“I thought that was what you would say,” he remarked, with an air of great satisfaction, and then he relapsed into a silence which lasted almost until they reached the ugly little framehouse, which stood solitary in the wide brown wilderness.
“Why, there is someone here; look at that wagon drawn up by the veranda post!” said Bertha, in surprise, pointing to a wagon standing before the house. The horses were still hitched to it, but covered with red blankets to keep them from being chilled by the cold wind drawing across the prairie, for night was coming down, and winter had as yet been pushed but a very little way into the background.
“A visitor, most likely,” answered Edgar, and then he looked grave, guessing what the visitor’s errand most likely amounted to, for ill news flies fast, and people are uncommonly keen in spreading the tidings of disaster.
“Why could they not have waited until I got home? It will be enough to kill poor Grace to have such tidings blurted out to her!” cried Bertha.
“Run in and do your best to stave off the telling until you can do it in your own way—you may be in time. I will see to the horse,” he said, taking the lines from her hands as she sprang down without waiting for the creature to stop.
“Thanks!” she murmured, and then she ran up the steps and opened the house door, to be confronted by an amazing sight.
CHAPTER XXXII
The Man at Last
Grace was not on the couch where she had lain so long, but was sitting in a chair by the stove. Her face was hidden in her hands, and she appeared to be weeping bitterly. Plainly the bad news had already been told to her, and Bertha clenched her hands hard at the thought of the pain she must be suffering. But the amazing thing was that a frail old man knelt at her feet, his straggling white hair hanging down on the collar of his coat, his hands clasped in entreaty, while he was speaking in a high-pitched wavering voice, pleading as if his life depended on his gaining the thing for which he asked.
“Say, is there enough goodness and charity in your heart to enable you to forgive an old man who has sinned so sorely, that if you will not forgive him, perchance he will lack forgiveness from heaven also? I was mad with jealousy that Tom should prefer an invalid wife and a houseful of little helpless children to me and the power my money could give him. I have had so little love in my life, and by my folly I have flung away what I might have had. But now, if you will forgive me for the sake of the holy dead, I promise you that want shall never touch you nor those children who call him father. Ah, I would not help him when I could, and now it is my punishment that he will not know how sorely I have repented my hardness towards him.” The old man’s white head dropped lower on his upraised hands, and a choking sob broke from him which was echoed by Grace.
Eunice and the children were not to be seen, but from the sounds which came to the ears of Bertha, as she stood hesitating on the threshold, she guessed that Eunice was trying to keep them quiet in the bedrooms until the visitor had had his interview with their mother.