CHAPTER VIII.
It was one of those deliciously cold evenings in early autumn. All day long the sparkling sunshine-scented air had held an exhilaration like wine, but now night had folded a thin mist across the hills, though the clear darkness of the upper sky was filled with the keen white light of innumerable stars.
A fire in the open grate in John Ward's study was pure luxury, for the room did not really need the warmth. It was of that soft coal which people in the Middle States burn in happy indifference to its dust-making qualities, because of its charm of sudden-puffing flames, which burst from the bubbling blackness with a singing noise, like the explosion of an oak-gall stepped on unawares in the woods.
It had been a busy day for John, ending with the weekly prayer-meeting; and to sit now in front of the glowing fire, with Helen beside him, was a well-earned rest.
In the afternoon he had taken a dozen of the village children to find a swamp whose borders were fringed with gentians, which seemed to have caught the color of the wind-swept October skies. He would not let Helen go. "The walk would tire you," he said; but he himself seemed to know no weariness, though most of the time he carried one of the children, and was continually lifting them over rough places, and picking their flowers and ferns for them.
Helen had seen them start, and watched them as they tramped over the short, crisp grass of an upland pasture, and she could just distinguish the words of a hymn they sung, John's deep, sweet tenor leading their quavering treble:—
"His loving kindness, loving kindness,
His loving kindness, oh, how free!"
After they had gathered gentians to their hearts' content, they crowded about John and begged for a story, for that was always the crowning bliss of an afternoon with the preacher. But, though prefaced with the remark that they must remember it was only a story and not at all true, their enjoyment of gnomes and fairies, of wondrous palaces built of shining white clouds, with stars for lamps, was never lessened. True, there was generally a moral, but in his great desire to make it attractive John often concealed it, and was never quite sure that his stories did the good he intended. But they did good in another way; the children loved him, as most of them loved nothing else in their meagre, hungry little lives. And he loved them; they stirred the depths of tenderness in him. What did the future hold for them? Misery, perhaps, and surely sin, for what hope was there of purity and holiness in such homes as theirs? And the horror of that further future, the sure eternity which follows sin, cast a dreary shadow over them, and lent a suppressed passion to the fervor with which he tried to win their love, that he might lead them to righteousness.
But it was his gentleness, and a childlike simplicity which they themselves must early lose, which attracted and charmed the children, and made them happy and contented if they could but be with the preacher.
They had left him reluctantly at the parsonage gate, clamoring for another afternoon, which was gladly promised. Then John had had a quiet half hour for further thought upon his evening talk to his people, which had been prepared the day before. Helen had laughed at the amount of study given to every address. "I wish you could see how uncle Archie manages his sermons."