"Why, of course, I am for following it up as best I can. It's my clear duty to do that. I must try the mountain and about; for though we are not in Ireland, I have a strong suspicion that I shall find an illicit still, hid away in some nook or crevice."
The young man turned white—so white that even Alice's unsuspicious mind read something painful and alarming in his face. She looked appealingly at Mark while his eye rested compassionately on her anxious brow. She turned from him to her mother, and saw that her thin hands were clasped tight together, as they always were when the mother's heart within her was working with fear and wrestling in the hidden might of prayer. Her eyes were fixed upon her wayward son, but they were lambent with the holy light of love.
"It is growing over late for any more talk," said she, gently, "and seems to me that the best thing we can do will be to have our chapter and our little bit prayer. Mark Wilson, thou wilt take the book;" and her trembling finger pointed at the great family Bible on the little oak table beside her.
Mark silently took his place before the book, asking in his heart that God the Spirit would guide him "rightly to divide the word of truth," would "take of the things of Christ; and show them unto them;" would send home the teaching until it should be "as a nail in a sure place." He opened upon that precious story which has been the turning point in the downward path of so many thousands of sinners, who are now rejoicing saints in their Father's house above.
"And he said, a certain man had two sons." Mark's was a voice of wondrous power, and as sweet as it was strong; but never had it sounded more thrilling than when it read how the young man waywardly demanded the portion of goods that fell to him, and went away into a far country to waste his substance with riotous living; never more mournful than when it told of the great famine that arose when he had spent all, and how he began to be in want; never more touching in its chastened gladness than when the story told how the young man "came to himself" in the depth of his utter desolation, and said, "I will arise and go to my father;" but never had it swelled so triumphantly to the higher notes of joy, as when it told that the father "saw him when he was yet a great way off;" but here the clear voice trembled, shook, fell; and then kneeling down, Mark Wilson turned the rest into a prayer.
He prayed and said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son:" he prayed and asked that the robe, the seamless robe of the Redeemer's righteousness, might be brought forth and put on each returning prodigal; that the ring of covenant love might be placed on the trembling hand of repentance; that the wounded feet of the weary wanderer might be shod afresh to walk in the ways of holiness, until they became even "beautiful upon the mountains," as bearers of "good tidings of great joy." Then Mark Wilson paused again, and his voice changed from the pleading accents of prayer to the full hymn-notes of praise, while he repeated the words of the reconciled father, "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
No one stirred—but there was a sound as of a wind sobbing in the branches of the shaken trees, and there were drops falling, as of a gracious rain on the mown grass. It was Alice who was sobbing, but so gently that she knew not it could be heard—it was Miles whose strong limbs were trembling with over-mastering emotion, and whose tears were falling fast as rain. The widowed mother had retired into that inner chamber of the heart where the believing soul communes with her Lord; and there she was interceding, as Moses interceded for the rebellious children of his people:—
"Oh, he hath sinned a great sin; yet now, if thou wilt forgive his sin—"
Old Mr. Knibb had quietly submitted to the turn which things had taken, though he was altogether unenlightened as to the true cause of the emotion which was prevailing around him. But the old man's thoughts had gone back into some almost forgotten haunts of memory, and the handmaid, who, with lantern in hand, was lighting him through those dim and crooked bye-paths of the past, was none other than conscience. Yes, conscience, a rather sleepy inmate of the old man's "house of life," had been suddenly aroused from her long lethargy, and, her lantern, which had gone out, was suddenly lighted up afresh from the clear lamp of the word. And he was seeing some turns in his past road as he had never seen them before, and wish, nay, longing, that the crooked had been made straight, and the broad had been narrow, never mind how narrow, so that it might not have brought him to the hard parched land of his dry old age.
Look! the old man is weeping—weeping softly and tenderly as a little child. Perhaps there may be a beam of Divine love shining on those tears which the old man is wiping away with the back of his hard thin hand. Sometimes, very late in the evening there is a light—light enough to show the cross of Christ, though the eye maybe dim and the natural strength abated, and it be very late in the day to bring the offering of a contrite heart into the house of the Lord. But he has taken his candle and gone to his chamber; and there we will leave him alone with God.