"O, very, very pleasant!" answered Molly, and then gave the little blind girl into the arms of the old man, who pressed her to his heart, and kissed her. Then he said rapidly: "Now let us all hasten away from this desolate, frightful place; and it shall henceforth be my only care to make you forget all the unspeakable misery you have suffered through my cruelty."
Molly and O'Neil again entered the cave, to bid farewell to their strange place of refuge. Molly looked gratefully round, as if to thank it for the shelter it had afforded them.
Soon the whole four were on their happy way together home. Their path passed by the hovels whose inmates had evinced so much kind feeling towards the banished family; and they found there a man who, upon a promise of good pay from the landlord, was willing to take them home in his little one-horse wagon. Towards evening they reached the handsome house of the grandfather. The old housekeeper came rushing out to meet them, perfectly astonished to see her master, whose return she had awaited with the most dreadful anxiety during the whole of the stormy night now past, and whom she never thought again to have seen alive, as his horse, covered with foam and blood, had returned home without a rider. She was also very much surprised at the little band of strangers who accompanied the old man. She turned herself right and left in her confusion, without exactly knowing what kind of welcome she was to offer the new guests, who, although scarcely covered with their miserable rags, yet through their noble bearing and appearance inspired respect. At last the old man said to her, in a more friendly tone than she had ever before heard from his lips: "Make haste, Mary! Prepare the very best you have in the house, for I intend to celebrate this evening the happiest festival of my whole life!"
He then dismounted from the wagon, and placed himself upon the threshold of his own door, to welcome his new inmates, whom he begged, individually, upon their entrance, to consider the house and everything in it as their own.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, as he led them in, and gazed in the soft eyes of Molly, "how poor was I, until this moment, although surrounded by so much wealth! and how truly rich have you always been, although in the midst of such bitter poverty, in the sweetness of your holy love! How warmly my heart beats to-day! how full it is of happy feelings! Like a tree blasted by lightning, I have stood stripped and desolate in the arid desert my own faults had made for me, almost afraid to gaze around me. But I have grown young again in your embracing arms; for the first time since I cursed my poor Kitty, does it seem to me a joy to live!"
CHAPTER V.
KITTY.
"Then said Raphael, I know, Tobias, that thy father will open his eyes."