John McIntyre did not answer. He sat still so long, with his face in his hands, that the boy grew weary, and rising, hobbled homeward.
The man's gray head sank lower. His thin hands, hard, and worn with heavy toil, were trembling violently. His stooped shoulders, in their poor, thread-bare covering, heaved convulsively. For the first time in years he had dared to look back into the blossom-strewn past, and the sight had been too much for his strength.
His misfortunes had come upon him in a way that, at first, had left him no time to reflect. His home had gone, and then his friend, just at the time when he needed his help. Then had come greater trials. Sickness stalked hand in hand with poverty. One by one his children were laid away in the earth; and then toil and want and grief had at last taken her, his best beloved, and in her grave John McIntyre had buried happiness and hope and faith.
What had he left in life? His home, his loved ones, were gone—even Martin must be dead, or he would have come to him long ago. Nothing remained but misery, and distrust of his fellow-men—and hatred—hatred of the man who had defrauded him, and who was now, no doubt, living in wealth and prosperity.
And what had he done to deserve it all? That had always been John McIntyre's cry. Why must he and his be singled out for such suffering? Why should his innocent loved ones be the victims of a villain's rapacity?
And how he had worked to save them from want! Oh, God! how he had toiled, until his back was bent and his health broken! And it had all been of no use—no use!
He clenched his shaking hands, striving to gain control of himself. In the early days of his misfortunes the necessity for straining every effort had kept him from brooding upon his losses, and finally a numbness of despair had seized him. But to-night the child's artless talk had brought back vividly the old home scene. He could see it now, as he had seen it so often in the light of a summer evening. The sparkling sea, with the tang of salt water wafted up over his fields; the rippling stream, winding like a thread of gold down to the Bay of Fundy; his cozy home peeping from its orchard nest, and Mary at the doorway, singing their baby's lullaby; Martin's gay voice passing down the road; and in the purpling woods the tender song of the hermit thrush:
"O hear all! O hear all! O holy, holy!"
A wave of desperate longing for the old days swept over him; a very passion of loneliness and homesickness shook his desolate soul.
Why should he struggle against it? he asked himself. Why live on in misery, only to die in misery at the end? Why not end it now? There was no God, at least none that cared; and as for the future—he had laughed when the minister mentioned hell. What profounder wretchedness could it hold than all he had already endured?