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Still the beast lay with closed eyes, yet never relaxing his grasp. Once a half-whine of enjoyment escaped him,–hefawned his fearful head upon her; once he scored her cheek with his tongue: savage caresses that hurt like wounds. How weary she was!and yet how terribly awake!How fullerand fuller of dismay grew the knowledge that she was only prolonging her anguish and playing with death!How appalling the thought that with her voice ceased her existence!Yet she could not sing forever; her throat was dry and hard; her very breath was a pain; her mouth was hotter than any desert-worn pilgrim’s;–if she could but drop upon her burning tongue one atom of the ice that glittered about her!–but both of her arms were pinioned in the giant’s vice. She remembered the winding-sheet, and for the first time in her life shivered with spiritual fear. Was it hers?She asked herself, as she sang, what sins she had committed, what life she had led, to find her punishment so soon and in these pangs,–and then she sought eagerly for some reason why her husband was not up and abroad to find her. He failed her,–her one sole hope in life; and without being aware of it, her voice forsook the songs of suffering and sorrow for old Covenanting hymns,–hymns with which her mother had lulled her, which the class-leader pitched in the chimney-corners,–grand and sweet Methodist hymns, brimming with melody and with all fantastic involutions of tune to suit that ecstatic worship,–hymns full of the beauty of holiness, steadfast, relying, sanctified by the salvation they had lent to those in worse extremity than hers,–for they had found themselves in the grasp of hell, while she was but in the jaws of death. Out of this strange music, peculiar to one character of faith, and than which there is none more beautiful in its degree nor owning a more potent sway of sound, her voice soared into the glorified chants of churches. What to her was death by cold or famine or wild beasts?”Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him,” she sang. High and clear through the frore fair night, the level moonbeams splintering in the wood, the scarce glints of stars in the shadowy roof of branches, these sacred anthems rose,– rose as a hope from despair, as some snowy spray of flower-bells from blackest mould. Was she not in God’s hands?Did not the world swing at his will?If this were in his great plan of providence, was it not best, and should she not accept it?

“He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth.”

Oh, sublime faith of our fathers, where utter self-sacrifice alone was true love, the fragrance of whose unrequired subjection was pleasanter than that of golden censers swung in purple-vapored chancels!

Never ceasing in the rhythm of her thoughts, articulated in music as they thronged, the memory of her first communion flashed over her. Again she was in that distant place on that sweet spring morning. Again the congregation rustled out, and the few remained, and she trembled to find herself among them. How well she remembered the devout, quiet faces, too accustomed to the sacred feast to glow with their inner joy!how well the snowy linen at the altar, the silver vessels slowly and silently shifting!and as the cup approached and passed, how the sense of delicious perfume stole in and heightened the transport of her prayer, and she had seemed, looking up through the windows where the sky soared blue in constant freshness, to feel all heaven’s balms dripping from the portals, and to scent the lilies of eternal peace!Perhaps another would not have felt so much ecstasy as satisfaction on that occasion; but it is a true, if a later disciple, who has said, “The Lord bestoweth his blessings there, where he findeth the vessels empty.”

“And does it need the walls of a church to renew my communion?”she asked.”Does not every moment stand a temple four-square to God?And in that morning, with its buoyant sunlight, was I any dearer to the Heart of the Worldthan now?– ‘My beloved is mine, and I am his,” she sang over and over again, with all varied inflection and profuse tune. How gently all the winter-wrapt things bent toward her then! into what relation with her had they grown!how this common dependence was the spell of their intimacy!how at one with Nature had she become!how all the night and the silence and the forest seemed to hold its breath, and to send its soul up to God in her singing!It was no longer despondency, that singing. It was neither prayer nor petition. She had left imploring, “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord?Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death!For in death there is no remembrance of thee,”–with countless other such fragments of supplication. She cried rather, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me,”–and lingered, and repeated, and sang again, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”