"No! The nights I walked my chamber-floor, with my finger-nails piercing my clinched palms till the blood came, were not without their use. I weighed every faculty God had given me, measured every power, with a view to its marketable use. I found one yet untried. I seized my pencil, and I triumphed even with the blood-hounds on my track, for God helped the innocent."
"Oh, teach me that, strong-hearted, noble Gertrude, teach me that! for I have no stay this side Heaven!" and, with sobbing utterance, Rose poured into Gertrude's sympathizing heart the checkered story of her life.
Did she whose courage had parted the stormy waters of trouble, and who had come out triumphant, turn a deaf ear to that wail of despair?
Is woman always the bitterest foe of her crushed sister? always the first to throw a stone at her?
No—God be thanked! For the first time Rose was folded to a loving sister's heart, and in the sweet words of Ruth to Naomi, Gertrude said, as she bade Rose good-night,
"Whither thou goest I will go; whither thou lodgest I will lodge; naught but death shall part thee and me."
Was the watchman's midnight cry, "All's well," beneath the window, a prophecy?