which is gained only by prayer and faith, down the steep chasm whence thou shalt rise again through the deep waters of repentance and humiliation, dost thou reach the blissful summit where thou shalt lie down in green pastures beside the still waters, feeling that the Lord is thy Shepherd and thou shalt not want forevermore.
It was a dull day in December. The snow had not yet whitened the earth, but the leaden grey aspect of the clouds portended an approaching storm.
It was particularly a dull day to Amelia Crawford, who had accepted Mrs. Claremont's offer of a home in her family the present winter. Her brain had been unusually busy for a few weeks, and now wearied and exhausted, she sat listless and sad over her work. Days, weeks and years passed heavily by as she plodded on her lonely way after her mother's death, not knowing of a single human being with whom she could claim kith or kin, and feeling like a waif on the ocean strand, waiting for another wave to bear her onward into the circle of the great human family, the only kinship she was henceforth to know. When that wave came it swept her to the threshold of a new existence. Hitherto separated from all the influences that stimulate to thought and action, contact with the world aroused new feelings, and awakened aspirations to which she was before a stranger. Introduced to the society of books, history, ethics, romance and biography brought their treasures to her awakening faculties, among which she revelled with that delicious sense of rapture a fresh acquisition of knowledge brings to the enquiring mind,
