Uncle Luke is yonder, too. At Madeline’s strong entreaty, he accompanied her from England; and now, very old and feeble, but still bright and simple as ever, he goes hand in hand through the woods and fields, with another ‘little Madlin,’ the very image of the little girl he used to love so well. For a long time he hardly seemed to recognise in the gentle woman who took him to her home the pretty Madeline of other years; but when the child came, he, a child himself, found his happiness in her, and recognised the vision of his old playmate, re-risen to delight his declining days.
And now, what remains to be told? The human shadows that have arisen throughout our story fade one by one away. Of only one of these, Adèle Lambert, will the reader care to hear a last record. She died in the springtime at Mount Eden, passing away, in perfect peace and faith: her spirit purified; her hand in that of the man who had pointed her upward to a holier life, her eyes on the face she had learned to regard as that of an angel, sent to succour sinners in this dark world.
This world remains as most men find it; a tomb, save for those superb spirits who come to bless the wretcheder dwellers in it, with deeds of beautiful self-sacrifice and words of divine love. In the depth of its darker recesses, still the snake-like seducer slimes his victim, and the slanderer spits his venom, and the literature of the Liar still festers like a feverish sore, spreading moral sickness and contamination all around. Thence, and thence only, comes the voice which would fain proclaim to the unhappy that there is no God, and but one gospel—‘Eat and drink, for tomorrow you die.’ But God is, as sure as Love is, or Hope, or heavenly Purity and Light. Therefore let no man despair, though now, as ever, ‘the Light shineth in Darkness, and the Darkness comprehendeth it not.’