The storm gradually passed away into silence. There was no sound but the short, interrupted breath of her patient, and the soft, healthful, regular breathing of infancy. Edith longed for the dawn, and looked anxiously through the little casement for the first gray streak. As far as the eye could reach, the bay was white with foam; but no light yet dawned upon it from the morning.
The old woman awoke. "I cannot see you," she said; "a film is over my eyes."
Edith told her the lamp had been extinguished with the wind.
"Alas!" she said; "and I must die as I have lived,—in darkness."
Edith assured her she was not then dying, and begged her to try to pray, or to listen while she endeavored, as far as she was able, to offer a prayer to God.
"No," she said; "I have lived without prayer, and I will not mock God on my death-bed; but, if there is mercy for me, God may listen to you, pure and good as you have ever been."
Edith knelt; and, with lips trembling with timidity and responsibility, she uttered a low, humble, and earnest prayer.
The old woman seemed at first to listen; but her mind soon wandered: broken and, as it afterwards would almost appear, prophetic sentences escaped from her lips: "Judgments are coming on this unhappy land,—delusions and oppression. Men and devils shall oppress the innocent. The good like you, the innocent and good, shall not escape!" Then she looked at the sleeping child: "Can the lamb dwell with the tiger, or the dove nestle with the hawk? But you have promised: you will keep your word; and when God counts his jewels"—
Edith arose from her knees, and trembled like a leaf. With inexpressible joy, her eyes fell on her own Dinah, standing looking on, with the deepest awe in her countenance. She had risen before the dawn, and come to relieve her young mistress, and had entered while Edith was kneeling. She now insisted on taking her place. Edith committed to her care the sleeping child, and then sought the repose the agitation of the night had rendered so necessary.
Before evening, the old woman died; and the next day she was to be committed to the earth. Little preparation was necessary for her funeral. No mourners were to be summoned from afar: there was no mockery of grief. She had lived disliked by her neighbors. A few old women came from curiosity to see old Nanny, who had never been very courteous in inviting her neighbors to visit her; and they came now to see how she had contrived to live upon nothing.