Then Mrs. Bellenger approached, and offering her hand, said to him very kindly:
"You are dear to me for Ellen's sake, and though I never saw you until to-day, my heart claims you for a child. Shall I be your mother, Mr. Marshall?"
He could only reply by pressing the hand she extended, for his heart was all too full for utterance.
"Let me go away alone," he said at last, "to weep out my great joy," and opening the door of what was once his room, he passed for a time from their midst.
The surprise had apparently disturbed the deacon's reason, for even after his son had left him he continued talking just the same: "Poor Seth,—poor child, to think your hair should be so gray, and you but a little boy."
Then, when Seth returned to them he made him sit down beside him, and holding both his hands, smiled up into his face a smile far more painful than tears would have been.
"Seth's come home. Did you know it?" he would say to those around him, as if it were to them a piece of news, and often as he said it, he would smoothe the gray hair which seemed to trouble him so much.
Gradually, however, his mind became clearer, and he was able to understand all that Seth was telling them of his experience since the night he went away.
At last, just as the sun was setting, Mr. Marshall arose, and without a word, passed into the open air. No one watched him to see whither he went, for all knew that before he returned to them he would go down the lane, along the beaten path, to where the moonlight fell upon a little grave.
It was long before he came back, and when he did, and entered the large kitchen, two figures stood by the western window, and he thought the arm of the taller was thrown about the waist of the shorter, while the face of the shorter was very near to that of the taller. Advancing toward them and stroking the dark curls, he said, half playfully, half earnestly: