Then the darkened future of her life rushed over her like an
overwhelming flood: the cares and duties which were henceforward to
devolve on her alone; the children who were never to know any other
parent but herself; never to know any stronger restraints from evil or
incentives to good than she in her feebleness could exert over them.
What would become of her boys as they grew older, and needed a father's
wise counsels? She saw with grief that she was even less qualified than
most mothers to exercise the sole government and providence over a
family. She had been too much indulged--too entirely screened from
contact with the world's rough ways.

How were the wants of her large family to be provided for with the
lessened income she could now command? Pecuniary loss had followed close
upon her great bereavement, and though this constituted but a small
element in her sorrow, yet now that it came before her on the morning of
this new year, it added yet another shade to the "horror of great
darkness" which encompassed her. She knew that it must have a direct
bearing upon her welfare, and that of her family.

Then she reverted to the New Year's Day of last year; the little
surprises she had helped to plan; the liberal expenditure by which she
had sent pleasure, for one day at least, into the dwellings of the poor,
her generous gifts to her servants, which it had been a pleasant study
to adapt to their several tastes and wants; the dependencies, near and
remote, which she had used as channels for conveying a measure of
happiness to many a heart. Now there must be an end to all this; she
could be generous no more. Even her children, partly from her
pre-occupied mind, had no gifts provided for them to-day. Was she not a
"widow and desolate?"

"Desolate, _desolate_!" she repeated in bitterness of soul. She paused.
A voice within her seemed to say--"Now she that is a widow and desolate
_trusteth in God_." A moment after there came into her mind yet another
verso, "And _none of them that trust in Him shall be_ DESOLATE."

Could it be that she remembered the passage aright? Her Bible lay open
on the table before her. She had that morning earnestly sought strength
from it, and from communion with God before she could nerve herself to
meet her children, and bear their reiterated salutations, heart-rending
to her, "Happy New Year, mother"--"Mother, dear mother, I wish you a
Happy New Year."

Now as she drew it towards her, and tu