He had been reading one night late, until as if unable to endure the images of woe it conjured up, he pushed the book away from him.  The night was dark and stormy, and the rain pouring in torrents.  He walked to the window and looked out.  He could see nothing, except as the landscape was revealed for an instant by a flash of lightning.  He could hear nothing, except the peals of thunder rolling through the valleys.  He took a candle, and walked cautiously to the door of Faith’s chamber, to see if she were asleep.  The door was ajar, for the purpose of ventilation, and, shading the light with his hand, Armstrong could see the face of his sleeping daughter without waking her.  She lay in the profound slumber of health and youth, undisturbed by the noise of the thunder, as one conscious of a protecting Providence.  Her left hand was under her cheek, the black hair combed back, and collected under the snowy cap.  Her breathing was scarcely perceptible, but soft and quiet as an infant’s.  An expression of happiness rested on her features, and the color was a little kindled in her cheek, looking brighter in contrast with the linen sheet.

“She sleeps,” he thought, “as if there were no sin and misery in the world.  And why should she not?  What has she to do with them?  Were my spiritual eyes opened, I should see the protecting angels in shining garments around her bed, unless my approach has driven them away.  Heaven takes care of its own.  So I could sleep once.  Will the time come when she, too, shall be so guilty she cannot sleep?  Almighty God forbid!  Better she were in her grave.  They are fortunate who die young.  They are taken from the evil to come.  The heart ceases to beat before it becomes so hard it cannot repent.  Were she to die to-night her salvation would be assured.  What infinite gain!  The murderer could inflict no injury, but would confer a benefit.”

Why did he start?  Why did he shudder all over?  Why did he hastily turn round, and shut the door, and hasten to his own room, locking it after him?  Why was it he took something from his pocket, and, opening the window, threw it violently into the dark?  But a moment Armstrong remained in his room.  Blowing out the candles, and noiselessly descending the stairs, he as quietly opened and shut the front door, and stood in the open air.

The storm was at its height.  The rain poured with such violence that in the flashes of lightning he could see the large drops leap from the ground.  But he felt not that he was wet to the skin.  He minded not that he had left the house without a hat, and that the water was running in streams from his head to the earth.  With a rapid pace, approaching running, he fled through the streets, until he reached the grave-yard.  Without a ray to guide him, through a darkness that might be felt, he found his way to a grave, it was his wife’s.  He threw himself prostrate on his face, and lay motionless.