Barriers Burned Away | Page 5

the face of the December storm had taxed
his system to the utmost, and now he felt the need of food and rest.
After supper he honestly meant to watch at his father's bedside, while
his mother slept; but he had scarcely seated himself on the old settle,
when sleep, like an armed man, overpowered him, and in spite of all his
efforts he was soon bound in the dreamless slumber of healthful youth.
But with eyes so wide and lustrous that it seemed as if sleep could
never close them again, the wife and mother, pale and silent, watched
between her loved ones. The troubled expression was gone, for the
ranks of her little band had closed up, and all were about her in one
more brief rest in the forward and uncertain march of life. She seemed
looking intently at something far off--something better discerned by the
spiritual than by the natural eye. Disappointments had been bitter,
poverty hard and grinding, but she had learned to escape into a large
world that was fast becoming real to her strong imagination. While her
husband was indulging in chimerical visions of boundless prosperity
here on earth which he would bring to pass by some lucky stroke of
fortune or invention, she also was picturing to herself grander things
which God would realize to her beyond time and earth. When alone, in
moments of rest from incessant toil, she would take down the great
family Bible, and with her finger on some description of the "new
heavens and new earth," as the connecting link between the promise
and her strong realization of it, she would look away with that intent
gaze. The new world, purged from sin and sorrow, would rise before
her with more than Edenlike loveliness. Her spirit would revel in its
shadowy walks and sunny glades, and as the crowning joy she would
meet her Lord and Saviour in some secluded place, and sit listening at
His feet like Mary of old. Thus, in the strong illusion of her
imagination, Christ's words seemed addressed directly to her, while she
looked up into His face with rapt attention. Instead of reading her
Lord's familiar sayings, she seemed to listen to them as did the early
disciples. After a little time she would close the Bible and go back to

her hard practical life, awed yet strengthened, and with a hopeful
expression, like that which must have rested on the disciples' faces on
coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration.

CHAPTER II
LOVE KNOWN
Hour after hour passed. The storm was dying away, and at times,
through broken rifts in the clouds, stars would gleam out. Instead of the
continued roar and rush, the wind blew in gusts at longer intervals, and
nature seemed like a passionate child that had cried itself to sleep. The
fitful blasts were the involuntary sobs that heave the breast, till at last
quiet and peace take the place of stormy anger.
It seemed as if the silent watcher never could withdraw her gaze from
the beautiful world of her vision. Never had it seemed so near and real
before, and she was unconscious of the lapse of time. Suddenly she
heard her name called--"Ethel!"
If the voice had come from the imaginary world present to her fancy, it
could not have startled her more for a moment. Then she realized that it
was her husband who spoke. He had called her name in his sleep, and
yet it seemed a call of God. At once it flashed through her mind that in
dreaming of a glorious and happy future she was forgetting him and his
need.
She turned the light upon his face. Never had he looked so pale and
wan, and she realized that he might be near his end. In an agony of
self-reproach and yearning tenderness she kneeled at his bedside and
prayed as she never had prayed before. Could he go home? Could he be
received, feeling toward his Father as he did? He had talked of
forgiving, when he stood so sorely in need of Christ's forgiveness; and
she had been forgetting that need, when every moment might involve
her husband's salvation. Out of his sleep he had called her to his help.
Perhaps God had used his unconscious lips to summon her. With a faith

naturally strong, but greatly increased by the vision of the night, she
went, as it were, directly into the presence of her Lord, and entreated in
behalf of her husband.
As she thus knelt at the bedside, with her face buried in the covering,
she felt a hand placed softly on her head, and again her husband's voice
called, "Ethel!"
She looked up and saw that he was awake now, his eyes fixed on