CHAPTER XXII. A NIGHT OF FEAR. Rosalie entered the house, and shut the door behind her. It was very dark, for twilight had departed, and the moon had not yet arisen. Although the door and windows were closed, the room was still sufficiently cool, and Rosalie might have remained pleasantly seated in her sole rocking-chair, and wrapped in reverie, through all the lonely hours until her husband should return, but for one trifling circumstance; trifling in itself, yet fraught with the most appalling danger, and the most ghastly consequences. The fresh carnal smell of that quarter of newly-killed beef that lay across the top of the barrel, only lightly covered over with the table-cloth, began to fill the closed room, and soon became intolerable to Rosalie’s fine senses. For the sake of fresh, pure air, she went and opened the door, and sat down upon the door step. There she sat, gazing into the dark mysterious depths of the forest, or up to the deep blue, starlit sky, listening to the chirp of the field-cricket, the grass-hopper, and the katydid, those merry little night warblers, who begin their concerts when the birds have finished theirs—and remembering all her past life, enjoying her present, and dreaming and hoping of the future. She thought of her palace home, where, circled with affection, she had still wandered with a strange unrest, and wasted with a vague longing; she thought of her present home, as poor, as humble, as rude, as it well could be, yet yielding a fulness of content—of _measureless_ content—that filled her heart to overflowing with gratitude and love to God for the joy and peace that abounded. And she thought of their future; it might bring toil, privation, penury, disappointment, and death, but it could not deprive her of the jewel of her soul, LOVE. That word—that idea—was still the centre of her soul’s circle, around which thought and feeling still revolved. She sank into a dim, delicious reverie, and, wrapped in blissful dreams, the world around her disappeared. The cheerful chirp of the crickets and the katydids was no longer heard—the deep blue, starlit sky no longer watched—the dark, mysterious forest, with its ever untrodden depths, no longer seen. She was like a slumberer “smiling as in delightful visions, on the brink of a dread chasm.” There was a far-off, light, multitudinous tramp, like the patter of distant rain-drops. She knew it not, she heard it not. “Senseless as the dead was she, to all around, beneath, above.” Senseless as the dead—aye, senseless as the dead—to the near approach of a dreadful death! Oh, surely this was not her unguarded hour! She would not be left to perish in her youth and beauty—to perish while wrapped in her visions of love and devotion. Oh, surely her guardian angel must have been at his post. He was! For, as she sat there in the door, her thin white dress distinct