"I can fancy it," said John, laughing; "did you answer him?"
"Not I," said Gertrude, "until I had ascertained that the same catechetical rule held good on the American side. Nevertheless, I would be willing to wager that I could smuggle any thing I pleased into Her Majesty's dominions under the toll-keeper's very nose, had I a mind to try it.
"I wonder," continued Gertrude, after a pause, "could one ever get used to Niagara? Could its roar be one's cradle lullaby and the spirit not plume itself for lofty flights? Could one look at it when laughing to scorn stern winter's fetters, as did Sampson the impotent green withes of the Philistines, dashing on in its might, though all Nature beside lay wrapped in old winter's winding-sheet? see it accepting, like some old despot, the tribute of silver moon-beams, golden sun-rays, and a rainbow arch of triumph for its hoary head to pass under;—ever absolute—unconquerable—omnipotent—eternal—as God himself! Could this be the first leaf turned over in Nature's book to the infant's eye, and not make it unshrinking as the eagle's?
"Hark! what is that?" exclaimed Gertrude, starting to her feet, and bounding forward with the fleetness of a deer.
Oh, that shriek!
High it rose above Niagara's wildest roar, as the foaming waters engulfed its victim! In the transit of a moment, they who for fourscore years and ten, through storm and sunshine, had walked side by side together, were parted, and forever! With the half-uttered word on his lip—with the love-beam in his eye—he "was not!"
"God comfort her," sobbed Gertrude, as the aged and widowed survivor was carried back insensible to the hotel. "How little we thought this morning, when looking at their happy and united old age, that Death would so unexpectedly step between; and still Niagara's relentless waters plunge down the abyss, shroud and sepulcher to the loved and lifeless form beneath?"
Serene as the sky when the thunder-cloud has rolled away, calm as the ocean when the moon has lulled its crested waves to sleep, smiling as earth when from off its heaving bosom the waters of the flood were rolled, leaning on Him who is the "widow's God and Husband," the aged mourner whispered, "It is well."
"God has been so good to me," she said to Gertrude. "He has lifted the cloud even at the tomb's portal. Listen, my child, and learn to trust in Him who is the believer's Rock of Ages.