"Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day,
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away,
Change and decay in all around I see,
O Thou, who changest not, abide with me!"
A trembling weakness seized him. He shrank back against the heap of logs. He seemed to have no power against the imperative sweetness of that voice. It called him away, it called him up. He clutched the rough bark of a log, and stood listening till the song swept on to its triumphant ending:
"Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee,
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!"
The last echo died away in the shadow of the willows. John McIntyre stood a moment, dazed by the glimpse into the depths to which his despair had brought him. He glanced down at the dark water and shuddered, then staggered weakly to his old place at the mill door, and sank in the sawdust. Something, not a prayer, but nearer it than anything he had uttered for years, burst from him—the name of his Maker, spoken unwittingly, in an abandon of weakness. "My God!" he whispered shakingly. The strength of desperation which had driven him on was gone, but his despair remained. And so he lay, spent and weak, in utter blackness of soul, not knowing that the prayer of the song had been answered, and that, though he knew Him not in the darkness, his Father was abiding with him still.
CHAPTER X
THE SECRET OF THE BLUE SILK GOWN
O love, can the tree lure the summer bird
Again to the bough where it used to sing,
When never a throat in the autumn is heard,
And never the glint of a vagrant wing?
—ARTHUR STRINGER.
The autumn days came, and all the landscape within the range of Granny Long's telescope turned golden with its wealth of harvest. The apples dropped, rosy-cheeked, from the orchard trees, the corn and the pumpkins ripened in the garden. All day the binder sang in the yellow fields, and at night a great harvest moon hung alone in the violet heavens. As soon as the first blue haze of autumn settled over the ravine the mill closed, and the men scattered to work in the fields, or at threshing-bees, or went farther north to the winter lumber camps.
John McIntyre did not leave, as people had expected. He remained in his old shanty by the Drowned Lands, harvesting his little crop of potatoes, or laying up his stock of winter wood from the adjacent swamp. The village saw him only on the rare occasions when he came up to the flour-mill or store for provisions. But he did not live a solitary life, for the eldest Sawyer orphan had now become his chum and confidant, and would have gone down to visit him almost every evening, even if old Hughie Cameron had reversed proceedings and paid him to stay away.