While their thoughts were on such of their flock as belonged to the plain, the thoughts of God were on those also whom he was about to send forth to a life-long separation from these means of grace. As late as ten o'clock, on the evening after the close of the term, Miss Fiske heard the voice of prayer for the absent ones, and fearing that the occupant of the closet was transgressing the laws of health, she approached the door, intending to enter, and advise her to retire; but as she listened to her strong crying, with tears, for each of the school by name, she could not find it in her heart to disturb the intercessions of Sarah. She was then a great bodily sufferer, but very patient, and for a long time had not spent less than four hours daily in her closet. The next day her disease assumed a serious form, and for more than a week she hovered on the borders of the grave. Several times she appeared to have drawn her last breath. But though her sick room seemed to all like the gate of heaven, and though to her the dark valley was all light, and she longed to embrace the messenger who should lead her through, it was not her Father's will to call her then. She was at first disappointed at the prospect of coming back to the world; yet still she sweetly said, "Thy will be done," as God restored her to health, with its responsibilities and temptations. April came, and a scarcity in the plain, occasioned by locusts, drove the fugitives from Tiary back to their mountains. The teachers hoped the girls might remain, and besought their parents to allow them to do so, but in vain. They were only too glad to get their daughters away from influences which in their blindness they abhorred. But God intended through these daughters to lay the foundations of many generations, and build again the old waste places of those mountains. It was hard for them to go. How could they leave their Christian home, and the means of grace they had enjoyed so much? It was no less hard for the teachers to think of those lambs as about to be left at the mercy of wolves, in rocky glens, so far away that no cry of distress would ever reach them. Yea, even if those loved ones died, long years might pass ere their friends could hear of their death. Those were days of sadness, and communion with God was the only comfort of all, and especially of Sarah.