Laura looked away at the stars: "Gave his father bread and a house and sheep, and everything he wanted."
For she knew all about this, her favorite Bible story.
There was a pause then. The child and her companion were thinking.
At last L'Estrange spoke: "And was he sorry afterward, this good Joseph, that he had been taken away from his father?"
"I think he was glad," said Laura in a low tone; "only it was such a very, very long time. But if I thought what you say I wouldn't mind the long time."
"Think it, then, ma fillette," he said, stooping over her with his own peculiar smile, which seemed to shine like light on his dark face. And the child believed him.
It was a strange doctrine to take root in so young a mind, for the subtle parable wrought powerfully. The great fact of self-sacrifice, the suffering of some for the good of others, began to dawn upon the child's mind. It was real suffering to be separated from her mother, to be wandering with this stranger through the night instead of lying in her warm white bed in her mother's room; but Laura neither wept nor complained. Her tears ceased, and her dark eyes grew large with thought. For she had overcome her distrust of her companion; she believed with the simple faith of childhood that what he told her was true. Her strong imagination idealized him into a guide (like Great Heart in the bit of the Pilgrim's Progress she loved the best) come to put an end to her mother's troubles by bringing her father back to them; and for her part in the great work the child, with unchildlike calm and thoughtfulness, was ready.
It was late before they reached York, but rooms were ready at an hotel to which L'Estrange had telegraphed, and the good-natured chambermaid took every care of the little lady. Going to bed so far from mamma was hard work for the poor child, and her sobs and tears and sudden startings from sleep were subject of much speculation to the attendant; but at this time she said nothing, as her services were very liberally remunerated.
L'Estrange passed a very different night. He had been longing for its deep solitude, that he might think out undisturbed the unwonted thoughts to which the experiences of that day had given rise. And the night came—heavy, dark, brooding, suitable to his spirit's mood.
He went to his room, but there he could not rest; under its narrow roof even thought would not come to him; he rose and went out. The town was silent in the darkness, and utterly undisturbed he walked through the quaint, narrow streets, under low-browed gates and arches, till in a few minutes he gained the open country. A wide, grassy expanse it seemed to be, as far as he could see by the faint light that struggled now and then through the clouds—undulating here and there, and bordered in the distance by a fringe of wood, behind which a line of light that told of either twilight or dawn was lying low down on the horizon.