midnight of winter
His truth and humility and love had not yet reached to the quickening of the idea of the old house with the feeling that God was in it with him , giving it to him . Not yet possessing therefore the soul of the house , its greatest bliss , which nothing could take from him , he naturally could not be content to part with it . It seemed an impossibility that it should be taken from him -- a wrong to things , to men , to nature , that a man like Lick-my-loof should obtain the lordship over it . As he lay in the night , in the heart of the old pile , and heard the wind roaring about its stone-mailed roofs , the thought of losing it would sting him almost to madness , -- hurling him from his bed to the floor , to pace up and down the room , burning , in the coldest midnight of winter , like one of the children in the fiery furnace , only the furnace was of worse fire , being the wrath which worketh not the righteousness of God . Suddenly one such night he became aware that he could not pray -- that in this mood he never prayed . In every other trouble he prayed -- felt it the one natural thing to pray ! Why not in this ?