was not in the little room where she had lain down. There