Then answered Mary, “This shall never be, that thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself: and, now I think, he shall not have the boy, for he will teach him hardness, and to slight his mother; therefore thou and I will go, and I will have my boy, and bring him home; and I will beg of him to take thee back: but if he will not take thee back again, then thou and I will live within one house, and work for William’s child, until he grows of age to help us.”
So the women kissed each other, and set out, and reached the farm. The door was off the latch: they peeped and saw the boy set up betwixt his grandsire’s knees, who thrust him in the hollows of his arms, and clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks, like one that loved him: and the lad stretched out and babbled for the golden seal that hung from Allan’s watch, and sparkled by the fire. Then they came in: but when the boy beheld his mother, he cried out to come to her: and Allan set him down, and Mary said: “O Father!—if you let me call you so—I never came a-begging for myself, or William, or this child; but now I come for Dora: take her back, she loves you well. O Sir, when William died, he died at peace with all men; for I asked him, and he said he could not ever rue his marrying me—I had been a patient wife: but, Sir, he said that he was wrong to cross his father thus: ‘God bless him!’ he said, ‘and may he never know the troubles I have gone through!’ Then he turned his face and passed—unhappy that I am! But now, Sir, let me have my boy, for you will make him hard, and he will learn to slight his father’s memory; and take Dora back, and let all be as it was before.”
So Mary said, and Dora hid her face by Mary. There was silence in the room; and all at once the old man burst in sobs: “I have been to blame—to blame. I have killed my son. I have killed him—but I loved him—my dear son. May God forgive me! I have been to blame. Kiss me, my children.”
Then they clung about the old man’s neck, and they kissed him many times. And Allan was broken with remorse; and all his love came back a hundred-fold; and for three hours he sobbed o’er William’s child thinking of William. So those four abode in one house together; and as years went forward, Mary took another mate; but Dora lived unmarried until her death.
THE FAMINE[13]
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O the long and dreary Winter!
O the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker,
Froze the ice on lake and river,