The last time Aunt Gretel crept up softly behind me, and throwing her large wimple over me, drew me gently away. "I have kept such a poor watch for Roger!" I said; "and see! my Father's lamp is burning still. He has been watching all night." "There is Another watching, Olive," she said, softly, "night and day. The Intercessor slumbers not, nor sleeps. It is never dark now in the Holiest Place, for he is ever there; and never silent, for He is ever interceding." CHAPTER V. When I awoke again, the cheerful stir of life had begun within and without the house--the ducks splashing in the pond in the front court; the unsuccessful swine and poultry grunting and cackling out their bill of grievances against their stronger-snouted or quicker-witted rivals; Tib's cheery voice instructing her cows and calves; and at intervals the pleasant regular beat of the flail in the barn, where they were thrashing the corn,--striking steady time to all the busy irregular sounds of animal life, and bringing them into a kind of unity. All these homely, quiet sounds seemed stranger to me than the howling of the winds, and fitful clattering of the hail, through the night. They made me feel impatient with the animals, and with Tib, and with the inflexible every-day course of things. Was not Roger--our own Roger--in agony worse than mortal sickness, in suspense whether or not his hand had dealt a death-blow. Were not we in dreadful suspense whether his whole life might not be overshadowed from this moment as with a curse? And yet the calves must be fed, and the swine snuff at their troughs and grudge if they be not satisfied, and the ducks splash and preen themselves as if nothing was the matter. There are many seasons in life when the quiet flow of the stream of every-day life, as it prattles past our door among the familiar grasses and pebbles, falls on the heart with a sense of inflexibility more terrible than the storm which ploughs the waves of the Atlantic into mountains, and snaps the masts of great ships like withered corn stalks. But that morning was the first on which I learned it. The storm had quite passed. The dawn was still struggling with the cold winter moonlight. Far off the gray morning shone with a steely gleam on the creek of the Mere, were I used to sit quite still for hours while Roger angled, holding his fish-basket, amply rewarded at last by his dictum that there was one little woman in the world who knew when to hold her tongue, and by the reflecting glory of his triumph when he brought the basket of fish to Tib for my father's supper. Only last autumn, and now it seemed as if it had happened in another life. Close to us in the high-road the moonlight still glimmered on the pools. Aunt Gretel was dressed and gone. My last sleep had been sound. I reproached myself for my hard-heartedness in sleeping at all. It was still dusk enough to show the faint red light in my Father's chamber. Was he still watching?