Baffled and bleeding has returned,
To stifle down its crying here."
"Thou shalt go forth in prouder might
And firmer strength e'er long."
Up to the clear blue sky, when the sun was gone down on the silent earth, clad in the pure white snow-mantle, and away over the tops of the forest-pines, at the diamond stars hung in the far-off heaven, gazed Annie Evalyn through that long, dreary winter, from the window of that rude hut in the solitary depths of Scraggiewood. How she mourned o'er her shattered idols, all fallen and wasted on their shrines! What a blow had been dealt her sensitive nature! "O, it was so bitter cruel!" she thought; "and what had she done that she should suffer thus?"
In vain her aunt tried to soothe and solace, by telling her time would bring better hopes. Parson Grey would sometimes drop in of a Saturday evening to coax and encourage his former pupil, and bring some nice tit-bit to tempt Annie's delicate relish.
"You will regain your health and spirits when the spring opens, my child," he would say. "Netta will come home, and we shall have you over to the Parsonage, and all will seem like old times again. Then you must resume that pen of yours, Annie, and let it write down those speaking thoughts that lie in your inventive brain. You know my old doctrine; it is a glorious thing to do good, and you can exert a happy and extensive influence upon society. I know you will not abuse the noble faculties given you by the great Creator."
"Ah, he does not know all!" Annie would think. "I once was vain enough to suppose I possessed faculties and powers to act a brave part in life; but they've been bruised and broken in the very outset. I've no energy, no aspirations; because there's nothing in the future to beckon me on. Wherever I turn is desolation; and I despise my weakness as much as I lament my misfortune. But I'll no more of a world that has dealt me my death-blow. Here, in this solitude of nature, let me die and sink to oblivion."
Thus she ruminated, while the shadowy wintry days sped on; and reason, weak and powerless in the headlong tide of passion that swept and swayed in her breast, was buffeted and submerged in the furious waves; and yet, when the storm had spent its fury, should it not arise clear and brilliant, and over the subsiding tumult be heard to utter a calm, proud jubilate of triumph and redemption?