Deborah felt
encouraged; she even went down upon her stiff knees after her family
were in bed, and thanked the Lord from the depths of her sorely
chastened but proud heart. She did not foresee what was to come of
it; for that very night Ephraim, induced thereto by the salutary
effect of the medicine, which removed somewhat the restriction of his
laboring heart upon his boyish spirits, perpetrated the crowning act
of revolt and rebellion of his short life.
The moon was bright that night. The snow was frozen hard. The long
hills where the boys coasted looked like slopes of silver. Ephraim
had to go to bed at eight. He lay, well propped up on pillows, in his
little bedroom, and he could hear the shouts of the coasting boys.
Now that he could breathe more easily the superiority of his enforced
deprivation of such joys no longer comforted him as much as it had
done. His curtain was up, and the moonlight lay on his bed. The
mystic influence of that strange white orb which moves the soul of
the lover to dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with
sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the
terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides,
apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all
the innocent hilarity of his youth which he had missed.
Ephraim lay there in the moonlight, and longed as he had never longed
before to go forth and run and play and halloo, to career down those
wonderful shining slants of snow, to be free and equal with those
other boys, whose hearts told off their healthy lives after the
Creator's plan.
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