The man, old beyond his years, looked pained at first.
“Do you think so, Amos?” he muttered, as though hardly daring to believe such good news. “It will take a terrible load off my heart when I am able to redeem the past, so far as a mere return of the lost money can ever make amends.”
Amos laughed.
“Don’t let it worry you, father,” he hastened to say. “That was all attended to long ago. Why, for more than six years now there hasn’t been the slightest thing against you; and Mr. Hastings never let it be known that he had lost a large sum of money through your fault. So you see there has really been no publicity at all; in fact, these good chums of mine are the only ones who know about it; and they’ve promised never to let it go any further.”
“But—I’ve been expecting all this time that the money would be paid over only through hard work on my part,” stammered Mr. Codling, weakly; “and here, when I’m making my way back in the direction of my old home, meaning to wipe out my error, you’re telling me there is nothing to be done. Whose money was it that settled the claim against me?”
“Oh! mother attended to all that, sir. Why, I believe the very first thing she did after her Aunt Letty died and left everything to us, was to hurry to see Mr. Hastings in the city, and arrange with him to take up his claim. So you see no outside assistance was needed; we took care of things right in the family, father.”
“But—Aunt Letty wasn’t so rich but that this must have sadly crippled your dear mother’s resources, Amos,” expostulated the man, suppressing a groan that might have been from mental pain, though Elmer and Wee Willie were gently handling his swollen ankle at the time.
“Oh! there was quite enough left, sir, to keep the wolf from the door,” the brave boy hastened to declare, though Elmer remembered him saying something that was quite different not so very long back.
“It is wonderful, simply wonderful!” murmured the wanderer, heaving a sigh of supreme contentment, such as probably had not passed his lips for seven long agonizing years. “To come back after this age and find that God has been so kind, so forgiving as to leave me all my dear ones. I can never be grateful enough to Him for these mercies. The hours will seem like years to me until I can look again into her blessed eyes, and hear her say that true love has survived it all.”
“If you knew how often she speaks to me of you, father, how many times I’ve found my mother crying to herself after the children were all in bed, you’d have no fear about that. Her one great dread was that you might be dead, and we’d never know about it at all.”