How she had leant on his counsel; his yea was yea to her, and his nay, nay. How wise and gentle he had ever been with her; once she had been ill, and the tenderness of his sympathy had made her almost love her illness. 'You must get well; we cannot spare you,' he had said to her, and she had thanked him with her sweetest smiles. How happy they had been in those days: the thought of any change had terrified her; sometimes she had imagined herself twenty years older, but Mildred Lambert still, with a gray-haired friend coming quietly across in the dusk to sit with her and Arnold when all the young ones were gone--her friend, always her friend! How pitiable had been her self-deception; she must have loved him even then. The thought of Margaret's husband marrying another woman, and that woman the girl that she had cherished as her own daughter, tormented her with a sense of impossibility and pain. Good heavens, what if he deceived himself! What if for the second time in his life he worked out his own disappointment, passion and benevolence leading him equally astray. Sadness indescribable and profound steeped the soul of this noble woman; pitiful efforts after prayer, wild searching for light, for her lost calmness, for mental resolve and strength, broke the silence of her anguish; but such a struggle could not long continue in one so meek, so ordinarily self-controlled; then came the blessed relief of tears; then, falling on her knees and bowed to the very dust, the poor creature invoked the presence of the Great Sufferer, and laid the burden of her sorrow on the broken heart of her Lord. One who loved Mildred found, long afterwards, a few lines copied from some book, and marked with a red marginal line, with the date of this night affixed:-- 'So out in the night on the wide, wild sea, When the wind was beating drearily, And the waters were moaning wearily, I met with Him who had died for me.' Had she met with Him? 'Had the wounded Hand touched hers in the dark?' Who knows? The lightnings ceased to play along the edges of the cloud, the moon rose, the long shadows projected from the hills, the sound of cattle hoofs came crisply up the dry channel of the beck, and still Mildred knelt on, with her head buried on her outstretched arms. 'I will not go unless Thou bless me'--was that her prayer? Not in words, perhaps; but as the day broke, with faint gleams and tints of ever-broadening glory, Mildred rose from her knees, and looked over the hills with sad, steadfast eyes. The conflict had ceased, the conqueror was only a woman--a woman no longer young, with pale cheeks, with faded, weary eyes--but never did braver hands gird on the cross that must henceforth be carried unflinchingly.