"Oh, heavens!" I cried to myself, "must we really spend a long, hideous night in this place? We are safe! safe!" I repeated; but still it was too horrible to think of wearing out the long, slow hours in such misery. It was six now; the tide would not turn until three in the morning; it had been rising for three hours now; it would not be possible to leave the cave and make our way by the cliff for an hour after that. Ten hours--ten long, crawling hours to pass in this cramped position! I thought of dear mother's horror if she knew of our peril, and then I thought of Allan, and a lump came in my throat. Mr. Lucas would be scouring the coast in search of us. What a night for the agonized father to pass! And poor, fragile Miss Ruth, how would she endure such hours of anxiety? I could have wrung my hands and moaned aloud at the thought of their anguish, but for the children--the poor children who were whispering their baby prayers together; that kept me still. Perhaps they might be even now at the mouth of the cave, seeking and calling to us. A dozen times I imagined I could hear the splash of oars and the hoarse cries of the sailors; but how could our feeble voices reach them in the face of the shrieking wind? No one would think of the smugler's cave, for it was but one of many hollowed out of the cliff. They would search for us, but very soon they would abandon it in despair; they knew I had gone to seek the children; most likely I had been too late, and the rising tide had engulfed us, and swept us far out to sea. Miss Ruth would think of her dreams and tremble, and the wretched father would sit by her, stunned and helpless, waiting for the morning to break and bring him proof of his despair. The tears ran down my cheeks as these sad thoughts passed through my mind, and a strong inward cry for deliverance, for endurance, for some present comfort in this awful misery, shook my frame with convulsive shudders. Dot felt them, and clasped me tighter, and Flurry trembled in sympathy; my paroxysm disturbed them, but my prayer was heard, and the brief agony passed. I thought of Jeremiah in his dungeon, of Daniel in the lions' den, of the three children in the fiery furnace, and the Form that was like the Son of God walking with them in the midst of the flames; and I knew and felt that we were as safe on that rocky shelf, with the dark, raging waters below us, as though we were by our own bright hearth fire at home; then my trembling ceased, and I recovered voice to talk to the children. I wanted them to go to sleep; but Flurry said, in a lamentable voice, that she was too hungry, and the sea made such a noise; so I told them about Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego; and after I had finished that, all the Bible stories I could remember of wonderful deliverance; and by-and-by we came to the storm on the Galilean lake.