There was no sound, no life anywhere; the twilight was creeping over the silent hall and staircase, and he knew it was deepening in the uninhabited rooms below. And then, as if to mock him with the contrast, came before him so vivid a recollection of life with his mother in the house; of her voice and her laugh upon that staircase; of her presence in those rooms; so clear and distinct a vision of her soft eyes and gentle smile, that the motherless child could bear it no longer, and covering his face with his hands to shut out the sight of the emptiness, he fled away down the passage, as if he thought to leave the desolation behind. But the emptiness was with him as he went; all down the stairs and through the hall it pursued him; it gained upon him as he stood with his hand upon the drawing-room door; it preceded him into the darkened room, and was waiting for him when he entered. The light that came in through the chinks of the shutters was very faint, but his longing eye sought the picture, and he could just distinguish the sweet face and the smiling babe in her arms. He ran forward, and threw himself on the sofa beneath it. "Mother!" he sobbed, "I want you back so much! Every one is angry with me, and I am so very miserable!" Cold, blank silence all around; mother and child smiled on, unconscious of his words; even as he gazed the light faded away from the picture, and he was left alone in the gathering darkness! In vain he tried to fancy himself once more the child in the picture; in vain he tried to fancy he felt her arms around him, and her shoulder against his head. It would not do! In fits of passion or disobedience he had come here, and the memory of his mother had soothed him, and sent him away penitent; but in this dreadful sense of loneliness he wanted comfort, and of comfort he found none. * * * * * Yet was there comfort near, if he would but ask for it, and of the very kind he wanted: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." He knew it not; he cried not for it. He was not ignorant of God's omnipresence; in ordinary times the boy believed with a child's simple faith that God was always near him, but in the hour of his trouble he was incapable of deriving any comfort from the knowledge, incapable of any thought but his own sorrow. Children of a larger growth, but children in understanding still, do not many of us, in spite of our maturer experience, do likewise? "There is no help," we say; "our trouble is greater than we can bear." We lie like the child, crushed and despairing, and God, who at other times we feel to be so near, seems hidden from us altogether.