For Ruth believed there was a worse. She dreamt she saw
the girl, wandering, lost; and that she saw her son in high
places, prosperous--but with more than blood on his soul. She saw
her son dragged down by the clinging girl into some pit of
horrors into which she dared not look, but from whence his
father's voice was heard, crying aloud, that in his day and
generation he had not remembered the words of God, and that now
he was "tormented in this flame." Then she started in sick
terror, and saw, by the dim rushlight, Sally, nodding in an
armchair by the fire; and felt her little soft warm babe, nestled
up against her breast, rocked by her heart, which yet beat hard
from the effects of the evil dream. She dared not go to sleep
again, but prayed. And, every time she prayed, she asked with a
more complete wisdom, and a more utter and self-forgetting faith.
Little child! thy angel was with God, and drew her nearer and
nearer to Him, whose face is continually beheld by the angels of
little children.
CHAPTER XVI
SALLY TELLS OF HER SWEETHEARTS, AND DISCOURSES ON THE DUTIES OF
LIFE
Sally and Miss Benson took it in turns to sit up, or rather, they
took it in turns to nod by the fire; for if Ruth was awake she
lay very still in the moonlight calm of her sick bed. That time
resembled a beautiful August evening, such as I have seen. The
white, snowy rolling mist covers up under its great sheet all
trees and meadows, and tokens of earth; but it cannot rise high
enough to shut out the heavens, which on such nights seem bending
very near, and to be the only real and present objects; and so
near, so real and present, did heaven, and eternity, and God seem
to Ruth, as she lay encircling her mysterious holy child.
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