o
hands.

"Behold, He cometh with clouds!" she whispered.

It always did seem to me as if mother had the imposition of
hands,--perhaps every one feels just so about their mother,--but only
her touch always lightens an ache for me, whether it's in the heart or
the head.

"Oh, Aunt Rhody," said Dan, looking up in her face with his distracted
eyes, "can't you help me?"

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,"
said mother.

"There's no help, there!" called Dan. "There's no God there! He wouldn't
have let a little child run into her damnation!"

"Hush, hush, Dan!" murmured mother. "Faith never can have been at sea in
such a night as this, and not have felt God's hand snatching her out of
sin. If she lives, she's a changed woman; and if she dies, her soul is
whitened and fit to walk with saints. Through much tribulation."

"Yes, yes," muttered father, in the room beyond, spitting on his hands,
as if he were going to take hold of the truth by the handle,--"it's best
to clean up a thing with the first spot, and not wait for it to get all
rusty with crime."

"And he!" said Dan,--"and he,--that man,--Gabriel!"

"Between the saddle and the ground
If mercy's asked, mercy's found,"

said I.

"Are you there yet, Georgie?" he cried, turning to me. "Here! I'll go
myself!" But he only stumbled and fell on the bed again.

"In all the terror and the tempest of these long hours,--for there's
been a fearful storm, though you haven't felt it," said mother,--"in all
that, Mr. Gabriel can't have slept. But at first it must have been that
great dread appalled him, and he may have been beset with sorrow. He'd
brought her to this. But at last, for he's no coward, he has looked
death in the face and not flinched; and the danger, and the grandeur
there is in despair, have lifted his spirit to great heights,--heights
found now in an hour, but which in a whole life long he never would have
gained,--heights from which he has seen the light of God's face and been
transfigured in it,--heights where the soul dilates to a stature it can
never lose. Oh, Dan, there's a moment, a moment when the dross strikes
off, and the impurities, and the grain sets, and there comes out the
great white diamond. For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that
not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,--of Him that maketh the seven
stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning. Oh, I
_will_ believ