ate antenna of spiritual
instinct which feels danger to be near and warns of it.

Nanna had had _the dream_ that ever forecast her misfortunes, and she
sat thinking of its vague intimations, and tightening her heart for
any sorrow. She had been forewarned that she might be forearmed,
and she regarded this warning as a mark of interest and favor from
beyond the veil. God had always spoken to his children in dreams
and by the oracles that abide in darkness, and Nanna knew that in
many ways "dreams are large possessions." She fell asleep pondering
what her vision of the preceding night might mean, and awoke next
morning, while it was still dark, with a dim sense of fear and sorrow
encompassing her.

"But everything frightens one when night, the unknown, takes the
light away," she thought. And she rose and lighted a lamp, and
looked at Vala. The child was in a deep and healthy slumber, and the
sight of its face calmed and satisfied her. Yet she was strangely
apprehensive, and there was a weight on her heart that made her faint
and trembling. She knew right well that some hitherto unknown sorrow
was creeping like a mist over her life, and she had not yet the
strength and the pang of conflict.

Have we not too? Yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognized intelligence.

Yet the secret silence of the night, the vague terror and darkness
of that occult world which we all carry with us, created in her, at
first, fear, and then a kind of angry, desperate resentment.

"Oh, how helpless I am!" she sighed. "I can think and feel, I can
fear and love, and I am not here by my own will; I did not place
myself here; I cannot keep myself here. My life is in the grasp of
a Power I cannot control. What am I to do? What can I do? Oh, how
miserable I am! All my life long I have seen '_Not for you_' written
on all I wished. Life is very hard," she said with a little sob.
And then she made no further complaint, but her heart grew so still,
she was sure something must have died there. Alas! was it hope?

"Life is very hard." With these words she lay down again, and between
sleeping and waking the hours wore on, and she rose at last from
her shivery sleep, even later than usual. Then she hurried breakfast
a little, and as the light grew over land and sea she tidied her
room and dressed Vala and herself for the kirk. As the sound of the
first service bell traveled solemnly over