Then I thought of Rachel Forster in her lonely home. And it was a relief to rise at once and go to her. Her door was open. She was sitting before the old Bible. It was open, but she was not reading. Her hands were clashed on her knees. There was a stillness on her face as great as that over the country. But in this calm there was something that calmed me. It seemed to me conscious and victorious, not dreamlike, and liable at any moment to a terrible waking. I told her the restlessness I had been feeling. "Can we wonder, Mistress Olive?" said she. "Do we not know what we might be giving them up for?" "This quietness of the world seems awful to me to-day, Rachel," said I, "but in you there is something that quiets me. You find peace in prayer Rachel," said I. "Is it not that?" "I scarce know whether it is prayer, Mistress Olive. It is nothing but going to the Rock that is higher than I, and taking all that is precious to me there, and staying there. It is just creeping to the foot of the Cross, and keeping there." "You feel, then, as if something terrible were coming, Rachel," I said. "I know something terrible must come," she said, with a tremulousness in her voice which was more from enthusiasm than from fear. "To-day, or to-morrow, or some day. For the Day of Vengeance is come; and the year of His redeemed is at hand." "Oh, Rachel," I said, "I cannot silently rest as you do. I want words, entreaties for Roger, for my Father, for Job, and also for the good men who, if the battle comes, must die on the wrong side, and for the king; the king who, if he would but be true, might set all right again." And she knelt down and prayed in words brief and burning, like the prayers in the Bible. "You do not feel it too lonely here, Rachel?" I said as I left, "Why not come up to us? Your presence would be like a strong wall and fortress to me." "I am less lonesome here, Mistress Olive," said she. "Job made so many little plans to spare me trouble before he went. I see his hand everywhere. There is the pile of wood close to the fire, and the little pipe carrying the water to the very door. It would seem like making light of his work not to use it all. And besides," she added, "there's a few poor tried folk who used to look to Job for a good word and a good turn, and now some of them look to me. And I could not fail them for the world." As I wished her good-bye, and walked home and thought of her, a glorious new sense came on me of the strength there is in waiting on God, of the possibility of the feeblest who lean on him being not only sustained, but becoming themselves strong to sustain others. When I went to see Rachel, the whole solid world had seemed to me, in my anxiety for the precious lives I could do nothing to preserve, but as some treacherous and quaking ground among our marshes, ready to sink down and overwhelm, us, beneath the weight of our passing footsteps.