turned with all its provident thoughtfulness and care at once to her
husband; all her wrongs were forgotten, all her sorrows obliterated by
this one fear. Well did St. Augustine say, "God is patient because He is
eternal": but better and truer would the saying have been, had it run,
"God is patient because He is love": a gospel that He publishes in the
lives of saints on earth, in their daily and hourly "anguish of
patience," preaching to the fearful souls that dare not trust His
long-suffering by the tenacious love of those who bear His image,
saying, in resistless human tones, "Shall one creature endure and love
and continually forgive another, and shall I, who am not loving, but
Love, be weary of thy transgressions, O sinner?" And so does the silent
and despairing life of many a woman weave unconsciously its golden
garland of reward in the heavens above, and do the Lord's work in a
strange land where it cannot sing His songs.

The day crept toward sunset, and Hitty sat with her wan face pressed to
the window-pane, hushing her child in his cradle with one of those low,
monotoned murmurs that mothers know; but still her husband did not come.
The level sun-rays pierced the woods into more vivid splendor, burnished
gold fringed the heavy purple clouds in the west, and warm crimson
lights turned the purple into more triumphant glory; the sun set,
unstained with mist or tempest, behind those blue and lonely hills that
guard old Berkshire with their rolling summits, and night came fast,
steel-blue and thick with stars; but yet he did not come, the untouched
meal on the table was untouched still. Hour after hour of starry
darkness crept by, and she sat watching at the window-pane; overhead,
constellations marched across the heavens in relentless splendor,
careless of man or sorrow; Orion glittered in the east, and climbed
toward the zenith; the Pleiades clustered and sparkled as if they missed
their lost sister no more; the Hyades marked the celestial pastures of