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The little girl started up in a fright; who could have taken Matt away? No one; for she remembered that she had bolted the door. She slipped off her shoes and stole softly up the stairs, to see if he might have found his way into her mother's chamber. No -- he was not to be seen; her mother and sister were soundly sleeping, and the dim rush-candle was giving light enough to show that no Matt was there. She went down again and tried the door, full of a vague terror. Oh, if Matt, by long trying had found out how to open it, and had wandered out in the snow to look up on that bitter night between the clouds, what would become of him! She laid her hand upon the bolt; it was drawn back; -- then Matt had opened the door and pulled it after him.

Becca was but a little girl; and when she found that Matt was gone, and that the men had none of them returned from fishing, and that her mother and sister were asleep, she sat down on the floor and cried there a long time before she could make up her mind what was to be done; and then she put on her shoes again, and tied on her shawl and bonnet, and opened the door softly, resolving to follow him.

It was very dark, but it had ceased to snow. Becca waited a few minutes, hoping the moon would soon come out; and when it did so, she saw distinctly the print of footsteps; they led away from the other cottages, and seemed to wander toward the direction of the cave.

But still Becca could not rest till she had run on to the cottage where Matt had lived. She tried the door, -- it was locked; and peeping in she was sure that no one was inside; so she turned away, and, as well as she could in the sweeping storm and raging wind, she made her way toward the cave, which she knew was the likeliest place for Matt to go to.

Sometimes running, sometimes groping in the darkness, sometimes wading through deep snow-drifts and again cowering under a rock till the force of a stronger gust than usual had spent itself, the child went on, now full of hope that she should find Matt safe in the shelter of the cavern, now sick at heart for fear of what might have happened.

She felt the rocks with her hands, and went slowly on. She surely must be near the place. Impatience to reach it made her too hasty, and she struck her face against a projecting ledge, and was compelled to wait for the coming out of the moon. A heavy wall of cloud was moving on; all the heavens behind it were quite bare. Becca watched them; the moon drew near its edges, and turned them of a silvery whiteness, then shone out cold and clear, and Becca found she was not far from the Cavern. She ran and stumbled on. She was very near; the voice she was longing for arrested her on her way, "God! God!" it said, "oh, send for poor Matt; let Matt go away."

In the entrance of the cavern, with the moon shining on his white face, and the bitter wind blowing about his thin clothing and uncovered hair, and driving the frozen snow over his feet, stood the boy. Great must have been the efforts that he had used to get there, and now he did not see Becca nor answer her. His woe-begone voice and awe-struck face were directed only to the now cloudless sky, and all his thoughts were given to that great Being whom in the midst of the darkness he was seeking after.

The little girl touched him; he was cold as a stone. She shook his sleeves, but could not rouse him from his deep abstraction. "God! God!" he uttered more perfectly still, "and Man that paid, oh, take poor Matt away!"

The little girl, trembling and shivering with the cold, and faint with running against the wind, sank down upon the snow; and still Matt stood upright, and held up his beseeching hands, till exerting all her strength, she pulled him away, and got him to lie down farther in where the snow had not yet penetrated, and where the cavern floor was dry. Then she took off the shawl that formed her own scanty covering; and as she lapped it over him, he said faintly, "Matt shall see God some day, and Matt shall never be cold any more."

She heaped some driftwood between him and the entrance of the cave to keep the wind away, and then she set off to run home again for help; but before her exhausted feet, in the gray of the winter morning, had reached the cottage threshold, the fishermen, after their perilous voyage, landed a mile or two higher up, and going into the cavern for rest and shelter, found Matt on his frozen bed. They took him up and chafed his stiffened limbs with their rough hands; they said he was frozen to death, and they laid him down again on his desolate bed, and mourned and lamented over him. Happy Matt! the summons had been sent to him to go, and join that God whom he had sought so long. The days of his darkness, and feebleness are over, -- he will never be cold any more.

Matt was buried in the village churchyard, and on his gravestone was written, "They that seek me early shall find me."

If any of us, knowing God better, have loved him less, and needing God's grace as much, have turned from his face, instead of seeking it, let us think on the history of this simple poor child. "Let us seek the Lord while he may be found, let us call upon him while he is near."