"You had lots of gold, father, but that was nothing. It couldn't make you happy. It couldn't keep you from dying. It couldn't take you to Heaven. You had the gold and you were poor; and now the gold is gone, I want you to be rich—really rich. I want you to be rich in the love of the Lord Jesus. Father dear, won't you try to come to Him, and tell Him you are sorry you haven't thought more about Him, and ask Him to forgive you everything and to make you His very own for ever?"
"I don't know that I durst," said Isaac tremblingly. "I don't know that I durst, Daisy. And I don't know how."
But when Daisy knelt beside him, and prayed aloud for him, in pleading words which presently ended in a burst of weeping, Isaac was strangely moved. He bent his head low, and tried to join in, murmuring the words after her; and when she broke down he said hurriedly, "Don't you—now don't you, Daisy. I'll never speak about the gold any more, Daisy."
[CHAPTER XVII.]
MONEY AGAIN.
THAT Isaac should never again allude to his lost gold was hardly to be expected, more especially with his infirm memory. But from that day it became apparent that a marked change was passing over the poor old man. He clung yet more to Daisy, and evidently liked to hear her voice reading from the Bible or speaking to him of the things of God, so long left utterly out of his life. And though at times he broke out into his old moanings, he would frequently check himself, saying, with sudden recollection, "No, no, I'm not a-going to cry for the gold,—am I, Daisy?" And later on he began sometimes to add, "It was God took the gold, wasn't it, Daisy?"
He was very feeble in mind, and very ignorant also. Daisy was often sorely disappointed to find how little he could understand, how rapidly the impression made upon him one hour would fade away the next. But Mr. Roper, to whom she one day confided her distress, warned her not to expect too much.
"Your father is like a child in many ways," he said, "only with less sense than a child, Daisy, and with no memory. It is of no use to attempt to teach him, as you would teach a man in full vigour. All we can do is to lead him on gently, by very short steps, and in very simple paths. If he can take in the two great truths, first that he is a helpless sinner, and secondly that Christ is able and willing to save him, it is as much as we can hope for." And Daisy was comforted.
John Davis was by this time out of hospital, but instead of his wife going to him, he had joined his wife at Old Meadow. The girl, Bess, had been dismissed, and Mary did all the house-work and cooking, besides attending to the wants of Daisy and her father, and besides taking many a half-day's charing. John was by no means so capable a man bodily as he had once been, but he found work without difficulty, much interest being felt in his case. And as he had now signed the pledge, and as he kept it, he worked more steadily than of old, and thereby actually made more money than when his bodily strength had been greater. He and his wife thenceforward had their abode in the kitchen regions of the old house, having house-room free, but costing Isaac nothing in the way of food, and saving him the expense of a servant.
The arrangement was a happy one. As months went on, however, it became apparent that a change was inevitable. Old Meadow would have to be sold. Daisy could see no loophole of escape from this conclusion. Through the gifts of kind friends, and the disposal of certain useless articles of furniture, she had managed to keep on for a while, but she knew that to keep on thus much longer was a simple impossibility.