"Uncle, I am sorry to hurt you, but I could do no less and please God. And God is first in my life."
"First, is he? Then go to him, and let him feed you and clothe you, you ungrateful wretch!" And with the words the angry man struck Job such a blow that he went reeling over, a dead-weight, on the floor.
It was midnight when Tony, passing the door, heard the old man moan. Peering in at the window, he saw him on his knees beside Job, who, with white face and closed eyes, lay on a lounge near the door. Tony stole away to whisper to Hans:
"Guess the old man's made way with the kid! Let's lay low!"
What a night that was for Andrew Malden! Two minutes after he had struck the blow, all the wrath which had gathered strength on that long mountain ride was gone. The blow struck open the door of his heart; he saw that the boy was right and he was wrong. That blanched face, those closed eyes—how they pierced him through and through! He loved that boy more than all the mines and gold and ranches in the world. The depth of his iniquity came over him. He hated himself, he hated the Cove Mine; but that stalwart lad lying there—how he loved him! All the hidden love of thirty years went out to him. "Job! Job!" he cried. "Look at me! Tell me you forgive me!"
He dashed water in the boy's face. He felt of his heart—he could hardly feel it beat. Was he dead? Dead!—the only one he cared for? Dead!—the poor motherless boy he had brought home one moonlight night long ago, and promised that he would be both father and mother to him? Dead!—aye, dead by his hand! And for what? For telling the truth; for being honest and manly; for saving him from holding in his grasp the ill-gotten gain that always curses a man.
The hot tears came, the first in years. Andrew Malden knelt by the bedside and groaned. And then he thought of Job's God and of the Christ he talked about: thought of the little Testament he cherished. He would call on Him, he would beg Him to spare Job. He knelt near the lad; he started to say, "Oh, God, spare my boy! spare my boy!" when a sense of his wickedness, his hard heart, his selfish life, his sin, came over him; and instead he cried from the depths of his soul, "God have mercy on me a sinner!"
The daylight was struggling through the shutters when Job turned and opened his eyes, to see an anxious face look into his own and to hear a familiar voice out of which had gone all anger, say:
"Oh, Job, my boy, I knew He'd hear me, I prayed so long! Job, God has forgiven me! Won't you? Oh, tell me you will! I am a different man! I read it in the Book while you lay here so still: 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.' And Job, it's true!"
The fever stayed with Job many a day after that, and it was June before the natural color came back into his white cheeks. But the old ranch seemed like a new place to him; and when one morning Mr. Malden read at family devotions, "All things work together for good to them that love God," he broke down in the prayer he tried to make, and rushed out of doors to hide the tears of joy that choked him, while he heard Tony singing as he went about his toil: