WYLDER'S HAJVD.
135
"So it is, Miss Radie," answered the old -woman, her
glittering eyes returning her sad gaze wofully. "Aye, so
it is, sure! — and such it was and will be. For so the
Scripture says— " Cursed is the ground for thy sake"
— hard to the body — a vale of tears — dark to the spir-
it. But it is the hand of God that is upon you, and, like
me, you will say at last, 'it is good for me that I have
been in trouble.' Lie down, dear Miss Radie, and I'll read
to you the blessed words of comfort that have been sealed
for me ever since I saw you last. They have —but that's
over."
And she turned up her pallid, puckered face, and, with
a trembling and knotted pair of hands uplifted, she mut-
tered an awful thanksgiving.
Rachel said nothing, but her eyes rested on the floor,
and, with the quiet obedience of her early childhood, she
did as Tamar said. And the old woman assisted her to
undress, and so she lay down with a sigh in her bed. And
Tamar, her round spectacles by this time on her nose, sit-
ting at the little table by her pillow, read, in a solemn and
somewhat quavering voice, such comfortable passages as
came first to memory.
Rachel cried quietly as she listened, and at last, worn
out by many feverish nights, and the fatigues of her jour-
ney, she fell into a disturbed slumber, with many startings
and sudden wakings, with cries and strange excitement.
Old Tamar would not leave her, but kept her seat in
the high-backed arm-chair throughout the night, like a
nurse — as indeed she was — in a sick chamber. And so
that weary night limped tediously away, and morning
dawned, and tipped the discolored foliage of the glen with
its glow, awaking the songs of all the birds, and dispers-
ing the white mists of darkness. And Rachel, with a
Btart awoke, and sat up with a wild look, arid a cry —