nd herself in such a place. But she had been led to
the quiet, familiar Basin, and no harm had come to her, and she had good
strong nerves, and lost all her fear in five minutes, so that the
mischance would end only in an exciting adventure, which would give her
something to talk about as long as she lived.

Well; she was sure she was very thankful to--whom? and Gypsy bowed her
head a little at the question, and she sat a moment very still.

Then she had other thoughts. She looked up at the shadowed mountains, and
thought how year after year, summer and winter, day and night, those
terrible masses of rock had cleaved together, and stood still, and caught
the rains and the snows and vapors, the golden crowns of sunsets and
sunrisings, the cooling winds and mellow moonlights, and done all their
work of beauty and of use, and done it aright. _"Not one faileth."_ No
avalanche had thundered down their sides, destroying such happy homes as
hers. No volcanic fires had torn them into seething lava. No beetling
precipice, of which she ever heard, had fallen and crushed so much as the
sheep feeding in the valleys. To the power of the hills as to the power of
the seas, Someone had said, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.

And the Hand that could uphold a mountain in its place, was the Hand that
had guided her--one little foolish, helpless girl, out of millions and
millions of creatures for whom He was caring--in the wanderings of an
uneasy sleep that night.

There was a great awe and a great joy in this thought; but sharp upon it
came another, as a pleasure is followed by a sudden pain,--a thought that
came all unbidden, and talked with Gypsy, and would not go away. It was,
that she had gone to bed that night without a prayer. She was tired and
sleepy, and the lamp went out, and so,--and so,--well, she didn't know
exactly how it came about.

Gypsy's bowed head fell into her hands, and there, crouched in the lonely
boat, under the lonely sky, she put this thought into a few whispered
words, and I know there was One to hear it.

Other thoughts had Gypsy after this; but they were those she could not
have put into words. For three of those solemn, human syllables had
sounded from the distant clock, and far over the mountain-tops the sweet
summer dawn was coming. Gypsy had never seen the sun rise. She had seen,
to be sure, many times, the late, winter painting of crimson and gold in
the East, which unfolded itself before her