"Happy! No, I shall never be happy," Mrs. Skinner had replied. Little Miss Joy was disappointed; but she quietly said:
"Yes, you will, if you make other folks happy, grannie. That's the secret."
Was it indeed the secret? Again and again, like a breath of heaven, gentle and subtle, an influence unknown before seemed to touch Mrs. Skinner's heart in those solemn, lonely hours as she sat pondering over the sad, sad past.
The Holy Spirit had convinced her of sin, and she was turning by that divine power from darkness to a glimmering of light. When the grey, cold dawn of the autumn morning crept through the chinks of the shutters, she went softly to her room, and lay down with the relief a tired labourer feels who has laid down a heavy burden he has borne through the long hot day. That burden was the burden of harsh, unforgiving judgment and remorse. It had been rolled away, like that of one of old, at the foot of the cross—the cross of Him who, in the pains of a cruel death, could pray for those who had done Him wrong, and say, "Father, forgive them."
CHAPTER XIII.
A TOKEN AT LAST.
The ship that had picked up Colley and Jack Harrison in mid-ocean, and saved them from the lingering death of starvation, was bound for the islands of the South Pacific, and the captain told them that they must be content to be absent from England till the following spring. He had to call at several of the islands, and exchange cargo, so that even with fair weather their return voyage could not be made under nine months.
Poor Colley was slow to recover; indeed, he never did recover fully from the effects of those terrible days and nights at sea. But Jack was young and strong, and he and Toby were soon, as old Colley said, "hale and hearty as ever they were."
Jack earned his biscuit and won favour as well; and the captain's kind heart was touched by Colley's history of what had happened to his old mother and his little children at home, and the fear he had that he should never see them again.