For all the calmness and repose that was on his face, he longed to cry out. Oh! was there no deliverance? Might not these long wasted years yet be paid for by deeds of mercy and charity? But where was there a deliverer? and who could tell how many years of good deeds and charity could pay for forty years of wasted ones?
CHAPTER XX.
New Thoughts and New Plans
oll, sitting in the doorway, was presently aroused from a little reverie into which he had fallen by hearing a voice call, "Noll, my boy, come here." He obeyed the call, and started for the little wharf, half expecting that Uncle Richard was about to reprove him for what he had done. Trafford gazed in his nephew's face for a short space, and then, smothering what his heart longed to cry out, and what he had intended to say to the boy, he sighed only, "We will start homeward, if you are ready."
Noll was sure that his uncle had kept back something which it was in his heart to say, and, wondering what it could be, he followed after the tall figure along the homeward path.