“Then she told how when she lifted him to carry him home she wanted to take off the handkerchief that was cutting into his poor leg so, but he would not let her, because he said the angel had tied it and said he was not to touch it; and how when she told the doctor this afterwards he explained to her that if she had unfastened it the boy would certainly have died.
“Then she repeated the boy’s part of the tale—how the moment after he fell this lovely little angel came to him (he knew it was an angel because he knew there had been nobody in sight for half a mile round when he was at the top of the cliff just before—only he could not understand why it hadn’t any wings, and why it said it was only a boy)—how it lifted him against the rock and tied up his leg, and then began to talk to him and tell him he need not be frightened, because somebody was gone to fetch mother, and she would be there directly; how it kissed him and tried to make him comfortable, and how its soft, warm, little hand held his all the time, while it told him strange, beautiful stories which he could not clearly remember, but he knew they were very good, because he had almost forgotten he was hurt until he saw mother coming; and how then it assured him he would soon be well again, and smiled and squeezed his hand, and then somehow it was gone.
“Since then there has been quite a religious revival in that village! Their minister has told them that so signal an interposition of divine providence must have been meant as a sign to them, to rebuke scoffers and to prove the truth of holy scripture and of the Christian religion—and nobody seems to see the colossal conceit involved in such an astonishing proposition.
“But the effect on the boy has been undoubtedly good, morally as well as physically; by all accounts he was a careless enough young scamp before, but now he feels ‘his angel’ may be near him at any time, and he will never do or say anything rough or coarse or angry, lest it should see or hear. The one great desire of his life is that some day he may see it again, and he knows that when he dies its lovely face will be the first to greet him on the other side.”
A beautiful and pathetic little story, truly. The moral drawn from the occurrence by the village and its minister is perhaps somewhat of a non sequitur; yet the testimony to the existence of at least something beyond this material plane must surely do the people more good than harm, and after all the mother’s conclusion from what she saw was a perfectly correct one, though more accurate knowledge would probably have led her to express it a little differently.
An interesting fact afterwards discovered by the investigations of the writer of the letter throws a curious side-light upon the reasons underlying such incidents. It was found that the two boys had met before, and that some thousands of years ago the one who fell from the cliff had been the slave of the other, and had once saved his young master’s life at the risk of his own, and had been liberated in consequence; and now, long afterwards, the master not only repays the debt in kind, but also gives his former slave a high ideal and an inducement to morality of life which will probably change the whole course of his future evolution. So true is it that no good deed ever goes unrewarded by karma, however tardy it may seem in its action—that
Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience stands He waiting,
With exactness grinds He all.