“It was a strange meeting;” Hew Murray wiped away the pleasant moisture which dimmed those happy eyes of his; “and Ahmed had given me my freedom. That wily, politic boy! I wonder if he was getting wearied of his old Dominie after all, or if his reluctance to part with me was real. I wish affection was as blind as they call it, Adam, for I think my eyes, being so solicitous about him, were only quickened to see his weakness; but I could not have remained. I could not have done him any service even if I had remained.
“So I gave him my Bible, Adam, and he gave me jewels and shawls more than I knew what to do with. I was bringing them all home innocently to Lucy,” said Hew, with his old frank laugh. “Lucy would have been as magnificent as a Begum had no one interfered, but we got into a mercantile atmosphere before we left India, and so some of Ahmed’s pretty things were converted into coined monies. There is enough to make the old house habitable, I think; but I have come home as I went away, Adam. I always thought I should; there has no bilious fortune fallen to my share; only they have given me a pension—and better than the pension—give me your hand, Adam—I am at home.”
And the two gray-haired men grasped each other’s hands.
Lucy Murray had entered the room unheard. She came forward with her gentle, gliding step, and leaned over the carved back of Charlie’s chair, looking at them as they sat together by the fireside.
“What are you doing, boys?” said Lucy, with the voice and the smile of her youth. Boys—the young composed grave girl, long ago, had called them by that name. They were both older than she was; but the assumed dignity of the earlier maturing woman sat gracefully on her then, as that smile did now.
“We were talking of that merchant boy of yours, and how he would not let me bring home Ahmed’s jewels to his mother, Lucy,” said Hew.
“I wonder Hew did not remember the bride that will soon be,” said Lucy. “Adam, I like your Lily; I was a little afraid—may I tell you? a little afraid when I began to guess what the conjunction of her two names pointed to. You look grave, Adam—I should not have said so much?”
“No, Lucy,” said Mossgray, “they are dead; how far we might err in our early dreams, let us not question. I forget all that is evil when I look back. Let us lay the errors of their youth beside them in the grave.”
Lucy Murray bowed her head silently in acquiescence, and folding her hands over Charlie’s chair, pitifully thought of the dead.
The dead who wounded hearts and had no power to heal them—who broke faith, and went away with their treachery in their hearts to the grave; who disenchanted youthful eyes and darkened lives which were not bright before—evils that the doer never can atone—alas for them, unhappy! Alas for the false—the cruel—the heart-breakers! The hearts broken will heal; the suffering will pass away like clouds; but woe for those who inflict—woe for the seedmen of sin, whose harvest shall not fail.