Stephen Grattan's Faith: A Canadian Story - Margaret M. Robertson

As for Alice, it did not seem to her that there was anything left for her to desire. Her heart was rejoicing over her husband with more than bridal joy,—her husband who had been “lost, and was found.” On this first day of his coming home she suffered no trembling to mingle with it. She would not distrust the love which had “set her foot upon a rock, and put a new song in her mouth.” “Mighty to save” should His name be to her and hers henceforth. The clouds might return again, but there were none in her sky to-day.

Things went well with the Morelys after this. How it all came about, cannot be told here; but when the grand cut-stone piers of the new bridge were completed, it was John Morely who built the bridge itself,—that is, he had the charge of building it, under the contractor to whom the work had been committed,—and it was built so quickly and so well that he never needed to go away from Littleton to seek employment again.

The little Morelys have come to think of the days before that pleasant May-time as of a troubled dream. The first fall of the snow-flakes brings a shadow to Sophy’s face still; but even Sophy has come to have only a vague belief in the troubles of that time. The little ones are never weary of hearing the story of that terrible winter storm: but Sophy never tells them—hardly acknowledges to herself, indeed—that there was something in those days harder to bear than hunger, or cold, or even the dread of the drifting snow.

If after that first bright day of her husband’s home-coming there mingled trembling with the joy of Mrs Morely, she is at rest now. Day by day, as the years have passed on, she has come to know that with him, as well as with herself, “Old things have passed away, and all things have become new;” and, in the blessed renewal of strength assured to those who wait upon the Lord, she knows that he is safe for evermore.

As for Stephen Grattan, he has had a good many years of hard work since then, making strong, serviceable boots and shoes, and serving the Lord in other ways besides. He is ungrammatical still, and queer, and some people smile at him, and pretend to think lightly of him, even when he is most in earnest,—people who, in point of moral worth or heavenly power, are not worthy to tie his shoes. But many a “tempted poor soul” in Littleton and elsewhere has his feet upon a rock and a new song in his mouth because of Stephen’s labours in his behalf; and if ever a man had the apostle’s prayer for the Ephesians answered in his experience, he has; for he is “strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.”

He is an old man now, whose “work of faith and labour of love” is almost over; and I never see him coming up the street, with his leather apron on, a little bowed and tottering, but always cheerful and bright, but I seem to hear the welcome, which cannot be very far before him now,—“Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”