"And Sam Amos he begun to laugh, and he laughed till he had to set down, and he kept on till Milly got skeered and beat him in the back to make him stop, and finally he got his breath and says he, 'I'm laughin' to think how we all looked settin' here at one o'clock in the mornin' waitin' to hear the clock strike twelve.' And then he started out again, and we laughed with him, and everybody went home in a good humor. I ricollect me and Abram had an argument on the way home about whether it was worth while to go to bed or not. Abram said it was worth while to go to bed if you couldn't sleep but a half-hour, but betwixt laughin' and ridin' in the cold air I was so wide awake I felt like I never wanted to sleep again; and I went to work and cleaned up the house and cut out some sewin' and had breakfast ready by half-past four. I never made that sleep up, child, and I never felt any worse for it. You know what the Bible says, 'As thy days so shall thy strength be,' and when a person's young, there's strength for the day and more besides." Aunt Jane dropped her knitting and rested her head against the patchwork cover of the high-backed chair. Like a great wall of shelter and defense, we felt around us the deep stillness of a midwinter night in the country. The last traveler had gone his homeward way over the pike hours ago, and in the quiet room we could hear now and then those faint noises made by shrinking timbers, as if the old house groaned in the icy clutch of the December cold, and, louder and clearer than by day, the voice of the clock ticking away the last hours of the old year. What is there in the flight of years to sadden the heart? Our little times and seasons are but fragments of eternity, and eternity is ours. The sunset on which we gaze with melancholy eyes is a sunrise on the other side of the world, and the vanishing days can take from us nothing that may not be restored by some day yet unborn. Eternity! Immortality! If mortal mind could but fathom the depth of these ideas, they would be as wells of peace in which all trouble, all regret, would be forever drowned. But as Aunt Jane and I sat alone by her deserted hearth we saw the shadows of the night deepening while the fire burned low, and in our hearts we felt another and a darker shadow cast by the wing of the passing year. And, breaking our dreams, the clock struck ten. Aunt Jane gave a start, and the ball of yarn fell from her lap. She picked it up before I could reach it, and winding the yarn and rolling the stocking around the ball she called in her wandering thoughts and entered instantly into the life of the present hour. "Light the lamp, child," she said, "and hand me my Bible. The Scripture's got a word suitable for every season, and I'll read you the psalm that Parson Page read the night the clock didn't strike." [Illustration: "REVERENTLY SHE LAID THE HEAVY CALF-BOUND VOLUME ACROSS HER KNEES." _Page 290._]