As he ceased the skipper looked up, his eyes still humid with love, and after gazing for a moment into C. B.’s clear eyes he turned to his wife with a happy sigh and said—
“Darling, don’t be hurt, forgive me if I’ve wounded you, but you can never know all that I and you owe to this man. He’s not only brought me back to you, he’s brought peace to my soul, he’s made me acquainted with God the Father. You know how you used to harp at me to get religion; you said it was the one thing wantin’ to make you happy. Well, I’d never got it your way. I didn’t like your preachers, shan’t like ’em now any better than before, but I’ve seen Christ lived from day to day before my eyes, I know what lots of things in the Gospel mean as I never hoped to do, and I’m satisfied to be a child of God. But I’m afraid if I come across any of them cantin’, drawlin’, fat-mouthed, camp-meetin’ religionists I’ll have to tell ’em what I think of ’em. I’ve seen the real and it’s made me more fierce against the false. An’ it seems to me that the one thing that I can’t learn from this beautiful friend is patience and toleration.”
He sank back exhausted, and Mrs. Taber, looking reproachfully at C. B., said—
“There now, you are making yourself ill again. I wonder your friend, if he’s got so much control over you, doesn’t stop you from going on like that.”
C. B. was entirely unsophisticated, but his ear detected the note of enmity in the good woman’s voice, and he thanked God with all his heart that he had something to fall back upon. Nothing could have induced him to remain where he saw that he would be a daily bone of contention, even had he been as helpless and alone as for a few minutes that afternoon he had felt he was. He did not know, he could not explain, but he could feel that Mrs. Taber, though in other respects as good a woman as ever lived, would forget at once all his services to her husband in the jealousy of him occupying even a remote corner of her husband’s heart. And his mind was swiftly made up. Squeezing his friend’s hand, which indeed he had never released, he said—
“Mrs. Taber and dear friend, my job here is finished. I undertook to bring the captain home at his request, and by the help of God and ever so many human agencies He has used I have succeeded. I never could have done it if it had not been for that. And now I must leave you. If the captain needed me God knows I’d stay as long as I could be of any use to him. But he has now some one to look after him far better than I can, his dear wife, and he knows that I have found dear friends, so he has no need to worry about what is to become of me. And I think that now is a good time to bid him good-bye, knowing how safe he is.”
“Stay,” cried Captain Taber, whose mind had been working fast as C. B. spoke, “I feel you’re right; I feel, too, that when you go out of this room I’ll never see you agen. But before you go pray; commend my dear wife and children and me to the God you’ve taught me to know and love.”
In an instant C. B. had slid to his knees, and amid a tense silence he lifted his streaming face and cried—
“O dear Father, take all this household into your loving keeping. Let them always know how good and kind and thoughtful you are, especially how you love them. Keep them in that knowledge day and night until the day dawns and the shadows flee away. Keep them happy, contented and useful, but especially kind and loving to all who are about them. And may we all meet again in the new world where Jesus is the Head of all and all are good like Him. For His sake, dear Father. Amen.”
Then rising to his feet he stooped over his friend and kissed him as men kiss the dying, turned and shook hands with Mrs. Taber and the three children, and turning swiftly left the house before they had so far recovered as to try and stop him. And as he went he knew that his duty to that fine fellow was done and that he would never see him again. We too have done with him, except to note that Mr. Stewart fulfilled his promise to the captain in fullest measure and so put him and his beyond the reach of want or that half dependence which is so painful to a gallant spirit that has to accept it for the sake of its dear ones.