For when we are going down visibly into the dark valley of the shadow of death, those around us look upon us with other eyes, and press upon us some of the kindliness and tenderness which would have made all the pilgrimage of life only a happy journey. Ruth, so long a solitary and sorrowful woman, wondered at the friendliness which gathered about her in her last days.
"It makes home seem sweeter," she said to Ishmael, "to have plenty o' friends, and plenty o' everything else. But if it had always been so, I might never ha' thought as dyin' was like goin' home. I always think as if heaven were home now, Ishmael," she added, a faint smile lighting up her wrinkled face.
She was sitting beside him on the old door-sill for the last time, though that they did not know. For when death is drawing near to any one of us, we do not always know that the last time is come for the old familiar duties and habits of every-day life. It had been a long sunny day in May, but now the twilight was coming on, and every minute made her beloved face more thin and shadowy.
"It feels a'most," she went on falteringly, "like when I was a little girl, and 'ud hear father callin' me in from my play. I'm partly afeared to say it, Ishmael; but it's sometimes as if I could hear the blessed Lord callin', 'Ruth, come to Me, and ye shall find rest.'
"And last night I answered Him out loud, 'Lord, I can't rest because of my lad Ishmael.'
"And it seemed to me as if there came a low quiet voice whispering to me, 'Leave Ishmael to Me. He is My son.'
"And I said to myself, 'The Lord has heard my affliction again.'"
Ishmael sat silent, with his eyes fastened on the pale yellow light in the sky behind the tops of the trees, across which a bat was flitting to and fro; but he did not see the sunset light or the flight of the bat.
"Ay!" she said, almost joyously. "And to-day I knew He'd heard; for Mrs. Clift and Miss Elsie came to see me; and Ishmael, my lad, they brought grand news for thee. They're going away across the seas, to that country where folks go for a better chance than they've got here; and they've promised to take thee with them; for Mrs. Clift said, 'It was all along of Elsie that Ishmael got into trouble and disgrace; and folks won't think badly of him there; and I'll be like a mother to him,' said Mrs. Clift. And I knew then that God had heard my affliction again."
"Oh, mother!" cried Ishmael, "I couldn't leave thee, never; not if the Queen of England sent for me to go!"