“Mercy! ye mun easy say that; why did He let the poor lad die i' the snow, then?”
And Harold's lips hesitated over those holy words “The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away.”
“He should ha' takken th' owd mother, then. She's none wanted; but the dear lad—the only one left out o' six—oh, Reuben, Reuben, wunna ye never speak to your poor father again?”
He looked on the corpse fixedly for some minutes, and then a new thought seemed to strike him.
“That's not my lad—my merry little lad!—I say,” he cried, starting up and catching Mr. Gwynne's arm; “I say, you parson that ought to know, where's my lad gone to?”
Harold Gwynne's head sank upon his breast: he made no answer. Perhaps—ay, and looking at him, the thought smote Olive with a great fear—perhaps to that awful question there was no answer in his soul.
John Dent passed him by, and came to the side of Olive Rothesay.
“Miss, folk say you're a good woman. Dun ye know aught o' these things—canna ye tell me if I shall meet my poor lad again?”
And then Olive, casting one glance at Mr. Gwynne, who remained motionless, sat down beside the childless father, and talked to him of God—not the Infinite Unknown, into whose mysteries the mightiest philosophers may pierce and find no end—but the God mercifully revealed, “Our Father which is in heaven”—He to whom the poor, the sorrowing, and the ignorant may look, and not be afraid.
Long she spoke; simply, meekly, and earnestly. Her words fell like balm; her looks lightened the gloomy house of woe. When, at length, she left it, John Dent's eyes followed her, as though she had been a visible angel of peace.