“Your father will be so happy, son! He started to meeting a little while ago. I stayed at home to have a nice, warm supper ready. It isn’t many more meals I’ll get a chance to cook for my boys.”
“You did your share in that line long ago, mother dear.”
In the family reunion in the little cottage home that night there were no intruders. John, Mary, and Joseph held sweet communion with their parents alone.
“Our Father in Heaven,” prayed the old man, before retiring, “we thank Thee for all Thy tender mercies to us-ward. We realize Thy hand in our chastening; and we behold Thy love in our sorrows, since, but for them, we could not appreciate our joys. We thank Thee for John, for Mary, for Joseph, and for this night’s reunion. We also thank Thee for our absent dear ones, and for those whose bodies are under the snow, whose spirits are with Thee.
“Animate us all with the Christ spirit, O God; and grant that in Thine own good time we all may meet again.”
And the brothers echoed aloud the good father’s “Amen.”
XL
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
A year has passed, and the autumn of 1853 has arrived. It has been a most strenuous twelve months on the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Rapid changes, unlooked-for vicissitudes, improvements upon the virgin soil, annoying delays, and happy reunions have made the seasons fly.
The house was now surrounded by a cultivated field, through the centre of which a broad, tree-lined avenue wound upward from the grade below. The cattle whose labor had saved the lives of the immigrants the previous year were now sleek and fat.