"The next day they reached Sandy Hook. But it was already evening, and they were obliged to anchor over night, and defer running up to the city till the next morning. There were many impatient at this detention, but none more so than Rose Harding. What has come over her? her kind friends asked each other in vain; but she was no longer indifferent, and her face expressed a cheerful determination. It was a conviction of duty, and a resolution to fulfil it. All the night after the news, she had lain awake and pictured to herself the horrors of lying wounded on the battle-field, and of dying alone in the cold and darkness. She had loved Willis Courtney with the full depths of a first matured affection, and she loved him now, despite the indifference and coldness with which he had rewarded that love. And now he was dead, and whatever had come between them on earth had passed away; and, strange as it seemed to her, she felt that he had come back to her, and that they were nearer together than they had ever been. But he was dead, and he had died in a noble cause, and she felt ashamed of her own selfish grief, that had shut out the world and its cares and sorrows. The old words came ringing in her ears: 'The noblest place for man to die, Is where he dies for man.' "Had he not died nobly? And then she contrasted her own life with his. What had _she_ done to make any of God's creatures better or happier! 'Nothing! nothing!' Then came bitter regrets, and accusations against her destiny. Why had she not been permitted to be near him in the last struggle? Had not her own pride been perhaps somewhat to blame? He had suffered alone. "Then suddenly he seemed to stand beside her, and pointing upward, to repeat to her those words of Christ: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' {122} "It was a revelation. What God had done for Angela da Brescia, he had done for her. Darkness had passed away, and in its place was light, and the warmth of renewed life. 'Unto the least of these.' Willis was gone. On earth she could do nothing more for him; but there were others, others who were laying down their lives as nobly and in the same cause; for these she could work; and whatever she could do 'unto the least,' she should be doing for _him_ and for _Christ_.