“Voyst venno voskress,” said Ivan, as he fondly kissed, first the baby brother, then the two elder boys. There was magic in the touch of those little lips to soothe the heavy sorrow at his heart. But something in the thoughtful face of Alexander made him draw the boy close to him. “My child has been weeping this Easter morning,” he said.
For a moment the child did not speak. Then he said falteringly, “I meant to serve the Czar, my godfather, when I grew to be a man.”
“Serve instead his King, whom he loved,” answered Ivan. “And take this thought with thee to keep all thy life, ‘The Lord is good to the soul that seeketh him.’”
“Yes, father,” the boy whispered, winding his arm about his father’s neck. “Yes, he is good; for he comforted him at last.”
“He did, my child. However dark his ways with his own may seem to be, yet are they all mercy and truth—all—when we see them from the end to the beginning. ‘Though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion.’ He will make the heart of his own to rejoice, and that joy no man taketh from them.”
“Papinka, are these our Easter gifts?” asked Feodor, laying his rash little fingers on the silver medal and the golden coin so temptingly near him on the table.
“Nay, my boy; these are too precious for thy father to give away even to his dear little son. When he is laid in the grave, these shall be laid there with him. But to-day, my children, we will not talk of the grave, but of Him who came back from it, and opened our way to the happy home beyond.”
So the current of those lives flowed on;—little lives of children, like bright, glad mountain rills, laughing as they tripped along; larger lives of thoughtful men and women, moving towards the sea in ever broadening channels, and bearing precious freights. Sorrow might come to them, but not despair; conflict, but not defeat. Life to them was “a cordial Yes, and not a dreary No,” for the same reason which makes it worth while for each one of us to live and work to-day—because “Christohs voskress,” Christ is risen indeed.
THE END.