any other.

She had a fashion, this child, in whom the simplicity of
practical life and the poetry of imaginative life were
curiously blended, — she had a fashion of going to her window
every night when the moon or stars were shining, to look out
for a minute or two before she went to bed; and sometimes the
minutes were more than any good grandmother or aunt would have
considered wholesome for little Fleda in the fresh night air.
But there was no one to watch or reprimand; and whatever it
was that Fleda read in earth or sky, the charm which held her
one bright night was sure to bring her to her window the next.
This evening a faint young moon lighted up but dimly the
meadow and what was called the "east-hill," over against which
the window in question looked. The air was calm and mild;
there was no frost to-night; the stillness was entire, and the
stars shone in a cloudless sky. Fleda set open the window, and
looked out with a face that again bore tokens of the
experiences of that day. She wanted the soothing speech of
nature's voice; and child as she was, she could hear it. She
did not know, in her simplicity, what it was that comforted
and soothed her, but she stood at her window enjoying.

It was so perfectly still, her fancy presently went to all
those people who had hushed their various work and were now
resting, or soon would be, in the unconsciousness and the
helplessness of sleep. The _helplessness_, — and then that Eye
that never sleeps; that Hand that keeps them all, that is
never idle, that is the safety and the strength alike of all
the earth, and of them that wake or sleep upon it, —