"It's no go," repeated he; "and I shall have to stay away."
So all that glorious September day Dick spent in vain regrets that but for his own folly, he might have been one of Hal's merry birthday party.
But as the autumn days fell on the woods, a shadow settled on the cottage by the gate, where Farmer Bluff was drawing towards his death. Death is not always dark. The end of life is sometimes like a glorious sunset, when the light of day sinks in triumphant promise of another dawn. But Farmer Bluff had sinned, and had never made the Bible promises his own.
Hal often went to sit beside his bed.
"The others play as well without me," he would say. "I'm not much good in games, you see; and I would rather come and help you bear your pain."
"It's not so much the pain," the farmer said to him one day. "I'd go on bearing that. But they tell me that I'm going fast; and I can't see where. I've never been a praying man; and now it's dark. 'Prepare to meet thy God,' they say. How can a man prepare?—What can I do?—I've lost my right to think of ever getting Him to listen to my prayers; and I must go before His judgment-seat with all my sins upon my back."
Hal was silent.
"It's very sad," said he presently; "because, you see, you've wasted all the best part of your life. And I should think a man wouldn't like to have to go to God and ask to be taken into heaven, when he'd done so badly all along. Of course, there was the prodigal, who squandered all his father gave him so disgracefully; but you see, he was a young man, and he went back to work again as soon as the feast was over. The Bible doesn't say so; but it seems to me he'd work like two, whenever he remembered how his father ran to meet him, open-armed. You're more like the man who didn't come to work until the eleventh hour," added Hal thoughtfully.
Farmer Bluff asked to have the passage read to him.
"He got his penny just the same as all the rest, you see," said Hal, when he had finished it.