fell in short and sudden showers, driven from angry clouds eager
for some atmospheric change whereby to be relieved of their
pent-up burden. Then the wind, as though in answer to the prayer
of the clouds, changed its course and stilled its moaning, and the
sky 'wept its watery vapours to the ground.'

When Amanda stood upon the fringe of the great moss that stretched
for three miles between the Scars and Rehoboth her spirit sank
within her. The season had been dry, and she knew the path by
instinct; but the storm and the darkness seemed like twin enemies
determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe,
even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her
return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging
showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that
they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly
to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that
strange, weird sound--the sound muttered by miles of herbage when
beaten down by rain--the swish and patter and sigh of the long
grass and of the bracken, as they bent beneath the continuous
fall, and rose in angry protest, to fling off their burden on each
other, or shake it to the ground? Then a mute sympathy sprang up
in her desolate heart as she grew incorporate into this
storm-swept, helpless vegetation, and she felt that she, too, like
it, was the helpless prey of angry forces.

The moss traversed, the twinkling lights of Rehoboth broke the
darkness. Yes, the old chapel was illuminated, the windows of that
rude structure glowing with warmth and life; and as she passed the
graveyard a hymn, only too well known to her in the happy days of
the past, reached her ears. Once this had been her sanctuary, a