“I knew you would come back,” said Archie at last through his tears. “I always told Lilias you would be sure to come back again.—Oh, Aunt Janet, are you not glad?—And you’ll never go away again? Oh, I was sure you would come home soon!”
Even his mother had not received her prodigal without some questioning, and the sudden clasping of Archie’s arms about his neck, the perfect trust of the child’s heart, was like balm to the remorseful tortures of Hugh Blair, and great drops from the man’s eyes mingled with the boy’s happy tears.
“Archie,” said his aunt after a little time, “who spoke to you of your cousin Hugh?”
“Oh, many a one,” answered Archie, as he gently stroked his cousin’s hair. “Donald Ross, and the Muirlands shepherds, and Mrs Stirling.” And then he added, in a hushed voice, “Lilias heard you speak his name in your prayers often, when you thought her sleeping.”
Hugh Blair groaned in bitterness of spirit. The thought of his mother’s sleepless nights of prayer for him revealed more of the agony of all those years of waiting than her lips could ever utter. He thought of this night and that in his career of reckless folly, and said to himself: “It may have been then or there that my name was on her lips. O God, judge me not in Thine anger!”
The words did not pass his lips, but the look he turned to his mother’s face was a prayer for pardon, and she strove to smile as she said hopefully, “It is all past now, my son. God did not forget us—blessed be His name!”
“And Lily!” exclaimed Archie, starting up at last. “Lily! where are you? Oh, will she not be glad?”
“I am here, Archie. What has happened?” said Lilias at the door.
“Cousin Hugh has come home again,” he whispered, drawing her forward; and then she saw the stranger who had taken the water from her hand. He knew her, too, as the child who had bidden him “God-speed!”
“Ah! is this the wee white Lily of Glen Elder?” he said softly.