Twilight deepened into dusk, and dusk into dark, and then the moon rose over
the poplar trees outside the window where Susanna and Sue were sleeping. The
Shaker Brethren and Sisters were resting serenely after their day of
confession. It was the aged Tabitha's last Sabbath on earth, but had she
known, it would have made no difference; if ever a soul was ready for heaven,
it was Tabitha's.
There was an Irish family at the foot of the long hill that lay between the
Settlement and the village of Albion; father, mother, and children had prayed
to the Virgin before they went to bed; and the gray-haired minister in the
low-roofed parsonage was writing his communion sermon on a text sacred to the
orthodox Christian world. The same moon shone over all, and over millions of
others worshiping strange idols and holding strange beliefs in strange far
lands, yet none of them owned the whole of heaven; for as Elder Gray said, "It
is a big place and belongs to God."
Susanna Hathaway went back to John thinking it her plain duty, and to me it
seems beautiful that she found waiting for her at the journey's end a new love
that was better than the old; found a husband to whom she could say in that
first sacred hour when they were alone together, "Never mind, John! Let's
forget, and begin all over again.
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