What unseen power had drawn him there? Was it meant that he should understand that all the stings that fate had in store for him were to be in some unsearchable way the refuse of his father's deed? His mind went back to the night of his father's death. He thought of his mother's confession—a confession more terrible to make more fearful to listen to, than a mother ever made before or a son ever heard. And now again, was the disaster of this very night a link in the chain of destiny?
Let no man compare the withering effects of a father's curse with the blasting influence of a father's sin. If the wrath of Providence should fail in its stern and awful retribution, the world in its mercy would not forget that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the children.
Paul entered the lych-gate and entered the church-yard. The night dew on his cheeks was not colder than his tears as he knelt by his father's grave. At one instant he cursed the world and the world's cruel law. Then there stole into his heart a poison that corroded its dearest memory: he thought of his father with bitterness.
At that moment a strange awe crept over him. He knew, though still only by the eyes of his mind, that the vision had returned. He knew it was standing against the night-sky as a ghastly headstone to the grave. But when he raised his eyes what he saw was more terrible. The face was before him, but it was a dead face now. He saw his own corpse stretched out on his father's grave.
His head fell on the cold sod. He lay like the dead on the grave of the dead. Then he knew that it was ordered above that the cloud of his father's sin should darken his days; that through all the range and change of life he was to be the lonely slave of a sin not his own. His fate was sin-inherited, and the wages of sin is death.
Was it strange that at that moment, when all the earth seemed gloomed by the shadow of a curse that lay blackest over him—when reverence for a father's memory and love learned at a mother's knee were deadened by a sense of irremediable wrong—was it strange that there and then peace fell on him like a dove from heaven?
Orphaned in one hour—now, and not till now—foredoomed to writhe like a worm amid the dust of the world—the man in him arose and shook off its fear.
It was because he came to know—rude man as he was, unlettered, but strong of soul—that there is a Power superior to fate, that the stormiest sea has its Master, that the waif that is cast by the roughest wave on the loneliest shore is yet seen and known.
And the voice of an angel seemed to whisper in his heart the story of Hagar and her son; how the boy was the first-born of his father; how the second-born became the heir; how the woman and son were turned away; how they were nigh to death in the desert; and how, at last, the cry came from heaven, "God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is."
The horror of the vision had gone. It would come back no more. Paul walked home, went up to his own room, and slept peacefully.