At length the hope deferred began to make the heart sick. Dim anxiety
passed into vague fear, and then deepened into dull conviction, over
which ever and anon flickered a pale ghostly hope, like the _fatuus_
over the swamp that has swallowed the unwary wanderer. Each would find
the other wistfully watching to read any thought that might have
escaped the vigilance of its keeper, and come up from the dungeon of
the heart to air itself on the terraces of the face; and each would
drop the glance hurriedly, as if caught in a fault. But the moment came
when their meeting eyes were fixed and they burst into tears, each
accepting the other's confession of hopeless grief as the seal and
doom.
I will not follow them through the slow shadows of gathering fate. I
will not record the fancies that tormented them, or describe the blank
that fell upon the duties of the day. I will not tell how, as the
winter drew on, they heard his voice calling in the storm for help, or
how through the snow-drifts they saw him plodding wearily home. His
mother forgot her debt, and ceased to care what became of herself.
Annie's anxiety settled into an earnest prayer that she might not rebel
against the will of God.
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