images of the passage which all men dread had been talked over with low
voices, yet with smiles and a grateful sense that "the warm precincts of
the cheerful day" were once more familiar to both. And very cheerfully
she went to 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 in 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