Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/20

18 day a son was born to her. But when she listened for that first, faint wail, so full of music to the newly made mother's ear, there was silence, deep silence in the chamber!

She turned her large, blue eyes inquiringly, hopefully, towards those that surrounded her couch. There was no gleam of answering joy in the looks that met hers, every face was blank! With a stifled cry of anguish, she stretched her feeble hand towards her husband, and her white lips moved inarticulately.

He folded her tenderly in his arms, he held her close to his swelling heart in the silence of inward prayer. Then as the tremulous motion of the form that quivered in his embrace, slowly subsided, he whispered, "It is God's will, Amy; shall we oppose our wishes to His wisdom?"

It was an earthquake shock to Amy, the sudden vanishing away, the sliding from underneath her feet of a realm of hope, a world of happiness. But her husband's calm, instantaneous, undoubting recognition of his Master's will, infused fortitude into her stricken spirit. She uttered not one lamentation, not one murmur.

After a while, in a low, trembling tone, she begged that the babe might be placed in her arms. The little, lifeless form, arrayed in the white robe upon which she had expended so many hours of delightful labor, was laid upon a pillow by her side. With what eager eyes she scanned the